The Brutalist (2024) - Brady impresses with major immigrant love story

♥♥♥♥♥

 

A rich man looks at a coal-shoveling laborer on this evocative poster for Brady Corbet's The Brutalist

 

László Tóth, a great Hungarian-Jewish architect, arrives in America as a refugee following WWII, split up from his beloved wife Erzsébet, and he initially finds work at his cousin's furniture store.

 

The Brutalist is written by Mona Fastvold (Vox Lux (2018)) and co-writer/co-producer/director, great Arizonian filmmaker Brady Corbet (The Childhood of a Leader (2015)). The title is ambiguous, referring to the architectural style practiced by the protagonist but may also refer to several of the lead characters.

Commanding remarkable length, (this epic runs past 200 minutes), Corbet and his team manage to keep the story moving and compelling throughout. Centrally stands the engaged performances of Adrien Brody (The French Dispatch (2021)) as the wrought László and Felicity Jones (On the Basis of Sex (2018)), who gives a beautiful performance as his devoted wife. The film is in large part a love story of the two of them, and this love is the majestic force that powers The Brutalist.

Around them hovers Guy Pearce (Back from the Outback (2021)), mercurial, handsome and conflicted as the wealthy Van Buren, who becomes László's patron. There are rich supporting parts that are filled out by esteemed performances from Isaach de Bankolé (S.W.A.T. (2019, TV-series)) and Joe Alwyn (Boy Erased (2018)). The film's vivid experience of an immigrant in America is heightened by inspired work from the production design, locations and costumes to Lol Crawley's (Dau (2019)) fabulous VistaVision 70mm photography and Daniel Blumberg's (The World to Come (2020)) bold and strong score.

SPOILER László's troubles come to a head, when Van Buren rapes him, somewhat out of the blue, during their trip to Italy for marble. The event provides food for thought as to Van Buren's motivation for the entire enterprise, (the construction of a lavish community center on top of a hill), but the rape itself is relayed in just one shot that seems to last all of thirty seconds or so. It is somehow too short, - and seems unrealistic in its brevity. The film wraps up with a speech given about Tóth's body of work at a career retrospective exhibition decades later in Venice, and though I suppose the intent is for us to leave on a positive note, something along the lines of 'love overcomes', the speech's 'it is not the journey but the destination' feels a bit misplaced in the context of the very old and tired-looking László who is there in a wheelchair to be celebrated. These are minor asides to a noteworthy and highly accomplished film, which feels like a biopic but is actually entirely (inspired, of course, by life) fiction.

Related posts:

 

Brady Corbet: Saint Laurent (2014) - Bonello's overly self-confident biopic (actor) 

While We're Young (2014) - Baumbach offers another observant, clever downer (actor)

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) - Durkin's chilling psychological thriller debut (actor)

Funny Games (2007) - Haneke recreates his strong critique of movie violence consumption for the American audience (co-star)

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 9.5 mil. $

Box office: 47.3 mil. $ and running

= Big hit (has so far returned 4.97 times its cost)

[The Brutalist premiered 1 September (Venice Film Festival) and runs 215 minutes. Filming began in 2020, where the ending in Venice was shot. The rest of the filming, delayed due to the China Virus pandemic, Ukraine War, pregnancies, deaths and other issues, took place from March - May 2023 in Hungary, including in Budapest. The film opened #12 to a 266k $ first weekend in 4 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #9 and in 1,612 theaters. The film has one announced market left to release in: Lithuania on April 4. The film was nominated for 10 Oscars, winning 3; for Best Actor (Brody), Cinematography and Score. It lost Best Picture to Anora, Supporting Actor (Pearce) to Kieran Culkin for A Certain Pain, Supporting Actress (Jones) to Zoe Saldaña in Emilia Pérez, Director to Sean Baker for Anora, Original Screenplay also to Baker for Anora, Editing to Anora and Production Design to Wicked. It also won 4/9 BAFTA awards, 3/7 Golden Globes, was nominated for an Independent Spirit award and won an AFI award, among many other honors. Corbet has not announced his next project yet. Brody returns in Emperor (2026); Jones in Train Dreams (2025); and Pearce in Killing Faith (2025) and The Woman in Cabin 10 (2015). The Brutalist is certified fresh at 93 % with an 8.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Brutalist?

