The Brutalist Unfortunately Left Much to be Desired

Spoiler Level: I will try to keep it light but will mark parts that have more 'spoilers'

Brady Corbet's The Brutalist was one of my most anticipated films of the year, alongside the likes of Furiosa and Twisters. So, needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity to see the film two months early at the Chicago International Film Festival. Unfortunately, the film was underwhelming, to say the least.

Breaking out of festivals lauded as an 'American Epic' The Brutalist canvases 33 years from the life of fictional architect László Tóth and his struggle to survive as a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant during the Post-War era. Focusing on the architectural movement of Brutalism, which is very present in the design of our campus here at UIC (Daley Library and BSB, for example).

Slight Caveat: My Rating System

Just a short outline of how I use the 5-star rating system:

Each star represents something I like about the movie; each star not filled is something I didn't like. These can range from small things like a favorite character to big things like bad cinematography.

Now onto the actual review

A Perfectly 3-Star Film

I really wanted to love the Brutalist, I honestly really did. But, despite a strong basis, there were many points that were lacking.

The first good star is the performances by Adrien Brody and Guy Pierce. Both actors bring their characters to life on screen in a way that is deeply moving. Brody, in particular, had a few moments that left me speechless, while Pierce played the role of a simple man posing as someone great in a quite infuriating manner. The

rest of the cast was also quite brilliant, but we do not get to know them beyond a surface level.

The second star is for craft. The film is stunning: the set, score, costume, color, and effects were all captivating. I was especially partial to the opening credits crawl, and the scoring for that section. Every part of the production is meant to pull you deeper into the film, especially the bone-shaking score by Daniel Blumberg.

The third and final positive star is for the entire first half, or the part of the movie that makes you think, 'Wow, this might be the best movie ever.' The first half knows what it's doing, and sets up the daunting architectural feat at the center of the film. It's paced in a way that makes the 1.5 hours feel like only 40 minutes as you are eager to see László's vision come to fruition.

Okay now for the negatives, which come with the small disclaimer of I can always be wrong, this isn't a 'don't go see the movie' PSA but a 'these are things I didn't quite like' I would also like to say if you go see this movie look into the warnings, I will not be covering everything in this, but there are definitely some sensitive moments content-wise.

The first gripe was too many plot lines, not that that is inherently bad, but if you don't give them all time to breathe, you end up with the tangled, rushed mess that is the second half of The Brutalist. There is a concept of a great film somewhere in there, you can tell that much from the beginning, but between the intermission and the end, that momentum is lost. Where the first half seems to zoom past, the second half drags on and on through events that don't quite fit together within the narrative. There is the sense that something is missing as the film rushes through its own ideals, making vague gestures at its themes without giving time for any commentary, which leaves the film feeling flat.

!!Slight Spoilers in the Next Section!!

Director Brady Corbet answering questions during the post-screening Q&A.

My second gripe was the epilogue, the way the female characters were written and handled by the film, and the context of something director Brady Corbet said in the post-screening interview. Corbet called the film a love story between László and his wife Erzsébet, and I understand what he is saying, but in my honest opinion, the film does not come across as a love story at any point until the Epilogue when an adult Zsófia (László's niece) say point-blank "this is a love story" which to me means nothing unless it is shown through film. Erzsébet's presence in the narrative, specifically in the second half, was to function as a grounding point for her husband, and while that isn't necessarily bad, that is basically the only thing we see her do. All her other actions are shown to us through conversation and she was presently absent unless she was needed to move along the plot. The Epilogue in itself is a whole different creature, functioning as a 'fill in the gap' of the next 30 years of László's life after the climax of the second half. Functionally, I thought it was a tiny bit lazy to pull "information that the audience does not know recontextualizes the whole film" in a 3.5 hour-long film because the way Corbet talked about the film afterward aligned more with the meaning of the film before the Epilogue.

Conclusion and Shameless Self Promo

I have many more gripes with the way the whole film turned out that I will refrain from going into too much because I do not know how to feel about a lot of it, and my full thoughts are quite spoiler heavy. But, if that does not turn you off from what I have to say, my Letterboxd has my initial thoughts, and I am more than willing to talk for hours about this on Instagram (@suryaarienndil).