The brutalist
Four hours with an interval, Ove to done this sort of commitment since Devdas.
I had the window of opportunity. It was Saturday. I had done everything in the house it was a day off. The weather was awful, and I are going to pubs or bars on weekends. Or anything with people. So, I went for this. I knew very little. I thought it was about a real architect. Its not. But it’s a very real exploration of brutalism and immigrant/refugee life. I had only heard of brutalism by a young woman who I had known from waterstones. Emma. She loved it. Did presentations on it. And writes for cookery magazines the last I saw or heard from her. [people drift over the years. Ill add the link if I can find it at the end
Ostensibly following one man’s life, Lazlo Toth, haunted and traumatised from surviving the Holocaust, he tries to build the American dream as many have before. Hoping to reconnect with his family and set up some sort of future. Persecuted on so many sides. It’s weird watching the brutalist as it shoes the wake of the holocaust, but little is said about it. I was taught about the Holocaust. I knew a survivor when I was a child. I can’t help but feel without that point in it. It can be glided over for the future.
As it stands a lot of the film has the boho aesthetics of underground life, and man ness as Brody can cut a high cheekbones walk in a long black coat and another giulios hanging off his smitten lips. But this film does convey more then personal demons.
It takes on the fact that while the nazis were defeated. Were they merely replaced. Staunch in his own belief of himself and the support of his wife. Toth at once does not assimilate, integrate or veer from the hypocrisy of the American white hoes he finds himself relying on.
Guy Pearce resolute embedment of male americana and its toxicity and entitlement are a scale to almost match the vista vision of concrete we see put in front of us.
The film has an epic sweep of America and the 50; s. I did describe it as awful to a friend at work, but rather it is audacious in unflinching how awful these men are. Its Oppenheimer with less hats and more smack. But honestly, I can’t deny the stark strength of character and impression seeing this on big screen brings one.
I did suffer a bit towards the end. I found the denouement a bit flat, and the second half seemed to seep into longueurs. But it would be hard to say where to cut. And as a meditative piece I consider it a bold piece of cinema in a time where franchises seem to be propping up the screens. I would say. See it. Find the time. Give yourself breathing space either side of the screening. So, you can talk. Process. Think.
It is brutal. But there is beauty
The Irish Indian Times. 
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