Movie: The Brutalist
Running Time: 3:35 (It is actually the 'brutalist' running time. Ha!)
Nominated for: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Original Screenplay, Score, Editing, Production Design
How I watched: AMC A List
When it had me: The opening moments
When it lost me: Intermission
What systems does it challenge: War, anti-semitism, abuse
Allotting 4 hours and 20 minutes of your day (with previews and intermission) to a movie is a big commitment. It's really hard to justify and when you take that time, the film maker should be respectful of your sacrifice. I am almost never convinced a movie needs to be this long. I'm not convinced now.
For the first half, I felt pretty chill and pretty comfortable going along for the ride. The movie takes its time showing you how hard it is to be a refugee starting over in a new country with very little and the pacing feels instructive. I felt a sense of relationship building between me and the character and I was content.
The music in this movie felt like such a helpful friend. When I felt that a scene could be a little slow or bland, the music lifted the storytelling and kept me from losing interest. I was grateful for so many music cues.
I sort of panicked when the intermission came. While I appreciated the break and the self awareness on the part of the director to know it's difficult to sit for 4 hours, I also just wanted to get on with it. I started thinking about the time elapsing along with the onscreen countdown and thinking about all the other things I could be doing.
Following my rising tension about the time, the pacing and focus of the second half was far less satisfying to me. It felt less like a train picking up speed and more like meandering. It felt like I was losing the connection I had in the first half.
There was a tremendously dreamy and evocative sequence involving a marble mine that was beautiful and superbly done. It's probably the most impressive sequence in the film and yet somehow it doesn't quite feel like it belongs in this serious and workmanlike film.
When the ending comes along it felt like a surprise, even though I'd spent half my day there. So much time had been devoted to this person's life and then the ending felt cheated and abrupt somehow (I did not want it to be longer! Let me be clear. I wanted the pacing to work so the movie didn't feel all out of whack. I would not vote for this for editing, if it were up to me).
And the WORST thing about it for me was this: I went to see this screened on 70mm film because that is important to me. It honestly did not wow me as much as I thought it might but it was beautiful. However the ending of the film is shown in a (time period accurate) standard definition VHS format. After hours spent, we get no final retrospective on the work of the main character that is shot in a stunning and artful way. We leave on pixellation and I was really upset about it.
If the ending had been different, I might have bought the whole thing and loved this but I just can't vibe with this director's choice. In the
end, it felt unfocused. The point could have been the refugee experience or it could have been the suffering of an artist for his art or it maybe could have been 2 or 3 other things. It felt like a biopic in that it felt like the movie's directions was led by the life of the main character. In many biopics, the rising and falling of the action feels pretty clunking because a real life isn't written for the screen to fit nicely into a film. This had that feeling despite the fact that it was precisely written for the screen. You wanted us to sit here this long and then leave feeling a bit uncertain?
Fantastic acting, amazing music and a pretty ok experience overall.
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