Review: The Brutalist (2024)
If he builds it, she will come
The Brutalist (2024)
Written and directed by Brady Corbet
Cowritten by Mona Fastvold
Readers of my reviews in this space know that I have no problems with long movies. From the three-hour “Los Delincuentes” to the 14-hour-long, ten years in the making extravaganza that is “La Flor,” I happily sit through whatever a brilliant artist wants to show me. But, as a writer once said to me, if they’re a genius they can do anything. The corollary is: but you better be a genius.
The same dictum doesn’t apply to movies. Somehow an extravagant flop like “Argylle” (which cost upwards of $100 million plus another $100M in marketing costs, and made only $96M at the box office) comes to mind. My impression of that spy comedy-satire was that like a little kid who is given $1000 to spend in a candy shop, the director had way too much money to spend, and spent it all.
“The Brutalist” doesn’t have that problem. Somehow this 215 minute film (that’s almost 3½ hours) came in at less than $10M, according to its Wikipedia page, and that’s impressive given the results. Yes, it’s easy to see the director scrimping on sets and extras; Brady Corbet adopts a kind of socialist-realist esthetic for many scenes, wildly tilting the camera, coming close to the actors as if they were tussling in a boxing ring, blocking the background view by using a bus looming behind actors in a street scene as if it were the size of an ocean liner.
The first scene is set on a ship that’s never shown. Two men, one of them the film’s star Adrien Brody, make their way through overcrowded quarters. Up, down, everything’s shadowed; you don’t really glimpse what feels like dozens of other people all getting in each other’s way, at most you see shoulders, an out-of-focus hat, a few fingers. Finally they arrive out in the open air, and you still don’t see the ship, all you see is the Statue of Liberty upside down. Even at this early juncture, three minutes into the over three-hour film, I asked myself: Is that really the Statue of Liberty, or a model that a grip is holding at a 75° angle? Meanwhile the two men are celebrating: it’s 1947 and they have escaped Eastern Europe.
The other early, strong impression is the soundtrack, less musical than percussive. You hear clicks, taps, out-of-context bells. When there is music, it doesn’t seem to have a key to go home to; all musical lines are unresolved. To me, it felt less like the 1940s than some dadaesque experiment of the early 20th century, but as a viewer I didn’t mind — I was delighted. It sounded like the invention of music, and somehow it fit the action happening onscreen as Brody’s character László figures out how to survive in New York long enough to get to Philadelphia, where his cousin runs a furniture business. The New World is not modern, but Dickensian to the sensitive, grimacing László, who has to use all his cleverness just to find a bed and a scrap to eat.
That’s the first twenty minutes or so. To return to what I started saying: All this on a small budget. I’m thinking, this is genius. This is fantastic. The weirdness, the sheer amount of dirt and grime in a single shot, like rain or snow no longer fall from the sky, but only soot; the tintinabulative soundtrack.
Now consider again the length. Can the filmmaker keep up this level of intensity for three and a half fucking hours? Because if he could, I was ready for it. Bring on the endless variety of scraping sounds, bring on the showers of metal rain!
Unfortunately, the answer is no.
The premise is: László, a refugee from Hungary, has been separated by the war and the Soviet victory from his wife and her disabled niece. A vaunted architect, he’s almost literally rescued from the gutter by a rich gentleman — or rather, by his failson, who wants to renovate a large room to surprise his father, a wealthy egotist named Harrison Van Buren. An industrialist of some sort, Van Buren has a mansion and many beautiful suits; never a hair out of place, he speaks like a radio actor, and all his lines sound like they were written by a newscaster aspiring to be a playwright. Here’s part of a monologue:
I was received hospitably, so I swiftly moved to explain that I had made them out a cheque for the amount of $25,000. When I handed it over, they appeared relieved but perhaps a little disappointed at the figure. They were courteous and thanked me, all the same.
I was quite uncomfortable, but before hurrying off I asked them a question; “what will you do with all that money?” They rambled on about miracles or some such thing. For a moment, everything in their immediate line of view seemed solvable, achievable! They would finally be all right. What a thoughtful grandson I was!
Upon departure, before I had reached the edge of their front lawn, the two of them ran out after me shouting! -- “You’ve forgotten your signature, Harrison!”
I summoned the courage to be frank and speak to them as adults. I had not forgotten, I said, but was ultimately not compelled to sign due to the blunder of their response! If only they’d been sick or dying as my mother had previously suggested, how glad I would have been to ease their troubles — but they appeared perfectly healthy to me!
Van Buren is played by the actor Guy Pearce, a talented, chameleonic British actor who has played a huge range of movie roles, from a sergeant in “The Hurt Locker” to King Edward VIII in “The King’s Speech,” from the flailing protagonist of “Memento” to, well, this overbearing, well-tailored capitalist intent on impressing everyone around him. He commissions László to build a mammoth community center (that includes both a gym and a chapel) on a hill overlooking his home town. The rest of the movie is about László’s attempts to maintain his dignity while he carries out the project.
Or at least I assume so. Once Van Buren has announced the project, the film came to a halt, and the word INTERMISSION appeared onscreen. I was taken aback and looked at my watch; the over three-hour long film had only been running for just over 100 minutes. Yes, most of that time had been fascinating, but the intensity was starting to wear me out, and the time was almost 10 p.m. (Also wearing were the physical demands of viewing a 70mm print in a widescreen format.)
When the movie started up again, a new subplot began: László’s seemingly lost wife and her niece had been found. They appear in Pennsylvania, moving into the guest house which Van Buren has lent to the architect. There’s a fantastically erotic scene between the reunited couple; again director Corbet cleverly uses economy of framing and unexpected physical action to save himself a lot of trouble while imbuing the scene with a sense of weirdness.
But then things swiftly go downhill, narratively. Small town small-mindedness and petty graft threaten László’s project. For the first time, the movie feels predictable. Then the failson sets his sights on the disabled niece. Before that scene had a chance to go on for 30 seconds, I practically heaved myself out of my seat and left the theater.
Yes, I walked out. Should I have disclosed that earlier in this review? Maybe so. And maybe director Corbet should have cut an hour and a half out of this. (I wondered if maybe the 70mm print was some sort of director’s cut, but was informed by my moviegoing buddy S. that this 215-minute version is the only cut, that Corbet insisted on it. She lives in L.A., so I assume this represents the truth. Scuttlebutt about The Industry must blow through the air down there like pollen.)
Because it’s one thing to have a long movie; it’s another to have an intermission; but to have a movie turn boring and stupid after the intermission — that’s unforgivable.