PREMISE
When a visionary architect and his wife flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of the modern United States, their lives are changed forever by a mysterious, wealthy client.
THE GOOD STUFF
Adrien Brody– I can’t help but be seriously, seriously impressed with what Adrien Brody does in this film. I’m a big Ralph Fiennes fan, and nothing would make me happier than to see him get his just due at the Oscars, but it’s hard to deny the emotional comprehensiveness of this performance. Brody’s character Laszlo Toth is not an all-time great character or anything, but the material is so heavy. Brody is practically in every frame of the film, and he’s so damn good 100% of the time that it really does seem like the Oscar is inevitable. People have won Oscars for doing much, much less.
Brody has been an unsung hero for quite some time and deserves the second Oscar that seems so destined to be in his possession very soon.
TECHNICAL STUFF- It baffles the mind that the brutalist has a $10 million budget. This is one of the more beautiful-looking films of 2024. The cinematography, production design, and soundtrack are just so amazing. Seeing it on VistaVision 35 mm is such a chef’s kiss. There are a lot of movies in 2024 that have earned their nominations for the technical stuff that they do. And given the minimalism of this budget, I believe this movie deserves a lot of the technical awards that will be handed out.
THE ENIGMA OF ARRIVAL- I saw the brutalist on two different days. The first sitting was watching the aforementioned first chapter and left after the 15-minute intermission that followed. The second time (almost 3 weeks later), I bought a ticket, went and had a nice dinner, and then came back after the intermission was over and watched the second chapter (The Hardcore of Beauty) and the epilogue.
I truly believe this is the best way to experience this movie because The Enigma of Arrival is pretty f****** great. It is the story of a man who is the absolute best at what he does, comes from impossible odds, and is so undeniable at what he does that the audience can’t help but root for him to succeed. It is an uplifting, sweet, and outright inspiring hour and 45 minutes of film.
THE BAD STUFF
PACING- The co-founder of this website Aaron Goldstein, said something once upon a time that stuck in my head that very much rings true in the year of 2025:
“If a movie is over 3 hours these days it’s badly in need of a good editor”
Holy f*** does that ever ring true with this film. In this 3-hour and 20-minute film (there’s a 15-minute intermission that is counted in the runtime for some reason), there’s at least ONE FULL HOUR OF S*** that could not have been here.
There are multiple different characters that we are introduced to that come along and are never referenced again. So many different scenes have no lasting effect on the main story, so many monologues that, while telling the character’s backstory very well, do not show resonance in a character’s actions later on in the film. Many different scenes of partying and sex that largely have no resonance. Yes, I get that the brutalist really wants you to get a sense of the times of the story that is taking place. But it already does that without all of the extra stuff.
THE UGLY STUFF
THE LAST 40 F****** MINUTES- Sweet Lord, does this movie fall off a cliff in the last 40 minutes. And I mean FALL OFF OF THE F****** CLIFF. The brutalist is a really good movie by this point, justifying pretty much every Best Picture nomination it’s collected. But then the alleyway scene occurs… and something happens that turns the course of the entire movie in a dramatic fashion.
From there, the film rushes to deal with the fallout of this situation in such a clumsy and bull s*** way that I walked out of this movie thinking that a different director stepped in at the last minute for some reason that personally hated the actual director of this film Brady Corbet and just wanted to ruin all of the fascinating storytelling and goodwill that this movie spent the previous 2 hours and 40 minutes building. I’m so happy that I split this movie in half over the course of two different sittings. Otherwise, I would have been much more infuriated after spending all this time getting to know these characters for it to end like it does.
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**MINI-RANT ON DECK**
The worst movies that an avid moviegoer like myself can experience aren’t the terrible ones. A lot of the movies that you see critics put on their worst-of lists year by year are incompetently made, terribly written, poorly acted etc., etc. I can understand having some anticipation for a big-budget tent pole and being let down to the point where you consider it a terrible movie. Even so, that’s not the worst moviegoing experience. The absolute worst experience is a bull**** movie that is undeniably good until something irredeemable comes along and RUINS THE ENTIRE EXPERIENCE because of one inexcusable mistake.
It’s infuriating enough when that happens in a 90-minute to 2-hour movie instead of a 200-minute film. Because of the running time, It’s twice as infuriating because of how much time you’ve committed. In the case of the brutalist, it’s not one inexcusable mistake. It’s a jarring 40 minutes of bovine excrement that practically invalidates the excellent stuff that existed up until that point.
When the credits started rolling on this thing, I heard somebody in the audience say out loud, “That’s it?” And that’s precisely how I felt at that moment as well. It’s maddening. Really f****** maddening.
THE BRUTALIST is in theaters now
