I was actually amazed to know that American theaters don't usually have intermissions. Here in India, every movie will have a 5-10 minute intermission. It's great for the audience (toilet breaks) as well as the movie theaters (since more people buy food during the break)
My letterboxd review musing on that amazing final line: A gargantuan spectacle of a film about art, class, bigotry, and how we deal with great tragedies, but as I walked out of the theater, I found the intended meaning of it a tad elusive. So much happens, and there are so many interwoven themes handled with such subtlety that trying to define one overarching idea is a surprising struggle, but I feel like the best place to start is that incredible ending line said by László's Zionist niece: "No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey." To me, this is a deeply ironic line, a character looking at the emotionally complex tragedy we've been watching for the last three and a half hours and reducing it to just a journey to make a cool building. It's such a pat, unconvincing way to sum up someone's life that it brought a whole new way of looking at the story. This is a story about a man trying to move on from surviving the Holocaust to rebuild his illustrious career as an architect, reunite with his family, and build something great from the rubble he's now living in. But over and over, he's reminded that he can't just rebuild his old life. The cracks in the foundation run too deep. As Jacob Geller's review brilliantly says "What structure do we build to replace a home that no longer exists?" The tragedy of that final line is something that runs through the whole film, the desire to place a meaningful end to meaningless human tragedy. Spending years of your life on a project that isolates you from your wife to build a monument to a rich man's ego is beautiful because it was actually an expression of love for your wife. A mother's death is just a sign to her son to get into the architecture business. An overdose was just an opportunity to get a divine vision. The xenophobic oppression of America faced by the Jewish immigrants provides the motivation to focus on recreating our old homeland just for us (which absolutely won't be tainted by any of that stuff, no siree). This film is about the characters' rejection of the Jewish focus on reflection. The rejection of introspection in favor of simple positivist narratives to give meaning to suffering, their own or what they cause to others, but each narrative created just serves to obfuscate the ongoing tragedy. No matter how painful it may be to face, in life, there is no destination, only the journey. After all, is there a better description of a life lived than its construction?
It's a film about nothing! No seriously I agree with the bulk of this likely AI review. It's a very Jewish movie that's basically saying if you're doing okay today then forget about the camps... Wat!? Or people keep saying it's a critique of capitalism. How!? The main guy doesn't settle for anything less than the most expensive Italian marble. That's not a critique. Just because the main capitalist guy is a bad guy. Everyone in the movie is a bad guy. Even the black guy gaslit his son. The only blameless character is the daughter whose desire to gtfo is at least understandable. Film criticism is dead. There is no message. It's not really about anything. It's sort of a travelogue. And that's kind of it. It's well made. But hollow.
@@KevinJDildonik 1. My review was written by myself and not AI and it's somewhat insulting that you just assumed that. 2. The point I was making was that the film was about not forgetting the suffering by masking it under hopeful narratives so the movie is explicitly about not forgetting the camps. 3. Yes, the movie is a critique of capitalism. Sure, Laszlo is able to make something great, but at every step, he is beholden to a callous and uncaring wildly wealthy man who controls everything Laszlo does. This is an inherently abusive relationship on a structural level because the rich have complete control of any artist working with any kind of a budget that they didn't raise themselves and the abuse of it is literalized in the Italian section. Laszlo may be able to obtain the materials he wants but he is still forced to live within the material conditions of a capitalist society where those with money have enormous power over those without. 4. Everyone in the film is a complicated human being. Even and especially the daughter in deciding to leave and colonize the newly established Israel, is in fact choosing to become the new oppressor over the Palestinians in the place she's moving to. It's a story of moral greys and normal human beings all dealing with great tragedy in their own ways. The only truly bad people are those with the power to make their flaws have power over you. 5. If you agreed with any part of my review you must agree this movie was saying something. I understand the movie had a lot going on, so many themes and characters and moments, but I promise that there is more to get out of basically any piece of art by thinking about it further rather than just dismissing it as meaningless.
@@KevinJDildonik It has no message because you're unwilling to dig for one. The response by the original commentator explains the marble well. I guess the new hand wave attack on someone's good writing is to say an AI wrote it.
The epilogue is interesting because if you stop to think about it, it feels unreliably narrated. The adult Zsofia claims that the community center that Laslo built for the Van Burens was based on the measurements and experience of his time at the Buchenwald camp, a way of harnessing and taking control of his trauma to lift the middle finger at his abusive brutal oppressive American boss, Harrison Lee Van Buren. And it's certainly a plausible sounding twist. But it's also fair to point out that in the epilogue, that Laslo is a disabled old man who can't speak, that his later architectural works are all shown to be in America so we don't even know for sure if he and Erzsebet actually made aaliyah to Israel, and it makes you wonder if in fact that the last words of the film are Zsofia and her political predilections putting words in Laslo's silent mouth and twisting his artistic work to her own ends, in a manner not so dissimilar to what Harrison Lee Van Buren twisted Laslo's art to his own ends? Also, it's interesting that as one review put it, the Holocaust didn't break Laslo's faith but American capitalism did. . The ending to me was saying how even his story and "journey" would be swallowed and stolen from him by the myth making machine. Maybe that machine is tied to capitalism or is more criticism of the American Dream. But I don't see how people are taking that statement literally after watching 3.5 hours of being banged over the head with how miserable his life is after immigrating. How just like Laslo suffered from the reality of the myth of the American Dream, in the end, all his suffering and life becomes simplified and commodified into another myth by the myth making machine. At the start of the movie Laslo hopes for a better life in a new land & is shattered for it. At the end of the movie Laslo hopes for a better life in a new land & the only time we see him again is disabled, mute, mentally not present, & being spoken for, not with. Whether he made it to Israel or not, his work was forever shackled to the American myth. We never see him beat his addiction - to heroin, to art, to the dream. He disappears from the narrative when Van Buren does; Van Buren revealed as a hollow man with no inner world disappears into the ether like a vapor that never was, & Laslo subsumed into the Capitalist, American Machine. The ending is utterly bleak. I also think there's an even bleaker aspect to it in that being destroyed by the American colonial project, Laszlo turns to Israel only to be overrun by it because it is another colonial project, and ending up both in the birthplace of fascism and the site of his American trauma, which is another thing that speaks to the "destination not the journey" line being meaningless. He ends up right in the same circus ring as before, ogled by people with the same lack of interest in "architecture... magazines" as Van Buren. I think it's unfortunate that _The Brutalist_ is being misread so much largely because of that last scene, but it is a really phenomenal moment and a great thematic pay-off.
Thanks for the nuanced approach to the AI controversy - the whole debacle gave a huge pre-awards discourse vibe, felt superficial imo. There is also a huge difference between software powered by AI processes and actual generative AI (the stuff people actually hate due to art stealing in datasets and such).
The real problem is obfuscation by use of the misnomer "AI" and not more accurate terms like "machine learning", "photobashing algorithm", or "linear algebra". Replacing all those terms with one catchall that sounds like a independent creative intelligence is convenient for corporations in the process of literally killing the fundamental human endeavor of art, which is why its happened and we can't stop them. The closest we can get is overwhelmingly stigmatizing all tech in proximity of it-- a sledgehammer for a nail that MUST go in. My point is I disagree that the nuance is good here. Of course like I said, our rulers have made up their mind so there's nothing we can do. So idk. Whatever. Fuck it. Fuck everything.