Funny Games (2007) - Haneke recreates his strong critique of movie violence consumption for the American audience

♥♥♥♥

+ Best Home Invasion Thriller of the Year

Naomi Watts has been in better shape (but also worse, in a few cases) than on this confrontational, unsettling poster for Michael Haneke's Funny Games

A harmonic married couple are sought out in their idyllic summerhouse by two young men, who torment them and their young son as a part of their 'funny games'.

Funny Games is written and directed by great German filmmaker Michael Haneke (Hidden/Caché (2005)) and is a shot-by-shot remake of his impactful original Funny Games (1997), which was made in Austria.
This US replication of the unforgettable work has only altered very little from the scenario. The original film for some reason has a stronger impact, I find, because the couple are German-speaking, and the language comes out a bit quicker and more naturally. That aside the new Funny Games is a successful remake, and it is a testament to Haneke's almost insane artistic consequence that he recreates his most creep-out unpleasant film this meticulously.
Funny Games gives us violence-desensitized audiences a sobering slap across the face. The new ensemble of actors all perform well; Naomi Watts (Chuck (2016)) again shows her talent for portraying awfully afflicted females (as seen also in great film such as Mulholland Dr. (1999), 21 Grams (2003) and The Impossible/Lo Imposible (2012).)

Related posts:

Michael Haneke: 2012 in films - according to Film Excess
Amour (2012) - Tender love, unseizing death in Haneke's pictures
2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
Hidden/Caché (2005) - Haneke's slick, cold surveillance drama-thriller 

Watch a trailer for the film with Spanish subtitles here

Cost: 15 mil. $
Box office: 7.9 mil. $ 
= Huge flop (returned 0.52 times its cost)
[Funny Games premiered 20 October (London Film Festival, UK) and runs 111 minutes. Haneke has said that he wanted to make the original film in the US, but was not practically able to at the time. Instead the set from the 1997 film was meticulously recreated for the new film. Shooting took place in New York in and around September 2006. The film opened #21 to a 544k $ first weekend in 286 theaters in North America, where it added two more cinemas in its 2nd week but only lessened in rank, grossing 1.2 mil. $ (15.2 % of the total gross). The film's biggest market was Italy with 2.1 mil. $ (26.6 %); North America was the 2nd biggest, and France was the 3rd biggest with 1 mil. $ (12.7 %). Haneke returned with The White Ribbon/Das Weiße Band - Eine Deutsche Kindergeschichte (2009). Watts returned in The International (2009), Tim Roth (The Con Is On (2018)) in Virgin Territory (2007), and Michael Pitt (Criminal Activities (2015)) in 4 video, TV and a bit part credits before he reclaimed the major screen again in Seven Psychopaths (2012). Funny Games is rotten at 51 % with a 5.64/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Funny Games?

While We're Young (2014) - Baumbach offers another observant, clever downer

♥♥♥

The poster for Noah Baumbach's While We're Young seems to promise something light and uplifting ...

 
While We're Young is the new film by great Brooklynite writer-director-producer Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale (2005)).

Josh and Cornelia are beginning to get old, they feel, without having joined the 'baby cult' yet, as they meet a couple in their mid-20s, who spark their imagination and cause them to re-evaluate their lives.

I really liked the first approximately 25 minutes of the film, which are funny and sort of upbeat, in line with the expectations set by the trailer and poster for the film. At the point in the film SPOILER when everyone reveals themselves to be uninhibitedly ridiculous, while throwing up excessively, (yes, that happens), however, my feelings had begun to turn.
Ben Stiller (Tropic Thunder (2008)) and Naomi Watts (The Impossible/Lo Imposible (2012)) are wonderful actors, and they suit each other very well here. The problem is that their at first likable lead characters venture so clueless and naively into the humiliations that await them that at least I lost my affinity for them.
Amanda Seyfried (Lovelace (2013)) and Adam Driver (Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)) are good as the young, hip couple. - Driver I wanted to punch in the face for most of the film, and I never once believed their feigned authenticity, although the comparisons to the older couple along the way hold some amusement.

