The Brutalist

Making a movie like "The Brutalist" is not easy nowadays. Epic period dramas are not very trendy and asking the audience to sit for three and a half hours, is not an easy demand. With that being said, I went to the cinema curious to see what Brady Corbet made. I have to say that the movie has a nice start and development. Even if the character of László Tóth never existed and this is in fact a pure fictional story, overall it is pretty believable, at least in the first half. We see the protagonist getting to America, slowly integrating in the society and finding his first important job: building a complex for the rich businessman Var Buren.

The characterization of the protagonist is incredible: we get to know him inside out, which is his backstory, his strengths, his weaknesses, his vices. A brilliant mind that accomplished so much in his home country, getting awarded for the buildings that he projected. The film does a nice job in contextualizing the historical period, through the tragic events that happened during the 40s and 50s in Europe. Screenwriters managed to create a compelling character that needed to endure many difficulties through his life, as he needed to re-affirm his name in the USA. The director is setting this as a biopic, therefore I was expecting to see all the main important parts of this fictional life. But unfortunately I feel that the movie lost its identity halfway through. I can pinpoint the exact moment where things went sideways: there is a scene set in Italy, where the overall mood completely changed and it seemed to watch a different film altogether. The plot never recovered from this mistake. The story is split into four different parts: the first three parts are following the life of László from the 40s until the 60s, and then there is an incredible time jump that brings us directly to the 80s, showing us all the work that the Hungarian architect did in the US. The problem is that the audience never saw what actually happened in those 20 years. The director focused too much on pointless details and it seemed that he remembered that he needed to actually wrap the film somehow. The ending feels rushed and messy.

The movie has good ideas, but it feels very unbalanced towards the end. It is truly a pity, because all the right ingredients are there: incredible cast composed by many great names, wonderful photography, compelling and overall well written story. I am also sure that some of the shots are pretty iconic. Potentially this could have been a modern masterpiece. I strongly believe that considering the nature and the length of the production, this would have worked way better as a limited series of maybe 4-5 episodes. Unfortunately, by the end a lot of things are left unanswered. My final mark is 6.5. I recognized that a lot of effort was made into this project, but potential was wasted.

'The Brutalist' never lets you breathe. The director builds it with such purpose that you see the care in every frame. He's a talented craftsman, no question, but also so crushingly serious. And that chokes out any real feeling. You watch the artistry turn into artifice. And, after a while, all that weight just presses down.

The film is so obsessed with being Art that it forgets to let you in. It's so heavy with its own importance that it starts to close in on itself so much so that eventually all you see is this polished facade, reflecting its own seriousness back at you.

It doesn't stay with you. It stands there, sealed off by its own sense of importance, and you're left outside.

The first half of "The Brutalist" slowly and beautifully unfolds in a way that feels like it's going to be the next "Godfather."

As the second half of the film came after intermission, I was hoping it would continue down that same trajectory, but instead the second half goes down a strange, confusing and puzzling path, which some viewers might find brilliant. When the end did come, I found myself laughing as I shook my head walking the razors edge in my mind, saying to myself, "Why did Corbet go down this path?" and at the same time saying, "that was actually kind of brilliant."

Art is subjective and some people might really like this strange and bizarre second half of the film. Perhaps it was even Corbet's middle finger to the audience saying, "You didn't see that coming, did you?" Whatever the case may be, I give the second half a 4 because the first half was so brilliant, and I really wanted the film to continue going down that same trajectory the entire way through.

In the end, the acting is terrific, the cinematography is absolutely beautiful, and the film is strange. But I give it to Corbet for the effort, making films are hard, and he went for something different with his artistic vision.

"Brutalist," much like the architectural style it's named after, is imposing, cold, and ultimately, quite boring. This film, which chronicles the decades-spanning career of an ambitious architect, aims for epic grandeur but instead delivers a bloated and convoluted narrative that collapses under its own weight.

While the film boasts a striking visual style, meticulously recreating period details and crafting impressive architectural set pieces, this commitment to aesthetic flourishes comes at the expense of a compelling story. We are presented with a series of loosely connected vignettes, each more ponderous than the last, detailing the triumphs and tribulations of a man more cipher than character.

The film's central problem is its length. Clocking in far too long, "Brutalist" feels like a never-ending tour of a building you've already seen every corner of. The complicated, multi-stranded plot, only adds to the confusion, leaving the audience struggling to piece together a narrative that feels unnecessarily fragmented.

Ultimately, "Brutalist" is a classic case of style over substance. It's a film that clearly prioritizes visual spectacle over emotional resonance, leaving the viewer feeling impressed but ultimately detached. It's a beautifully constructed edifice with nothing inside, a testament to the fact that even the most impressive facade can't mask a hollow core. This film is less a moving story and more an endurance test, a stark reminder that bigger isn't always better, and that sometimes, less is truly more. Save your time and admire a well-designed building instead.

By all rights, The Brutalists should have been a triumph of contemporary cinema. It had all the necessary accouterments: a sprawling runtime (three-plus hours, no less), a cast of pedigreed thespians frowning meaningfully into the middle distance, and a grandiose self-awareness that all but guarantees critical accolades from the usual dreary pamphleteers of moral instruction. Instead, what we receive is a lumbering, self-indulgent exercise in ideological exhibitionism-an advertisement, really, for a laundry list of progressive orthodoxies, stitched together with the unearned gravity of a film convinced of its own greatness.

It is, at its core, an excruciatingly obvious sermon on the virtues of mass immigration, the tragic poetry of opioid smuggling, and the intersectional ballet of class struggle. One gets the distinct impression that the director, overcome with the giddy self-righteousness of a trust fund revolutionary, decided that any opposition to these themes-however slight, however nuanced-should be discarded as brutish and retrograde. The result is a film that does not argue, but dictates; it does not question, but demands obedience.

A particularly egregious example of this is the film's treatment of sexuality, which, rather than being a natural element of character or plot, is wielded like a cudgel, as if the director has mistaken provocation for profundity. This is, of course, the age-old trick of the modern auteur: to linger uncomfortably on scenes of grotesque degradation and then feign astonishment when audiences express revulsion. "Ah, but you are merely revealing your own prejudices," the filmmakers sneer, mistaking their own self-indulgence for bravery.

Then there is the matter of style-or, more accurately, the utter absence of it. The Brutalists operates in the now all-too-familiar mode of arthouse monotony, stretching its scenes to insufferable lengths in an attempt to pass off inertia as profundity. The cinematography, full of languid tracking shots and barren industrial landscapes, serves as a backdrop for dialogue so contrived, so consciously weighty, that one is left yearning for the honesty of silence.

But perhaps the film's greatest failure is its utter lack of humanity. Beneath its posturing, its po-faced political hectoring, and its parade of suffering, there is no genuine curiosity about human nature-only a tedious reaffirmation of fashionable narratives. It is a work of cynical calculation, designed not to challenge or illuminate but to reinforce the self-congratulatory smugness of its intended audience.

In the end, The Brutalists is not so much a film as it is a performance of righteousness, an expensively produced hymn to contemporary pieties. It is a cinematic endurance test, wherein those who survive its oppressive runtime are rewarded not with insight or catharsis, but merely the hollow satisfaction of having borne witness to its turgid self-importance. If this is the new standard of "bold" filmmaking, then one must ask: Is there anything left to rebel against, other than the tedium of the sermon itself?