I appreciated that it's left unclear whether the quote ("it is the destination, not the journey") actually came from László. When the movie feeds you a message, too often viewers just accept it uncritically, just because they were emotionally primed by the film to accept it. This ambiguity lets us critique the message for what it is. Personally, I'd say that our brains our capable of framing our life story either in terms of the destinations we reach or in terms of the journeys we take. It is intellectually important to acknowledge both, while it is emotionally healthy to actively choose to avoid dwelling on the parts that cause you suffering.
I agree but I found it disappointing that the movie ended with a message at all since the situations written into the story did a lot of the work for most of the film
I feel like the fact that he doesn't speak himself at the end is very deliberate. In the movie we see him and his wife be, if not entirely anti-Isreal, very much not pro. And then his daughter just full-on makes his art about his Jewish experience and Zionism. And the community center, of which the strongest symbolic feature is a Christrian shrine mind you, is reframed as his secret message about the Holocaust. Don't even think we're meant to view it as exploitative really that his daughter reframes it through her ideological lense, just what always happens with art when the artist themselves isn't able to speak on it.
i love listening to you talk, it could so easily be rambling but its so dense you get all your thoughts across so concisely and theyre consistently stuff I didn't think about
It's a rare contemporary film that earns its more than 2 hour runtime, and a reminder that movies over 2 hours should always have an intermission. To sound super pompous, it was the first time in a while where I felt like I was watching "Cinema!" I felt very much like you did across the board. I kinda loved it. But I'm super conflicted. And I really want to watch it again. That's actually sort of how I felt about the director's movie The Childhood of a Leader, too.
I saw Zsofia’s statement at the end, “it is the destination, not the journey,” as being more a statement about life and the immigrant experience than art. Especially because right after that final line, Corbet cuts back to the image of her in a Soviet interrogation room where we saw her at the film’s opening, scared and silent. It feels like a celebration of the success and happiness that Lazlo’s family eventually achieved, despite the hardship of the journey getting there.
Him saying it's about the destination... man. It has to be. Toth has no choice but to say it's about the destination just because of how hellish the journey really was.
i remember during one scene with the other architect where Lazlo felt betrayed saying something along the lines all've you've built is a church in Connecticut and a strip mall, then during the epilogue i was reading each and every building he made and one happened to have been in synagogue in Greenwich Connecticut. might have been a little easter egg but it was funny
It feels like your new parent exhaustion may have helped you break through to a new flow state for this review. Great balance between your raw response and the considered articulation thereof. Thank you!
the 80s pop during the end credits was very tonally grating. i'm wondering if his niece's speech at the end was a comparison to mechanisms of eulogy and cultural transmission. there's the visual theme of the statue of liberty turned topsy turvy; the statue of liberty being a symbol of the narrative of the american dream, and the clash between the optimism of this myth vs the reality of life on the ground. the "journey vs destination" paradigm is overly simplistic bs, and even when the niece subverts it, she still buys into the false binary. i think about how in my experiences with eulogies, people only talk about the good aspects of the deceased, or put a positive spin on their negative qualities, and how this relates to a generalized culture which handicaps its ability to matter of factly recognize what's useful and what's not. when laszlo is with the prostitute, he has a character moment of expressing this capacity; saying he's not attracted to her, but not as an insult; and being explicitly aware of and acknowledging his own ugly features. there are varied configurations of beauty and ugliness throughout; laszlo being ugly to some yet building a beautiful library; being called beautiful by his aggressor while being subjected to a horrifying experience. the van burens being physically beautiful but the men having terrible underlying character.
Literally just came out of a screening to find this in my subscriptions, huzzah. And, um, yeah, the ending does indeed leave a lot open to interpretation. However, it's so vague and open that I'm not sure that the director even had an interpretation of his own. There are indeed a lot of themes in this film that can be unpacked, but I'm struggling to identify a central thesis? But hey, I only just came out of the film, after all, and there's a lot of time left that I can spend thinking about it. Besides, Brody was amazing. The score too. And, darn, those credit designs were sexy looking.
Agree. It's not about anything. Like people keep saying it's a critique of capitalism. Then explain why the main character won't settle for anything less than artisinal Italian marble. You don't get that without something to trade for it. And an architect doesn't have anything to trade for a marble block and international shipping. You need cash to make that happen. A lot of it.
Ok, something that I've seen no one talk about, but was the number one thing I noticed was the flecks on the film - like this was something I hadn't seen on a projected film in like 12+ years. All of the theaters in my region switched to strictly digital projection, so you never saw those artifacts on the prints anymore. And like... surely this was not just in my theater? Like I am 100% sure they were not projecting some damaged print. Is that an actual part of the film? Were they added artificially? Was it because of shooting in 'Vistavision'?
One possible interpretation I had of the ending, was by having the niece be the first person we see in the first scene of the movie and then giving that last line, where then a shot of her at the beginning dissolves over her in the present, was in a way this was as much her story too. And having a different actress play 80’s Zsofia while (seemingly) the same actress who played 60s Zsofia playing Zsofia’s daughter, it was playing with the idea of time, and how the struggle of immigrants is an old one and is always present with us. That here and now is where we need to be looking.
I really enjoyed the film and I’m happy for the intermission. Lot of movies wouldn’t put one in, but here you can go to the bathroom and if you had popcorn, you can get some more. It would be cool to see Adrien Brody win another Academy Award.
I definitely felt a similar ambivalence about the epilogue. I thought that with the slideshow showing his works through the 70s that he had stayed on in America and continued working, whether that meant separating from his wife when she went to Israel or sacrificing the relationship (him going with her but being gone for long period’s of time or him convincing her to stay in America for his career’s sake). Also the fact that his ultimate success came through continuing on through a system that treated him so horribly, but as with his experience during the holocaust, he could never speak of it if he wanted acceptance (as an immigrant in America or as an outsider in the world of art). Earlier in the movie he is shown as being hyper-articulate regarding his intentions for his architecture when prompted by guy pierce (whether he’s being honest or just giving guy pierce what he thinks he wants in what László is obviously aware is at least in part a test). But when we see his work’s meaning articulated, it happens when he is robbed of speech, forced to listen as that meaning imposed by someone else. In all of this I was reminded most of the championing of the Pyramids beauty and grandeur over the suffering entailed in their creation at the end of The Wind Rises. Similar to the case with the brutalist, you could take that at face value as some did when they criticized the movie as apologia for complicity in Japanese imperialism, but in both cases I feel like that’s simplistic. The assertion is haunting in the objections it invites, not a mere didactic statement of theme. I also was very struck by the choice to have a disco song play over the end credits. Most obviously, the chorus and title “One For You, One For Me” invokes the classic equation of artists with a distinct vision operating within a capitalist system. But there’s more going on, I think. You also have a refusal to allow the holocaust and its lasting trauma and legacy exist solely in the past, which the traditional use of somber violins or pianos in a style, rooted in the European classical tradition of the late 17th to early 20th Century, can have the effect of doing. And maybe this is a stretch-I’m aware the song is by an Italian duo-but in tying disco to brutalism there’s a subtle nod being made from the tendency of artistic forms tied to marginalized groups (mid 20th century Jews, blacks and gays in the 70s) to face critical disdain at the time of their creation. But most of all, I think there’s a framing to the question of “is it the end or the destination.” You leave the theater to an upbeat song that objectively fucking rules. And I at least also left the theater with a sense of exhilaration at the possibilities of movies and art in general. But how does that sense of final exhilaration relate the horrific suffering of Laszlo? If we reject the simplistic conclusion that the exultation felt as the credits roll erases the enormity of the horror and grief that led up to it, then how does we negotiate the tension between the two?
not only do we sell coffee at my local cinema, I'm the one serving it more often than not ( please keep tidy, theatre goers. Cleaning up after messy customers is the worst -_- )
You have, by far, the most rationally thought out response to the whole AI controversy and I applaud you for your ability to directly address it reasonably! You got a new subscriber!!