The details:

The biggest problem about While We're Young may be that it's so dead-on. Baumbach is a great observer of modern people, and he puts his stings in auspiciously and cleverly. He wants to puncture some of our grand ideas and delusions about ourselves and our behavior today, and he does that time and again here. That's just not very uplifting or light-hearted, as I had been led to believe that the film would be. In fact While We're Young is probably Baumbach's most depressing film to date. It resembles Greenberg (2010) a bit, also with Stiller, which is also quite depressing, but which I like better though, maybe because it isn't about a married couple. That seems to make this film's depressing qualities more definite somehow. Also contributing is its theme of the horrors of putting life into the world, which, as you can imagine, isn't exactly invigorating as well. The in my opinion successful, funny version of While We're Young would be Judd Apatow's This Is 40 (2012).
Baumbach has made some not too specific, Woody Allen-like characters. They go through a sometimes contrived plot. (The occurrence of an ice-cream bucket, which leads to a key discovery for Josh, never made much sense to me.) And the ubiquitous Brady Corbet (Force Majeure/Turist (2014)) has a small role, which doesn't seem terribly well-acted, a first for him I think.
While We're Young also has a well-written, but also depressing (especially for the documentary fan), through-line about the making of documentaries today; getting them financed, produced, edited and set out into the world. Charles Grodin (Catch-22 (1970)) is perfectly cast in the role as Watts' championed father in the documentary world.
While We're Young opens with an Ibsen quote, and intelligent Baumbach is smart to point viewers into thinking of his own work in the shade of Ibsen, one of the great social satirists and critics of the written word. The film's problem isn't that it lacks wits, but it was still disappointing to me, maybe because it tonally stretches too far for my taste. I hope Baumbach's new film Mistress America (2015) with his girlfriend Greta Gerwig starring again, (as in their great Frances Ha (2012)) will be another story.

Related reviews:

2012 in films - according to Film Excess (UPDATED I) 
Noah Baumbach: Frances Ha (2012) or, Growing Older Ain't Easy

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 10 mil. $
Box office: 10.8 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say
[The film has been generally well-reviewed, as just about all of Baumbach's films are, - his parents are film critics, (so give that to a shrink.) - But it has earned just 7.1 mil. $ in North America (70 % of the total gross). It opens in key markets Germany, France and Spain soon, and it'll have to do well there to earn back its costs.]

What do you think of While We're Young?

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) - Durkin's chilling psychological thriller debut

♥♥♥♥♥

4 Time Film Excess Nominee:


Best Director: Sean Durkin (lost to Agnieszka Holland for In Darkness)
Best Actress: Elizabeth Olsen (lost to Bérénice Bejo for The Artist)
Best Supporting Actor: John Hawkes (lost to Michael Shannon for Boardwalk Empire S2)
Best Cinematography: Jody Lee Lipes (lost to Phedon Papamichael for The Descendants)

+ Best Thriller of the Year
+ Best Debut of the Year
+ Best Shooting Star Actress of the Year (Elizabeth Olsen)
+ Best Low-budget Movie of the Year 

The intense, Spanish poster for Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene

Martha is a young woman who escapes through a forest from a cult. She subsequently lives with her sister and husband in their summerhouse by a lake in Connecticut, while she remembers her traumatic experiences.

Beautiful Elizabeth Olsen (Kill Your Darlings (2013)) is fantastic here in what is only her second major movie role. She plays opposite a scary John Hawkes (The Sessions (2012)) as a pathetic lunatic and Sarah Paulson (12 Years a Slave (2013)) as her sister.
Martha impresses with stunning images, (cinematography by Jody Lee Lipes (Trainwreck (2015))), minimalistic effects and intense suspense.
It is the impressive feature debut of NYU graduate Sean Durkin (Southcliffe (2013), TV-miniseries), who has written and directed it, based on a short of his starring Brady Corbet (Force Majeure/Turist (2014)) called Mary Last Seen (2010). Corbet also has a smaller role in Martha.
The film forcefully captures the total detachment from reality of a group cult as well as the profound damage done to Martha by blending very uncomfortable scenes and incredible beauty.
Durkin may have made one of the year's best films here.
He is now working on a Janis Joplin biopic, simply called Janis (announced).

