The Brutalist (2024) - A Monumental Masterpiece

   The Brutalist (2024)

I've been in bed for a week with a fever of 39, and this is definitely one of the things I've thought about most often. I'm finally recovering and I can once again invest my energy in something other than "surviving". Being able to write something about this film won't be easy, but I'll try to clarify a couple of thoughts that came to mind.

Just calling it a film is quite reductive. Yes, because what I saw in Milan in the glorious 70 mm format, in the original language, goes far beyond the stylistic features of the classic film. Here we are faced with something else... here, we are faced with Cinema with a capital C, in bold and underlined, damn it. A Cinema that has been missing for too long now. I don't think I've seen something of this level for a very long time, several years perhaps, and despite my expectations being high, I never would have believed that they could be swept away so easily.

I'll say it clearly right away: "The Brutalist" is an incredible masterpiece.

Every aspect is simply unrivaled, and I don't say this lightly; very often in the past I have gone too far on the quality of certain titles, rather than others, well, for "The Brutalist" there is no history at all. It is an unprecedented universal quality, so universal that it makes me blindly believe that this year there is no point in doing the Oscars; as far as I'm concerned this film must win everything. Every single category for which it was nominated. Ok, I'm glazing a little too much, but trust me, anyone who has seen it knows deep down that it is so and what I'm talking about. I'll slow down for a moment. Maybe I should take a step back and try to explain in the vaguest way possible and without making spoilers, the greatness of this Work. The film lasts 3.35 hours, which I swear pass in the blink of an eye, and has a budget of only 10 million dollars; keep this figure in mind when you watch it or after you see it because I had to check 3 times before accepting it, I didn't believe it; such quality for so little money? EXCEPTIONAL.

The first part is cinematic perfection.

You are immediately immersed in the vision of László Tóth, played masterfully by Adrien Brody and from the very first seconds the film boldly captures the viewer and takes him hand in hand into an original, fresh and never banal narration, which at the same time harks back to the great classics of the early years of the New Hollywood (I had vibes like "The Godfather Part II", "Scarface" and many others); in this part, Brady Corbert's direction does not take care of itself. It's like a horse that has just freed itself from the reins of its own prison: UNLEASHED! Every camera movement is crazy, every angle undeniably studied, everything is in the right place. It really seems like you can see how everything was born to not be wrong by an inch. I didn't know Corbert at all, but after this film I fell in love with him (and how can you not fall in love with something like that). Also in the first portion, another character is introduced that I adored with every fiber of my body, namely Harrison Lee Van Buren, played by Guy Pearce. Pearce has always been an actor that I liked, not because he had made great films or anything like that (which he did anyway), but because he has the classic suffering face of a slightly beaten dog. In this film, however, the dog steps aside and gives a gigantic and unforgettable performance that will go down in history. Brody is no exception, in fact, I think I've never seen such a good actor in a fucking film. His performance is visceral and can only help the actor to win his second Oscar (no one has been like him this year). Every cell of his body exudes a rare acting quality, capable of moving and entering anyone's soul. In this first very rich part of the film the technical side is simply embarrassing. The sensational sets, which will leave everyone speechless, made with a maniacal attention to detail and perfect historical accuracy, a well-paced pressing editing, capable of going fast at the right moments and slow in the more introspective ones. Needless to say, among the jewels in the crown we have the cinematography. The holy cinematography of Lol Crawley is something sensational: made on 35 mm film VistaVision format it manages to give that sense of classic and archaic that has not been seen in a film for at least 50 years I think. The rendering of the film is then unprecedented, with warm colors, full of life in many scenes and cold in others, in which the architectural style of the various brutalist structures  is brilliantly reflected (as in the beautiful first shot of the Statue of Liberty upside down).

It goes without saying that every single frame could be detached from the film and put in a museum for its beauty and compositional quality.

The music?! Holy shit, the music is lethal. Another high point of the film that on more than one occasion caused me to have heart attacks, miles of goosebumps and erections because it was so splendid. Again, it had been a long time since I had heard such powerful and coherent soundtracks with the colossal staging.

Each of these high-level elements lead us (after a 15-minute interlude) to the second part of the film, about which I had heard and read some pretty demoralizing things. Many spoke of a drop in quality and a lack of narrative coherence, others of how compared to the first part the story went against its own principles. Honestly, I can only deny this bullshit, because it happens that if the first part was successful, the second is even more so. Everything is strengthened and crowned to make it even better than it was before.

With the second part, Corbert's work goes from being a wonderful film to what I consider without a doubt the best film of 2024.

All aspects are taken up, accentuated and improved to the extreme, also thanks to the entrance on the scene of some characters and the evolution (or involution) of others.

But what is the most incredible thing about "The Brutalist"? What is that thing that watching it made my eyes water and my heart beat?

The story.

The story is undoubtedly the pinnacle of the film, the pride for the eyes, the creme de la creme.

Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet have written something wonderful that will hardly go unnoticed not only by film enthusiasts but also by art preservers in the broad sense.

A story rich in meaning, metaphors, symbolism and above all passion. A story where there are no winners, nor losers but only victims. Victims of a corrupt world, founded on Capitalism, wars and fear. Fear of the different, of the stranger, of those who come from outside.

These are just some of the themes presented by the film, but many more are ready to be discovered by those who know how to observe and dig deep. The traumas of immigration, the fear of evolution, the obsession with one's art, the lack of communication between people, the oppression of sexuality, addiction…death...and much more.

But at this point I feel compelled to ask a question, more than anything to myself... what is "The Brutalist" really about? What does this monumental story tell? We have always been accustomed to seeing American cinema as the quintessential tool of mass communication, capable of reaching the eyes of many people and also influencing their hearts. A magical medium capable of transmitting an ideal, a concept and a mentality like nothing else until now. In particular, I am referring to the mentality of the very famous American Dream, according to which if a person commits himself to what he wants to achieve in one way or another, he will succeed, no matter what the cost. A hope born at the dawn of time and fueled over the years by Hollywood itself to feed the minds of the most maneuverable and give away the oldest of all exchange coins: illusion. And this is exactly what this immense MASTERPIECE is about. The illusion of the Dream, the deconstruction of America as it has always been depicted and the consequent lifting of the veil of Maya on the reality of things.

The representation of a mean, corrupt and as they also say during the film “rotten” land.

This (and much more) is what Corbert’s Work tells.

I'll stop here, I don't want to go on any longer otherwise I'll be taken for a ride for writing inconclusive reviews that never end. However, for anyone who has a shred of moral, I am convinced that this Work will speak to you like never before.

My final wish is that anyone can appreciate "The Brutalist" and love it as I loved it.

Not only for its beauty, its narrative and technical perfection, but above all for what it represents for Modern Cinema and the seventh art in general.

I repeat, a Cinema like this has been missing for too long... and my heart warms to see it shine with such intensity.

Oh, last thing, criticizing it for the AI ​​is bullshit, since Brody speaks Hungarian 4 times or so and they are all very short scenes anyway, so let's not be a pain in the ass for this triviality and appreciate what it really deserves (also because in any case Brody is the son of Hungarians and if he wanted to use this type of technology to make his performance better he had every fucking right to do so). Go see "The Brutalist" and do it at the cinema, on the biggest screen you can find, because it would be a real waste to see it otherwise.