AI alert: The director admitted to using at least 2 bits of AI. He replaced some of the Hungarian dialog, which is super obvious in some climax scenes, like literally voice not matching lips. And some of the architecture sketches at the end, particularly the one A24 is selling a shirt of, which looks like trash. Very puzzling why you'd do that in this film that's all about craft. I liked the movie. But it seems super unfinished. The final sequence seems very cheap. The GoPro on the gondola is lol. And some shots are in the wrong order. Like in the kitchen in the beginning. There's one shot of them dancing. I don't think it's supposed to be a fantasy or non-linear. I think it's an editing mistake. It happens a few times where like 3 frames of film are in the wrong spot. Confusing movie. It's well shot but did basically nothing for me. Kind of like brutalist architecture. It's kind of neat to consider. But most of the buildings suck to live in because concrete is a terrible material. Concrete echoes, it conducts heat too well, it's too easy for a designer to draw a structure that can't actually be safely built. Frank Lloyd Wright's famous concrete structures often cracked before they were even finished because the man knew jack about materials. And that's sadly how I feel about a director using AI to fake sketches.
The epilogue is interesting because if you stop to think about it, it feels unreliably narrated. The adult Zsofia claims that the community center that Laslo built for the Van Burens was based on the measurements and experience of his time at the Buchenwald camp, a way of harnessing and taking control of his trauma to lift the middle finger at his abusive brutal oppressive American boss, Harrison Lee Van Buren. And it's certainly a plausible sounding twist. But it's also fair to point out that in the epilogue, that Laslo is a disabled old man who can't speak, that his later architectural works are all shown to be in America so we don't even know for sure if he and Erzsebet actually made aaliyah to Israel, and it makes you wonder if in fact that the last words of the film are Zsofia and her political predilections putting words in Laslo's silent mouth and twisting his artistic work to her own ends, in a manner not so dissimilar to what Harrison Lee Van Buren twisted Laslo's art to his own ends? Also, it's interesting that as one review put it, the Holocaust didn't break Laslo's faith but American capitalism did. . The ending to me was saying how even his story and "journey" would be swallowed and stolen from him by the myth making machine. Maybe that machine is tied to capitalism or is more criticism of the American Dream. But I don't see how people are taking that statement literally after watching 3.5 hours of being banged over the head with how miserable his life is after immigrating. How just like Laslo suffered from the reality of the myth of the American Dream, in the end, all his suffering and life becomes simplified and commodified into another myth by the myth making machine. At the start of the movie Laslo hopes for a better life in a new land & is shattered for it. At the end of the movie Laslo hopes for a better life in a new land & the only time we see him again is disabled, mute, mentally not present, & being spoken for, not with. Whether he made it to Israel or not, his work was forever shackled to the American myth. We never see him beat his addiction - to heroin, to art, to the dream. He disappears from the narrative when Van Buren does; Van Buren revealed as a hollow man with no inner world disappears into the ether like a vapor that never was, & Laslo subsumed into the Capitalist, American Machine. The ending is utterly bleak. I also think there's an even bleaker aspect to it in that being destroyed by the American colonial project, Laszlo turns to Israel only to be overrun by it because it is another colonial project, and ending up both in the birthplace of fascism and the site of his American trauma, which is another thing that speaks to the "destination not the journey" line being meaningless. He ends up right in the same circus ring as before, ogled by people with the same lack of interest in "architecture... magazines" as Van Buren. I think it's unfortunate that _The Brutalist_ is being misread so much largely because of that last scene, but it is a really phenomenal moment and a great thematic pay-off.
Go to the Alamo Drafthouse if you want some coffee during a movie! Bottomless coffee out of a French press or a cold brew. I think there’s also coffee/cappuccino milkshake. I got one during this film, Anora and Nosferatu 👌🏾
With Art comes sacrifice -- Adrien's character loses most of himself in service of building the Van Buren Institute. There's hope but also devastating pain that runs throughout the film.
I adored the movie. But that scene with Adrien Brody and Guy Pierce… I remember being shocked by it, because, at least to me, there wasn’t any indication that this might happen. The only logical explanation was that the scene (although really happening) was metaphorical. Although I’m somewhat disappointed that they couldn’t really pass the underlying horror of their relationship across without doing this scene. They could have done a scale of worse and worse behavior coming from Harrison, until eventually. But I guess it wouldn’t be as shocking. It would be tense. I don’t know. Makes ya think
I think that the overlay final shot is antithetical to that statement about the destination over the journey, but also not really? Laszlo's answer for why architecture was because his buildings would stand the test of time. We see in the epilogue that they outlive what may or may not have been his original intentions - we don't know if what Zsofia is saying was really what he was thinking or some meaning that she has assigned to it. In that way, it is about the destination. Laszlo's architecture is eventually removed from its context by time, but other's assign context to it from their own journey. Zsofia's experiences with the Holocaust inform how she thinks about the world and potentially where she assigned meaning to Laszlo's work from. There's so much that could be said about this movie. Feel like I could write pages and pages going over every detail. Really an experience I haven't had in a while at the theater. Also really have to give props to the intermission. I think it contributes a lot to the pacing and is part of why it doesn't really feel that long (also appreciated the bathroom break)
This movie felt really fake deep and surface level to me. Visually, it was pretty incredible, and the performances were solid. It just felt like they were throwing everything they could at the viewer to tug at their heart strings, but it was all hollow. Sex, drugs, discrimination, addiction, rape, art, disease, depression, and it all meant nothing. A lot of virtue signaling with cool imagery, I don’t know why I was expecting something different from an A24 film 😂.
I really wish I connected with this as much as much as other people did, but I just couldn't get there for some reason. It looks and sounds amazing, but the deeper I looked the less I seemed to find. This story and these characters are all things we've seen many times before, which isn't a bad thing, but I just didn't find anything new to latch onto beyond the surface level. All this talk of the type of film and the runtime etc ended up feeling more like a crutch than anything else, as it puts the audiences focus on the film making over the actual film itself. Couple that with an ending that feels very clearly designed to help the audience form a conclusion that the film maker wants you to form and it leaves the whole thing feeling very unconfident in itself. It wants to go big and it wants to go weird: but not too big, and not too weird, just enough to capture the feeling of grandeur rather than actually achieving it. Which is a shame because I really wanted to love this more!
