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THE BRUTALIST

Starring: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Stacy Martin, Isaac De Bankolé, Alessandro Nivola, Jonathan Hyde, and Raffey Cassidy
Director: Brady Corbet

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ADRIANO

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The mere existence of The Brutalist is something to be amazed with. Writer/director Brady Corbet's three-and-a-half-hour epic harkens back to the likes of films such as Lawrence of Arabia and The Godfather, a grand, multi-decade journey that shows us just how wonderful and ugly the “American Dream” can be, told through a breathtaking performance from Adrien Brody. With its jaw-dropping score, magnificent 70mm cinematography, and script featuring dialogue and circumstances so interesting that it made its long runtime fly by, I imagine The Brutalist will be examined for years to come.

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NICK

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Let's get this out of the way, did The Brutalist need to be nearly four hours long? No. Did that runtime hurt the film overall? Yes. Although the first half is well paced, the second half moves in a different direction and loses momentum. I was invested in Adrien Brody's László and his architectural journey, but when the focus moved to more of the family drama, there was a disconnect leading to a bloated latter half. That said, the performances are stellar - including a career best showing from Brody - and the immigrant experience is well explored. It just didn’t need to take so long.

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AMARÚ

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The Brutalist is a gigantic film, not in its scale or scope, but in its storytelling. Director Brady Corbet takes comfort in his cast, letting scenes linger on their dialogue to fall deeper into their characters, placing us right in the middle of Laszlo Toth’s (Adrien Brody) flight from his war-torn country. Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce fill every frame with authentic emotion, Daniel Blumberg’s score is resounding, and Corbet’s direction makes a three-and-a-half-hour film feel like two by treating something as banal as the construction of a building with such reverence that what is important to one man becomes importance to us all.

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QUENTIN

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Despite grand direction, a tremendous score, and some very good (if not great) performances, The Brutalist is broadly undermined by a self-indulgent, 215-minute runtime full of grim story beats without much depth, an unrelenting parade of monochromatic misery for hollow characters. At no point was I given a reason to care about László’s (Adrien Brody) journey, other than the film insisting I should, which ironically conflicts with the film’s final line: “no matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.” Nothing presented made me care about the destination, either. Still, I can’t say I don’t respect it.

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This film was reviewed by Adriano as part of Bitesize Breakdown's coverage of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.

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