Related posts:
 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
 

Elizabeth Olsen and Sarah Paulson in Sean Durkin's great Martha Marcy May Marlene

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost. 1 mil. $
Box office: 3.5 mil. $
= Big hit
[Durkin's film won him the Directing Award for Best Drama at Sundance as well as many other nominations and awards and stellar reviews. It made 2.9 mil. $ (83 % of the total gross) in the US. It also helped catapult Olsen's career upwards.]

What do you think of Martha Marcy May Marlene?

Saint Laurent (2014) - Bonello's overly self-confident biopic

♥♥

The psychedelic, cool poster for Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent is the 6th feature from French co-writer/director Bertrand Bonello (The Pornographer/Le Pornographe (2001)). It is the 2nd biopic of 2014 about French fashion designer, innovator and icon Yves Saint Laurent, who passed away in 2008. The other film, Jalil Lespert's Yves Saint Laurent (2014) is the more expensive and conventional of the two, while Saint Laurent is the wilder film, which has not been condoned by Laurent's still-living life partner Pierre Bergé. Saint Laurent was France's Oscar entry this year, which did not get nominated.

Yves Saint Laurent stuns the fashion world and keeps rising in fame and wealth in the 1960s and 70s, bringing tuxedo suits to women bodies, introducing items and styles from foreign cultures and embracing what life has to offer in sex, drink and drugs.

Saint Laurent jumps in time and shows Bergé's unrelenting loyalty and work for YSL both the company and the man throughout years of substance abuse and infidelities. The film shows Laurent very much as a human being and not a saint, so that its title may seem humorously ironic in context.
The film is probably very truthful in its portrayal of Yves Saint Laurent: He is vain, self-indulgent, fragile, difficult and gifted. The man we meet also has an almost excessive self-confidence, - undoubtedly helped along by the crowd of worshipers that always surrounded him, - but the film Saint Laurent suffers from the same characteristic, which, for this film, is fatal: It becomes protracted in the almost absurd, and seems more than overly long at its 150 minutes' playtime.
Ubiquitous Brady Corbet (Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)) has a short role, - another prestigious film that the young American has impressively gotten himself cast in, - as a US business man who tries to reason with the French fashion company without much luck. - Saint Laurent is a film it seems could have benefited from a producer's insistence on tightening up and finding the core(s) of the matter at hand. Bonillo's film too often blurs out in the vain ramblings and constructs of the title character's mind, and some will therefore label it pretentious with some justification. It is too far removed from most audience's reality to inhibit its committing the cardinal sin for a film: 
It bores.

The film is stylish, flamboyant and technically astute. It, unfortunately, isn't enough to also make it compelling.
Gaspard Ulliel (Hannibal Rising (2007)) as the master designer, Jérémie Renier (Potiche (2010)) as the insistent Bergé and Louis Garrel (The Dreamers (2003)) as the self-destructive Jacques all give dedicated performances. But the great Léa Seydoux (Blue Is the Warmest Color/La Vie d'Adèle (2013)) makes hardly an impression as Loulou de la Falaise. Aymeline Valade (Riviera (2005)) is beautiful as the striking blond Betty, who has perhaps the film's best scene near the beginning, when she walks through a club and dances before a wanting Yves Saint Laurent. Saint Laurent is very much about these small moments rather than a larger, overall arc or plot.
Another of the film's finest scenes involves Laurent setting a beautiful woman 'free' by giving her a jacket, a belt and letting her hair down. This doesn't sound like much, but it is a touching and sensual scene.
- There are a few inspired, great scenes like this in Saint Laurent, co-written with Thomas Bidegain (Rust and Bone/De Rouille et d'Os (2012)), but they are unfortunately swamped in endless scenes of debauchery and the inevitable, resulting hangovers.

Related posts:

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
 

Léa Seydoux, Gaspard Ulliel and Aymeline Valade in Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent

Watch the US trailer for the film here

Budget: 8.7 mil. €
Box office: Unknown
= Uncertainty
[350k + have paid admission to see the film in France. It has been nominated for 10 César Awards (France's Oscar equivalent), winning for Best Costumes. Whether the film stirs up enough interest outside of France to become financially successful is highly dubious.]

What do you think of Saint Laurent?
If you've seen other films by Bonello, how was/were it/they?