@ I think of the classic epics that inspired this film like The Godfather, There Will Be Blood, Days of Heaven etc. Even more recent movies like Oppenheimer could fit in this category, and also tackled a lot of similar themes in a more impactful way for me. I just never felt like I was fully locked in while watching The Brutalist like I was when I watched those for the first time. To me it felt more like a pastiche of an epic rather that a real epic itself, and its attempts to subvert that style of film in the second half fell sort of flat for me
i always appreciate Jake’s takes but he took the words out of my mouth this time - esp with the reference to LotR’s armies and The Fabelmans. also feel the new dad sentiments - had my newborn at the beginning of last year and wife was super supportive of me seeing Dune Part 2 a jillion times. enough to make a man a wife guy
In America, people want the traditional popcorn and soda you get when going to the movie theater, with the option to get snacks as well as water if you’re not into soda.
16:26 I appreciated the ending. It gives us the rose-tinted view of an artist who went through hell. A view that most of us have toward artists as we enjoy their work in modern times. We also get the revelation that (SPOILERS!!!!!) Laszlo’s massive endeavor for Van Buren was designed as a monument to himself, Erzsebet, and other holocaust victims. Information that was kept secret from all financiers. It hints at the idea that Laszlo had the final word, that his art will live much longer than the frivolous whims of the ultra rich.
Thank you for addressing the AI controversy. I feel like this was absolutely something not to even make news. AI as a tool is acceptable so long as it is done ethically and without truly damaging the potential for fellow artists to thrive. This use of AI is no different than fine tuning vocals in an editing software or color correcting a shot
If this has any dialect coach worried about their job: don't be. It never ended up looking/sounding natural at all, just like bad ADR, like they dubbed Brody into Hungarian. I think they'd have been better of just having him speak mangled Hungarian. If even a fraction of the 10M budget went to this uncanny ass dialogue, it was money wasted. Disctracting every time it happened.
Have you never stood behind people in a coffee shop? Coffee is an incredibly personalized beverage, you would require an entire extra set of employees just for it, have to train them, keep a whole new set of ingredients around and directly available, all done in the short time before a movie starts. It would be a nightmare.
I actually felt hope coming out of the film. I was in a great mood, obviously the movie was filled with drama and bigotry, but the strength of these characters really sat with me.
My top movie of this decade so far 😭 A film with so much to chew on, and a 3.5 hr runtime that flies by. Highly recommend repeat watches for time to focus on the details more intimately.
As an artist, I think we have to be less vague about how we get so tossed around. I feel most people don’t really get the suffering behind the media they love so much, and how it would be so much better without it.
I disliked the epilogue at first but after a second watch I came to respect it more (even though I still have issues with it and other aspects of the story). I find the ending actually darkly, sadistically ironic and Laszlo's fate both a blessing and a curse. I loved the ambiguity behind Harrison's fate, but I will say I agree with you that I am also still confused about whether or not Laszlo made more buildings post-Harrison.
While I believe the first half is a masterpiece, I personally feel like the second half really dropped the ball. I don’t think it effectively handled some of the tragic elements and that ending in the 80’s was complete bs. Such an eyeroll moment revealed in that final speech. Disappointed
To me it was only pretty good. 6.5/10. I did like the second half better than the first but yeah overall a lot of very slow parts. The ending was definitely the most confusing part to me partly because I wasn't able to keep track of characters very well with the time jumps as they were especially of the niece I guess in the moment when they left for Israel I had somehow confused them with the friend lazlo had stayed with in the beginning the ones that made the weird accusation of him.
I love the score so much. I think it's my favorite score of the year and possibly my favorite part of the movie (and I fucking loved the movie). I think the score for the marble scene was inspired one by Cantus Arcticus, one of my favorite pieces of modern classical music, aka it was made for me specifically! ruclips.net/video/SKpDtyOsNdc/видео.htmlsi=RZiF_gvyRWxdU54N&t=120
It is a great, great movie -- with some problems. A hell of a lot is left totally unresolved and unexplained. It's fine to leave things open to the imagination, but there's a limit. Also, I thought it ran a little long. That said, I can only complain just so much about a movie that deals so effectively with LIFE, the highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies, and doesn't just shovel a bunch of mindless splatter-gore.
They sell coffee at my theatre. Get owned, kid.
just buy a coffee at the coffee place and get to the screening, i do it everytime
it's completely normal that theatres here (australia) sell coffee, plus i avoid the ones that don't have a bar
@@sergeymeshkov- could you sip it in your normal fashion?
They do over here in NL too but we Dutch drink coffee like most people drink water.
I loved the intermission, on top of letting me use the bathroom, I got to talk to the people around me about the movie.
killers of the flower moon would have won best picture if it had an intermission
@@womancarryingman Alfred Hitchcock once said "The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder."
I was actually amazed to know that American theaters don't usually have intermissions. Here in India, every movie will have a 5-10 minute intermission. It's great for the audience (toilet breaks) as well as the movie theaters (since more people buy food during the break)
I'm all for bringing back intermissions, especially if the movie is 3+ hours long.
@@Dev_712 Same thing here in Italy, 7 minutes of intermission no matter the movie, only very few theaters don't have them
what did your infant son think about the film tho?
Need their opinion on the AI usage to really make their thoughts valid.
@@smittyjjensin558yes, him and his son should discuss this next video
That is the real question. We need his opinion
This comment feels threatening
“Uhhhhhhhh” but in baby
This is secretly the real channel.
Shhhhhhhh
Now this is a story all about how,
Lady Liberty got flipped, turned upside-down
“Welcome to McDonald’s can I take your order?”
“Yeah… lemme get uhhhhhhhhhhh…”
And then they show you this video on the drive through screen
My letterboxd review musing on that amazing final line:
A gargantuan spectacle of a film about art, class, bigotry, and how we deal with great tragedies, but as I walked out of the theater, I found the intended meaning of it a tad elusive. So much happens, and there are so many interwoven themes handled with such subtlety that trying to define one overarching idea is a surprising struggle, but I feel like the best place to start is that incredible ending line said by László's Zionist niece: "No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey." To me, this is a deeply ironic line, a character looking at the emotionally complex tragedy we've been watching for the last three and a half hours and reducing it to just a journey to make a cool building. It's such a pat, unconvincing way to sum up someone's life that it brought a whole new way of looking at the story.
This is a story about a man trying to move on from surviving the Holocaust to rebuild his illustrious career as an architect, reunite with his family, and build something great from the rubble he's now living in. But over and over, he's reminded that he can't just rebuild his old life. The cracks in the foundation run too deep. As Jacob Geller's review brilliantly says "What structure do we build to replace a home that no longer exists?"
The tragedy of that final line is something that runs through the whole film, the desire to place a meaningful end to meaningless human tragedy. Spending years of your life on a project that isolates you from your wife to build a monument to a rich man's ego is beautiful because it was actually an expression of love for your wife. A mother's death is just a sign to her son to get into the architecture business. An overdose was just an opportunity to get a divine vision. The xenophobic oppression of America faced by the Jewish immigrants provides the motivation to focus on recreating our old homeland just for us (which absolutely won't be tainted by any of that stuff, no siree). This film is about the characters' rejection of the Jewish focus on reflection. The rejection of introspection in favor of simple positivist narratives to give meaning to suffering, their own or what they cause to others, but each narrative created just serves to obfuscate the ongoing tragedy. No matter how painful it may be to face, in life, there is no destination, only the journey. After all, is there a better description of a life lived than its construction?
watching this video was worth it just to get to this comment. Hell this comment is better than the video. Make a youtube channel! Write a blog!!
