The Brutalist

It’s hard sometimes to judge or appraise something by virtue of it being ‘high art’ or ‘low art’ and there is value in every type of artistic expression. A doodle can elicit as much of a smile as a painting in a museum.

Sometimes though a piece of clear ‘high art’ arrives that lands as a marker, a milestone of the times it is born in. Something that just cannot be denied.

The Brutalist is so clearly one of these pieces that is hard to be subjective about it. We are so frequently hit now with constrained visions and compromised art that something with this level of ambition and scope does need to be laden with the praise it is garnering.

Sure, it absolutely strives for those accolades it will inevitably hoover up. Some will cynically see through this or it might not connect to them at all.

It certainly won’t suit all tastes but then this is a three and a half hour piece with a self-imposed fifteen minute interval to clearly delineate its two parts. It has a divisive epilogue and some of the key events and key moments of plot resolution are kept off screen and/or ignored entirely.

And yet, like the monolith and life’s work at its core, here stands a colossal work that commands the attention.

It may dominate the hillside it’s built on but it dwarfs what is around it and draws attention to the intricacies inside.

Its meaning may differ from person to person and it’ll be unsightly to some, but you can’t deny the efforts, the vision, the detail and the craft.

It’s a film of Herculean proportions. An ‘American epic’ piece that does feel akin to its Mount Rushmore forebears in this vein. Maybe it doesn’t quite match up to them but we are talking of films like The Godfather Part II, There Will Be Blood, Goodfellas etc. Films that pick at the heart of the American Dream and try and tell a story worthy of it.

Centred on an Architect who arrives in America from Europe in 1947, this touches not just on the dark side of that dream but also every other aspect of life and art.

What’s striking is that whilst sometimes the film isn’t subtle in its approach to its themes and metaphors it does sink them within a moving and classic, novel-worthy tale that can stand beyond just making a point.

It also picks its moments and attempts to at least offer discussion points and intangibles amongst its big themes.

A lot is said but there is also a lot unsaid and debatable at film’s end (or, indeed, in that aforementioned interval.)

Laden with awards-worthy performances, adorned with a striking and moving score but, arguably topping the lot, bestowed with some absolutely stunning cinematography.

Using the glory of VistaVision to enhance its sense of time and place (but, also, let’s be honest, because it looks magnificent and places it in the lineage of its epic forebears) this is an example of film as art and a film that will bathe your eyes with its camera work and shot choices.

There’s not much more to say really. An obvious masterpiece, sure, and unlikely to be someone’s favourite, comfort watch film but this is absolutely cinema as high art and it sits with American epics of the past.

A marker for 2025 and a film that we’ll be debating in 2030 as one which represents this decade as a whole, for good and for ill.

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