words Jake Munn
‘The Brutalist’. You’ve no doubt have heard the clamour being made about this Academy Award nominee directed by Brady Corbet that recently picked up three Golden Globes – and not without reason; it contains the expected tentpoles of award season contenders, a three-and-a-half-hour epic movie that aims to explore themes including (in no particular order) Brutalist architecture, the post-war immigrant experience, drug use, familial strife, class gaps, xenophobia, the holocaust, religion, and sexual abuse. It’s an exhaustive list wound up into a plot spread across three acts with an ‘epilogue’ and intermission. It’s not for the faint of heart yet remains surprisingly accessible for the most part, even if the second act at times descends into melodramatic spectacle. The appeal for lengthy movies is on the rise; but does this translate to engaging storytelling in the age of the digital streamer?
The film follows the story of Laszlo Toth played by Adrian Brody, a Hungarian immigrant who comes to the United States after the end of World War two. A gifted architect, Laszlo works for his cousin until a feud causes them to go their separate ways, but not before Laszlo captures the attention of a rich industrialist (Guy Pierce) for whom he designed a new library. This catapults Laszlo to dizzying new heights as he’s tasked with designing his patron a new building, an impossible project for anyone but him. Soon reunited with his sick wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) and young niece, Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy), he is forced to navigate the professional and personal demands placed upon him, an addiction to opiates and a battle with the inner demon of burgeoning genius.
A film split into multiple acts could well be cause for the casual moviegoer to groan, perhaps even to question the necessity of what appears an overstuffed runtime. It could be argued that this borders on the pretentious; after all, ‘acts’ are only relevant to scriptwriters and narrative aficionados. I’ll admit, as each act title card emerged, along with the inevitable intermission, the film felt like I was scaling some indomitable mountain in the hopes of a rewarding vista.
It leads us to speculate upon the volume of recent successes with a similar runtime: the Dune series, Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, The Irishman. Films that received high praise and numerous award nominations upon release. These epic films work because they feel like novels; they delve into the historical, touch upon the fantastical, with central, human struggles and big ideas. Importantly, they are reminiscent of a different era. It’s no coincidence that the greatest films ever made have exceedingly long runtimes. Established filmmakers are attempting something vital here; to shock cinema back to life before it becomes irrelevant in the age of a disposable viewing culture and Scorsese’s grim prediction of the death of cinema is realised.
So how does The Brutalist factor into the equation? We will undoubtedly see more of these films which try to capture the essence of Coppola and David Lean over the coming years, due to their ability to garner critics’ attention and award nominations. The Brutalist has been adoringly compared to, amongst others, The Godfather. This is fair – Laszlo’s arrival in New York does carry a similar feel to Vito Corleone’s origin story and both tell a sprawling rise and fall of a central character. Brody gives a career defining performance and Guy Pierce couldn’t have been better cast in the role of the tempestuous industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren. Where things go awry is in the writer’s inability to know where to stop, or curtail their spiralling plot, so that the runtime begins to feel like an impediment. The plot choices of the final act steal the main character of his agency, offering a feeble payoff to a character who we become obsessively invested in. Three hours of carefully engineered suspense are entirely deflated. The rest of the film then feels in a rush to resolve itself, with a perplexing epilogue that is distinctly contrived.
Taken in its entirety, however, The Brutalist is a very good film and worthy of its high praise. A quintessential cinematic experience lovingly shot in VistaVision, which was crucial for effectively realising the movie’s era and, at times, providing an almost Hitchcockian feel, particularly apparent in Laszlo’s dizzying POV of the Statue of Liberty as he arrives in New York in the beginning of the movie.
The Brutalist will undoubtedly do well at this year’s Oscars, likely it will win the prized Best Picture award it seems built for. But what is important about it is in how it joins the likes of Oppenheimer and other recent epics in giving cinema back its credibility. As cinema continues to learn how to navigate the shifting sands of the media industry, it needs to continue to take risks and bite off more than it can chew.
Another possible Best Picture contender this year is All We Imagine as Light, an acclaimed Indian film that clocks in at not even half of The Brutalist’s runtime and was announced recently as Sight and Sound’s best film of 2024. It’s another sign that audiences seem to be yearning for something artistic that can serve as a mirror for the societal and cultural anxiety of our era – perhaps then, it’s not so much about runtime. Maybe, as we watch the unfolding drama of real life, cinema, more than ever, needs to strive for something bigger than itself.