It's a film about nothing! No seriously I agree with the bulk of this likely AI review. It's a very Jewish movie that's basically saying if you're doing okay today then forget about the camps... Wat!?
Or people keep saying it's a critique of capitalism. How!? The main guy doesn't settle for anything less than the most expensive Italian marble. That's not a critique. Just because the main capitalist guy is a bad guy.
Everyone in the movie is a bad guy. Even the black guy gaslit his son. The only blameless character is the daughter whose desire to gtfo is at least understandable.
Film criticism is dead.
There is no message. It's not really about anything. It's sort of a travelogue. And that's kind of it. It's well made. But hollow.
@@KevinJDildonik
1. My review was written by myself and not AI and it's somewhat insulting that you just assumed that.
2. The point I was making was that the film was about not forgetting the suffering by masking it under hopeful narratives so the movie is explicitly about not forgetting the camps.
3. Yes, the movie is a critique of capitalism. Sure, Laszlo is able to make something great, but at every step, he is beholden to a callous and uncaring wildly wealthy man who controls everything Laszlo does. This is an inherently abusive relationship on a structural level because the rich have complete control of any artist working with any kind of a budget that they didn't raise themselves and the abuse of it is literalized in the Italian section. Laszlo may be able to obtain the materials he wants but he is still forced to live within the material conditions of a capitalist society where those with money have enormous power over those without.
4. Everyone in the film is a complicated human being. Even and especially the daughter in deciding to leave and colonize the newly established Israel, is in fact choosing to become the new oppressor over the Palestinians in the place she's moving to. It's a story of moral greys and normal human beings all dealing with great tragedy in their own ways. The only truly bad people are those with the power to make their flaws have power over you.
5. If you agreed with any part of my review you must agree this movie was saying something. I understand the movie had a lot going on, so many themes and characters and moments, but I promise that there is more to get out of basically any piece of art by thinking about it further rather than just dismissing it as meaningless.
@@KevinJDildonik It has no message because you're unwilling to dig for one.
The response by the original commentator explains the marble well.
I guess the new hand wave attack on someone's good writing is to say an AI wrote it.
The epilogue is interesting because if you stop to think about it, it feels unreliably narrated.
The adult Zsofia claims that the community center that Laslo built for the Van Burens was based on the measurements and experience of his time at the Buchenwald camp, a way of harnessing and taking control of his trauma to lift the middle finger at his abusive brutal oppressive American boss, Harrison Lee Van Buren. And it's certainly a plausible sounding twist. But it's also fair to point out that in the epilogue, that Laslo is a disabled old man who can't speak, that his later architectural works are all shown to be in America so we don't even know for sure if he and Erzsebet actually made aaliyah to Israel, and it makes you wonder if in fact that the last words of the film are Zsofia and her political predilections putting words in Laslo's silent mouth and twisting his artistic work to her own ends, in a manner not so dissimilar to what Harrison Lee Van Buren twisted Laslo's art to his own ends?
Also, it's interesting that as one review put it, the Holocaust didn't break Laslo's faith but American capitalism did.
.
The ending to me was saying how even his story and "journey" would be swallowed and stolen from him by the myth making machine. Maybe that machine is tied to capitalism or is more criticism of the American Dream. But I don't see how people are taking that statement literally after watching 3.5 hours of being banged over the head with how miserable his life is after immigrating. How just like Laslo suffered from the reality of the myth of the American Dream, in the end, all his suffering and life becomes simplified and commodified into another myth by the myth making machine.
At the start of the movie Laslo hopes for a better life in a new land & is shattered for it. At the end of the movie Laslo hopes for a better life in a new land & the only time we see him again is disabled, mute, mentally not present, & being spoken for, not with. Whether he made it to Israel or not, his work was forever shackled to the American myth. We never see him beat his addiction - to heroin, to art, to the dream. He disappears from the narrative when Van Buren does; Van Buren revealed as a hollow man with no inner world disappears into the ether like a vapor that never was, & Laslo subsumed into the Capitalist, American Machine. The ending is utterly bleak.
I also think there's an even bleaker aspect to it in that being destroyed by the American colonial project, Laszlo turns to Israel only to be overrun by it because it is another colonial project, and ending up both in the birthplace of fascism and the site of his American trauma, which is another thing that speaks to the "destination not the journey" line being meaningless. He ends up right in the same circus ring as before, ogled by people with the same lack of interest in "architecture... magazines" as Van Buren. I think it's unfortunate that _The Brutalist_ is being misread so much largely because of that last scene, but it is a really phenomenal moment and a great thematic pay-off.
Thanks for the nuanced approach to the AI controversy - the whole debacle gave a huge pre-awards discourse vibe, felt superficial imo. There is also a huge difference between software powered by AI processes and actual generative AI (the stuff people actually hate due to art stealing in datasets and such).
The real problem is obfuscation by use of the misnomer "AI" and not more accurate terms like "machine learning", "photobashing algorithm", or "linear algebra". Replacing all those terms with one catchall that sounds like a independent creative intelligence is convenient for corporations in the process of literally killing the fundamental human endeavor of art, which is why its happened and we can't stop them. The closest we can get is overwhelmingly stigmatizing all tech in proximity of it-- a sledgehammer for a nail that MUST go in. My point is I disagree that the nuance is good here. Of course like I said, our rulers have made up their mind so there's nothing we can do. So idk. Whatever. Fuck it. Fuck everything.
I appreciated that it's left unclear whether the quote ("it is the destination, not the journey") actually came from László. When the movie feeds you a message, too often viewers just accept it uncritically, just because they were emotionally primed by the film to accept it. This ambiguity lets us critique the message for what it is. Personally, I'd say that our brains our capable of framing our life story either in terms of the destinations we reach or in terms of the journeys we take. It is intellectually important to acknowledge both, while it is emotionally healthy to actively choose to avoid dwelling on the parts that cause you suffering.
I agree but I found it disappointing that the movie ended with a message at all since the situations written into the story did a lot of the work for most of the film
I feel like the fact that he doesn't speak himself at the end is very deliberate. In the movie we see him and his wife be, if not entirely anti-Isreal, very much not pro. And then his daughter just full-on makes his art about his Jewish experience and Zionism. And the community center, of which the strongest symbolic feature is a Christrian shrine mind you, is reframed as his secret message about the Holocaust. Don't even think we're meant to view it as exploitative really that his daughter reframes it through her ideological lense, just what always happens with art when the artist themselves isn't able to speak on it.
i love listening to you talk, it could so easily be rambling but its so dense you get all your thoughts across so concisely and theyre consistently stuff I didn't think about
The newborn Dad beard is coming in nicely.
The most brutal fact in this review is that American cinemas don't sell coffee. Wtf?
Some do, some don't. If it's a late night showing they really should though.
Some of them do as the one I frequently go to sells coffee. It really depends from theater to theater.
MIne not only sells coffee but alcohol.
Uuhhhhhhhhhh. Idk why he’s so brutal
It's a rare contemporary film that earns its more than 2 hour runtime, and a reminder that movies over 2 hours should always have an intermission. To sound super pompous, it was the first time in a while where I felt like I was watching "Cinema!"
