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How long have you got for me to describe this 3 and a half hour epic following the fictionalized life of Laszlo Toth, architect, Holocaust survivor, and visionary artist. When arriving to America as an immigrant looking for a new life, he lands a job designing innovative furniture and this showcases his talent with just the right people to forge a business partnership allowing him to bring his wife from Europe, to care for his niece whose parents didn't survive, and to create a stark style of architecture that earns him high profile commissions. None of this remarkable accomplishment eliminates the obvious microaggressions against Jews in America, even from his wealthy partner and benefactor. A Jew is just a dirty Jew, no matter the accolades. My, how relevant to our times.
Longtime readers of the blog know my standing complaint about editing discipline with these long films, and I'm increasingly angry every time one of these is nominated for film editing. This film, however, is different. First, thank you to the filmmakers who returned to a long past tradition of giving an intermission! What makes this movie different is the way the intermission is used to give time to absorb "Part 1, the early years" and basically turns the experience into the film and its sequel all in one story. The film says, "these lives are too long, too complex, too important to tell with one iteration of this character." The length of the film allows the characters to evolve as real people do with time and experience.
It would be a true failure of description were I not to mention the nominated Original Score. The change of tone in the movie is matched by, or even created by the evolution of the music attached. It is not beautiful, it is aligned. I have not listened to the score as a stand alone experience, and I wonder what the score is without the movie. The movie isn't THIS movie without the score.
With my praise of the story, I will admit that both Felicity Jones' and Guy Pearce's nominations can be chalked up to being a part of the epic that has gathered so much attention, and in future blog posts when I say that certain performances should have been nominated in these categories, I mean instead of Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones. Wonderful actors both (if not both good people - I'm looking at you Guy Pearce, you anti-Semite), good parts both, well executed both. The top 5 performances of the year in those categories? Absolutely not.
The Brutalist is a good film, but it requires commitment. If you have to miss a few this year, I'd put this one on a maybe list and instead watch Avalon.