I felt very much like you did across the board. I kinda loved it. But I'm super conflicted. And I really want to watch it again. That's actually sort of how I felt about the director's movie The Childhood of a Leader, too.
I rewatched it last night on an even bigger screen than the first time, highly recommend it
I saw Zsofia’s statement at the end, “it is the destination, not the journey,” as being more a statement about life and the immigrant experience than art. Especially because right after that final line, Corbet cuts back to the image of her in a Soviet interrogation room where we saw her at the film’s opening, scared and silent. It feels like a celebration of the success and happiness that Lazlo’s family eventually achieved, despite the hardship of the journey getting there.
Him saying it's about the destination... man. It has to be. Toth has no choice but to say it's about the destination just because of how hellish the journey really was.
"Art isn't everything."
-Man who just spent 3,5 hours watching a movie instead of with his newborn.
Can't name a perfect movie? Watch Hundreds of Beavers
i remember during one scene with the other architect where Lazlo felt betrayed saying something along the lines all've you've built is a church in Connecticut and a strip mall, then during the epilogue i was reading each and every building he made and one happened to have been in synagogue in Greenwich Connecticut. might have been a little easter egg but it was funny
It feels like your new parent exhaustion may have helped you break through to a new flow state for this review. Great balance between your raw response and the considered articulation thereof. Thank you!
the 80s pop during the end credits was very tonally grating. i'm wondering if his niece's speech at the end was a comparison to mechanisms of eulogy and cultural transmission. there's the visual theme of the statue of liberty turned topsy turvy; the statue of liberty being a symbol of the narrative of the american dream, and the clash between the optimism of this myth vs the reality of life on the ground. the "journey vs destination" paradigm is overly simplistic bs, and even when the niece subverts it, she still buys into the false binary. i think about how in my experiences with eulogies, people only talk about the good aspects of the deceased, or put a positive spin on their negative qualities, and how this relates to a generalized culture which handicaps its ability to matter of factly recognize what's useful and what's not. when laszlo is with the prostitute, he has a character moment of expressing this capacity; saying he's not attracted to her, but not as an insult; and being explicitly aware of and acknowledging his own ugly features. there are varied configurations of beauty and ugliness throughout; laszlo being ugly to some yet building a beautiful library; being called beautiful by his aggressor while being subjected to a horrifying experience. the van burens being physically beautiful but the men having terrible underlying character.
Why did I get the notification for this video a week after it dropped?
Ooooof 😮 this review is so BRUTAL
This man is by far the best film reviewer in the platform, you could even say hes carrying it
I literally just watched the film an hour ago and I already want to watch it again. The film really is incredible.
Challengers is also my favorite movie of the year! With Brutalist as #2
Literally just came out of a screening to find this in my subscriptions, huzzah. And, um, yeah, the ending does indeed leave a lot open to interpretation. However, it's so vague and open that I'm not sure that the director even had an interpretation of his own. There are indeed a lot of themes in this film that can be unpacked, but I'm struggling to identify a central thesis? But hey, I only just came out of the film, after all, and there's a lot of time left that I can spend thinking about it. Besides, Brody was amazing. The score too. And, darn, those credit designs were sexy looking.
Agree. It's not about anything. Like people keep saying it's a critique of capitalism. Then explain why the main character won't settle for anything less than artisinal Italian marble. You don't get that without something to trade for it. And an architect doesn't have anything to trade for a marble block and international shipping. You need cash to make that happen. A lot of it.
Ok, something that I've seen no one talk about, but was the number one thing I noticed was the flecks on the film - like this was something I hadn't seen on a projected film in like 12+ years. All of the theaters in my region switched to strictly digital projection, so you never saw those artifacts on the prints anymore. And like... surely this was not just in my theater? Like I am 100% sure they were not projecting some damaged print. Is that an actual part of the film? Were they added artificially? Was it because of shooting in 'Vistavision'?
Must be that they left the damage on the negative in.
Yeah it happened too in mine I think its because of vistavision but I don’t know haha. The movie was great 😊!
The director admitted to using AI for some sequences. He probably faked it.
@@KevinJDildonik Only for enhancing some dialogue and as inspiration for drawings at the end, which were hand made. Did you read about it?
One possible interpretation I had of the ending, was by having the niece be the first person we see in the first scene of the movie and then giving that last line, where then a shot of her at the beginning dissolves over her in the present, was in a way this was as much her story too.
And having a different actress play 80’s Zsofia while (seemingly) the same actress who played 60s Zsofia playing Zsofia’s daughter, it was playing with the idea of time, and how the struggle of immigrants is an old one and is always present with us. That here and now is where we need to be looking.
My theater sells coffee and I usually get some if I need it but idk if it’s all the theaters
My theater sells $2 pbrs to members 😤
Honestly elements of this remind me of Phantom Threads, if we're talking Paul Thomas Anderson
I really enjoyed the film and I’m happy for the intermission. Lot of movies wouldn’t put one in, but here you can go to the bathroom and if you had popcorn, you can get some more. It would be cool to see Adrien Brody win another Academy Award.
I definitely felt a similar ambivalence about the epilogue. I thought that with the slideshow showing his works through the 70s that he had stayed on in America and continued working, whether that meant separating from his wife when she went to Israel or sacrificing the relationship (him going with her but being gone for long period’s of time or him convincing her to stay in America for his career’s sake).
Also the fact that his ultimate success came through continuing on through a system that treated him so horribly, but as with his experience during the holocaust, he could never speak of it if he wanted acceptance (as an immigrant in America or as an outsider in the world of art). Earlier in the movie he is shown as being hyper-articulate regarding his intentions for his architecture when prompted by guy pierce (whether he’s being honest or just giving guy pierce what he thinks he wants in what László is obviously aware is at least in part a test). But when we see his work’s meaning articulated, it happens when he is robbed of speech, forced to listen as that meaning imposed by someone else.
In all of this I was reminded most of the championing of the Pyramids beauty and grandeur over the suffering entailed in their creation at the end of The Wind Rises. Similar to the case with the brutalist, you could take that at face value as some did when they criticized the movie as apologia for complicity in Japanese imperialism, but in both cases I feel like that’s simplistic. The assertion is haunting in the objections it invites, not a mere didactic statement of theme.
I also was very struck by the choice to have a disco song play over the end credits. Most obviously, the chorus and title “One For You, One For Me” invokes the classic equation of artists with a distinct vision operating within a capitalist system. But there’s more going on, I think. You also have a refusal to allow the holocaust and its lasting trauma and legacy exist solely in the past, which the traditional use of somber violins or pianos in a style, rooted in the European classical tradition of the late 17th to early 20th Century, can have the effect of doing. And maybe this is a stretch-I’m aware the song is by an Italian duo-but in tying disco to brutalism there’s a subtle nod being made from the tendency of artistic forms tied to marginalized groups (mid 20th century Jews, blacks and gays in the 70s) to face critical disdain at the time of their creation. But most of all, I think there’s a framing to the question of “is it the end or the destination.” You leave the theater to an upbeat song that objectively fucking rules. And I at least also left the theater with a sense of exhilaration at the possibilities of movies and art in general. But how does that sense of final exhilaration relate the horrific suffering of Laszlo? If we reject the simplistic conclusion that the exultation felt as the credits roll erases the enormity of the horror and grief that led up to it, then how does we negotiate the tension between the two?
Great argumentation around the AI issue.
I see The Ax in your book stack. I click like.
not only do we sell coffee at my local cinema, I'm the one serving it more often than not
( please keep tidy, theatre goers. Cleaning up after messy customers is the worst -_- )
Thank you for your service
You have, by far, the most rationally thought out response to the whole AI controversy and I applaud you for your ability to directly address it reasonably! You got a new subscriber!!
I’ve been looking forward to this
AI alert: The director admitted to using at least 2 bits of AI. He replaced some of the Hungarian dialog, which is super obvious in some climax scenes, like literally voice not matching lips. And some of the architecture sketches at the end, particularly the one A24 is selling a shirt of, which looks like trash. Very puzzling why you'd do that in this film that's all about craft.
I liked the movie. But it seems super unfinished. The final sequence seems very cheap. The GoPro on the gondola is lol. And some shots are in the wrong order. Like in the kitchen in the beginning. There's one shot of them dancing. I don't think it's supposed to be a fantasy or non-linear. I think it's an editing mistake. It happens a few times where like 3 frames of film are in the wrong spot.
Confusing movie. It's well shot but did basically nothing for me. Kind of like brutalist architecture. It's kind of neat to consider. But most of the buildings suck to live in because concrete is a terrible material.
Concrete echoes, it conducts heat too well, it's too easy for a designer to draw a structure that can't actually be safely built. Frank Lloyd Wright's famous concrete structures often cracked before they were even finished because the man knew jack about materials. And that's sadly how I feel about a director using AI to fake sketches.
Hey, a Big Picture shout-out. Love to see it!
The epilogue is interesting because if you stop to think about it, it feels unreliably narrated.
The adult Zsofia claims that the community center that Laslo built for the Van Burens was based on the measurements and experience of his time at the Buchenwald camp, a way of harnessing and taking control of his trauma to lift the middle finger at his abusive brutal oppressive American boss, Harrison Lee Van Buren. And it's certainly a plausible sounding twist. But it's also fair to point out that in the epilogue, that Laslo is a disabled old man who can't speak, that his later architectural works are all shown to be in America so we don't even know for sure if he and Erzsebet actually made aaliyah to Israel, and it makes you wonder if in fact that the last words of the film are Zsofia and her political predilections putting words in Laslo's silent mouth and twisting his artistic work to her own ends, in a manner not so dissimilar to what Harrison Lee Van Buren twisted Laslo's art to his own ends?
Also, it's interesting that as one review put it, the Holocaust didn't break Laslo's faith but American capitalism did.
.
The ending to me was saying how even his story and "journey" would be swallowed and stolen from him by the myth making machine. Maybe that machine is tied to capitalism or is more criticism of the American Dream. But I don't see how people are taking that statement literally after watching 3.5 hours of being banged over the head with how miserable his life is after immigrating. How just like Laslo suffered from the reality of the myth of the American Dream, in the end, all his suffering and life becomes simplified and commodified into another myth by the myth making machine.
At the start of the movie Laslo hopes for a better life in a new land & is shattered for it. At the end of the movie Laslo hopes for a better life in a new land & the only time we see him again is disabled, mute, mentally not present, & being spoken for, not with. Whether he made it to Israel or not, his work was forever shackled to the American myth. We never see him beat his addiction - to heroin, to art, to the dream. He disappears from the narrative when Van Buren does; Van Buren revealed as a hollow man with no inner world disappears into the ether like a vapor that never was, & Laslo subsumed into the Capitalist, American Machine. The ending is utterly bleak.
I also think there's an even bleaker aspect to it in that being destroyed by the American colonial project, Laszlo turns to Israel only to be overrun by it because it is another colonial project, and ending up both in the birthplace of fascism and the site of his American trauma, which is another thing that speaks to the "destination not the journey" line being meaningless. He ends up right in the same circus ring as before, ogled by people with the same lack of interest in "architecture... magazines" as Van Buren. I think it's unfortunate that _The Brutalist_ is being misread so much largely because of that last scene, but it is a really phenomenal moment and a great thematic pay-off.
Go to the Alamo Drafthouse if you want some coffee during a movie! Bottomless coffee out of a French press or a cold brew. I think there’s also coffee/cappuccino milkshake. I got one during this film, Anora and Nosferatu 👌🏾
got to see it in 70mm at tiff Cinema one completely sold out unreal experience, plus they sold coffee
One of the great thing about this movie is how they got to make Pittsburgh with Budapest, and Pennsylvania with Hungary.
With Art comes sacrifice -- Adrien's character loses most of himself in service of building the Van Buren Institute. There's hope but also devastating pain that runs throughout the film.
I like this channel.
The Brutalist is one of the best movies I've ever seen. I was lucky enough to see it in 70mm twice.
so real about coffee. I slept with in the first 20mins of this movie then locked in when they were commissioned for the library
I adored the movie. But that scene with Adrien Brody and Guy Pierce… I remember being shocked by it, because, at least to me, there wasn’t any indication that this might happen. The only logical explanation was that the scene (although really happening) was metaphorical. Although I’m somewhat disappointed that they couldn’t really pass the underlying horror of their relationship across without doing this scene. They could have done a scale of worse and worse behavior coming from Harrison, until eventually. But I guess it wouldn’t be as shocking. It would be tense. I don’t know. Makes ya think
Thank you for letting us be co-owners of this channel, Man.
Our cinema has a coffee shop inside it man/woman carrying thing, I'm guessing they got the parent market cornered
I don't like ai period. Definitely don't want it in movies. Also new way for scammers to scam us. Screw ai.
It’s a masterpiece and time will be more than kind to it.
Are you going to see I'm Still Here? I'd love to listen your commentary on that
My old theatre in colorado springs had a cafe and bar. Truly the only way to watch films
I think that the overlay final shot is antithetical to that statement about the destination over the journey, but also not really? Laszlo's answer for why architecture was because his buildings would stand the test of time. We see in the epilogue that they outlive what may or may not have been his original intentions - we don't know if what Zsofia is saying was really what he was thinking or some meaning that she has assigned to it. In that way, it is about the destination. Laszlo's architecture is eventually removed from its context by time, but other's assign context to it from their own journey. Zsofia's experiences with the Holocaust inform how she thinks about the world and potentially where she assigned meaning to Laszlo's work from.
There's so much that could be said about this movie. Feel like I could write pages and pages going over every detail. Really an experience I haven't had in a while at the theater.
Also really have to give props to the intermission. I think it contributes a lot to the pacing and is part of why it doesn't really feel that long (also appreciated the bathroom break)
Having the different actors was so confusing, it really made none of that scene make any sense to me.
This movie felt really fake deep and surface level to me. Visually, it was pretty incredible, and the performances were solid. It just felt like they were throwing everything they could at the viewer to tug at their heart strings, but it was all hollow. Sex, drugs, discrimination, addiction, rape, art, disease, depression, and it all meant nothing. A lot of virtue signaling with cool imagery, I don’t know why I was expecting something different from an A24 film 😂.
1:25 There is a cinema here in Brasil that they actually sell coffee. And it's pretty good!
Never occurred to me that cinemas don't sell coffee.
I really wish I connected with this as much as much as other people did, but I just couldn't get there for some reason. It looks and sounds amazing, but the deeper I looked the less I seemed to find. This story and these characters are all things we've seen many times before, which isn't a bad thing, but I just didn't find anything new to latch onto beyond the surface level. All this talk of the type of film and the runtime etc ended up feeling more like a crutch than anything else, as it puts the audiences focus on the film making over the actual film itself. Couple that with an ending that feels very clearly designed to help the audience form a conclusion that the film maker wants you to form and it leaves the whole thing feeling very unconfident in itself. It wants to go big and it wants to go weird: but not too big, and not too weird, just enough to capture the feeling of grandeur rather than actually achieving it. Which is a shame because I really wanted to love this more!
Interesting take, genuinely.
What films do you consider actually achieve grandeur appropriately?
@ I think of the classic epics that inspired this film like The Godfather, There Will Be Blood, Days of Heaven etc. Even more recent movies like Oppenheimer could fit in this category, and also tackled a lot of similar themes in a more impactful way for me. I just never felt like I was fully locked in while watching The Brutalist like I was when I watched those for the first time. To me it felt more like a pastiche of an epic rather that a real epic itself, and its attempts to subvert that style of film in the second half fell sort of flat for me
i always appreciate Jake’s takes but he took the words out of my mouth this time - esp with the reference to LotR’s armies and The Fabelmans.
also feel the new dad sentiments - had my newborn at the beginning of last year and wife was super supportive of me seeing Dune Part 2 a jillion times. enough to make a man a wife guy
Challengers? The tennis movie? Didn't that come out a year ago?
Shoutouts to Nadia. I'm a parent of young kids and getting five hours to yourself is one of the best luxuries we can ask for 🤣
Do American theatres not sell coffee??
Nope, only soda, popcorn, and pretzels.
@ half the reason I go to the movies is a morning coffee
In America, people want the traditional popcorn and soda you get when going to the movie theater, with the option to get snacks as well as water if you’re not into soda.
the theater I go to here in California, USA has beer, wine, coffee, food
16:26 I appreciated the ending. It gives us the rose-tinted view of an artist who went through hell. A view that most of us have toward artists as we enjoy their work in modern times. We also get the revelation that (SPOILERS!!!!!) Laszlo’s massive endeavor for Van Buren was designed as a monument to himself, Erzsebet, and other holocaust victims. Information that was kept secret from all financiers. It hints at the idea that Laszlo had the final word, that his art will live much longer than the frivolous whims of the ultra rich.
❤
The theatres around me do sell coffee, but they dont advertise it well. You uave to know to ask.
Thank you for addressing the AI controversy. I feel like this was absolutely something not to even make news. AI as a tool is acceptable so long as it is done ethically and without truly damaging the potential for fellow artists to thrive. This use of AI is no different than fine tuning vocals in an editing software or color correcting a shot
First half 😍
Intermission 👌
Second Half ☹
Music 💯
Poor lazlo! The greatestind of his generation!
Goated movie. Future classic 🙌🏽
Haven't seen it btw
@@seanbehnisch6185 beast mode
I loved this movie a lot.
Is this just a treat for us early birds or you are just going to keep the title as is forever?
Great review of Megapolis.
Dan Murrell just posted a really good video talking about the AI in the movie and what filmmakers have said in interviews, I recommend it
Funny, it's the only video by Dan in my years of watching him that I've outright despised.
WHERE HAVE Y'ALL WATCHED IT?😭 I legit tried everything and my theathers haven't shown it yet
Need you as a guest on the Big Picture pod some day
If this has any dialect coach worried about their job: don't be. It never ended up looking/sounding natural at all, just like bad ADR, like they dubbed Brody into Hungarian. I think they'd have been better of just having him speak mangled Hungarian. If even a fraction of the 10M budget went to this uncanny ass dialogue, it was money wasted. Disctracting every time it happened.
With the downside of being mainly in Texas, Alamo Drafthouses have reallu good coffee that you can order from your seat
Great movie. The second half is not what I expected at all
Jake could star in Eggers new Werwulf
i loved it ❤
Ah yes, very The Master 2012
12:33 what does it feel to make Plankton FARTS and DIES (real)
I haven’t but would very much like to see it
Have you never stood behind people in a coffee shop? Coffee is an incredibly personalized beverage, you would require an entire extra set of employees just for it, have to train them, keep a whole new set of ingredients around and directly available, all done in the short time before a movie starts. It would be a nightmare.
My local cinema that i saw this in had huge coffee dispensers so movie theaters can do it for cheap if they want to
I actually felt hope coming out of the film. I was in a great mood, obviously the movie was filled with drama and bigotry, but the strength of these characters really sat with me.
yep, it's certainly a calculated attack: it really isn't that big of a deal
My top movie of this decade so far 😭
A film with so much to chew on, and a 3.5 hr runtime that flies by. Highly recommend repeat watches for time to focus on the details more intimately.
Salt lake film society sells coffee
They made this film before annihilation 2 (I just read the first book)
What? There is no annihilation 2 movie? You mean from the southern reach books?
I still can't believe this movie is real.
As an artist, I think we have to be less vague about how we get so tossed around. I feel most people don’t really get the suffering behind the media they love so much, and how it would be so much better without it.
To me the way they used AI is much less egregious than dubbing an actors singing voice *side-eyes Oscar winner Rami Malek
Actually, the correct way to say it is 'most brutal'.
Would love to know your opinion of Challengers not getting any academy awards nominations, its my favourite film of the year as well.
I disliked the epilogue at first but after a second watch I came to respect it more (even though I still have issues with it and other aspects of the story). I find the ending actually darkly, sadistically ironic and Laszlo's fate both a blessing and a curse. I loved the ambiguity behind Harrison's fate, but I will say I agree with you that I am also still confused about whether or not Laszlo made more buildings post-Harrison.
While I believe the first half is a masterpiece, I personally feel like the second half really dropped the ball. I don’t think it effectively handled some of the tragic elements and that ending in the 80’s was complete bs. Such an eyeroll moment revealed in that final speech. Disappointed
To me it was only pretty good. 6.5/10. I did like the second half better than the first but yeah overall a lot of very slow parts. The ending was definitely the most confusing part to me partly because I wasn't able to keep track of characters very well with the time jumps as they were especially of the niece I guess in the moment when they left for Israel I had somehow confused them with the friend lazlo had stayed with in the beginning the ones that made the weird accusation of him.
what is your second favorite of the year?
I love the score so much. I think it's my favorite score of the year and possibly my favorite part of the movie (and I fucking loved the movie).
I think the score for the marble scene was inspired one by Cantus Arcticus, one of my favorite pieces of modern classical music, aka it was made for me specifically!
ruclips.net/video/SKpDtyOsNdc/видео.htmlsi=RZiF_gvyRWxdU54N&t=120
It is a great, great movie -- with some problems. A hell of a lot is left totally unresolved and unexplained. It's fine to leave things open to the imagination, but there's a limit. Also, I thought it ran a little long. That said, I can only complain just so much about a movie that deals so effectively with LIFE, the highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies, and doesn't just shovel a bunch of mindless splatter-gore.