The Brutalist (2024)
Dir. Brady Corbet
I would like it to be known that I am not usually this bitter about film. I think cinema is a beautiful art form and it hurts me to be a hater. But I sat with it for a while and this one just rubbed me the wrong way.
For the sake of impartiality, I landed on two ways of, personally, interpreting this movie:
One—this movie is an endorsement of and justification for Zionism. It is about the rampant, unjust antisemitism that has followed Jewish people around for generations and generations (which is obviously true) but the only solution to this terrible issue is the creation of an enthostate (absolutely not). In this interpretation of the movie, I see Tóth’s chosen style of architecture, Brutalism, as a representation of the formation of Israel. Erecting a bold and immovable, controlled structure that survives through all the elements, man and nature. When Tóth is explaining why he chose architecture as his profession, he says his buildings withstand the test of time and war, standing proudly amongst the rubble and exclaiming their resistance to the oppression around them. I think, in a Zionist’s mind, Israel is just that—an implacable monument to Jewish resilience (when in actuality it is a violent genocidal apartheid state). The epilogue then acts as a celebration of this, touting Tóth’s work as a life devoted to turning the pain and trauma of the Jewish experience in the early 1900s into a vessel of justification for Zionism.
Two—this movie is rightfully positing Zionism as a bastardization of the Jewish struggle and a grave misstep in the fight for Jewish safety and liberation. In this interpretation, much more than in the other, I think there is a case to be made that the movie is critical of western capitalism and focuses on showing capitalism as a breeding ground for antisemitic sentiment as well. The Brutalist architecture here is maybe more artistically driven in a sense. The style being, yes, a monument to Jewish resilience and unwavering resistance against consistent persecution, but, rather than a manifestation of Zionism, it is instead an insistence that Jewish people are here to stay and that they will not falter in the destructive winds of an antisemitic world hellbent on persecuting them. Through this interpretation, the epilogue could be showing a post-holocaust generation’s misuse of the memory of Jewish pain and suffering as a means to justify a so called Zionist "safe haven." Tóth’s niece manipulating his legacy and art—things he had such little control over his entire life, and now again here—to act as mere shows of trauma that can help ensure a strong foundation in the construction of a violent, apartheid state.
I want to believe that this movie is the latter. I want to believe that I sat through three and a half hours of something worth watching. But honestly, I don’t think Corbet, or his movie, are well equipped enough for the second interpretation to be the intended meaning. If I’m being even more honest, I don’t think this movie is good enough to be either interpretation. I have not watched any of Brady Corbet’s other work, but the impression I am getting from this movie and his direction and writing, is that he’s overtly self-obsessed and couldn't commit to anything here. I don’t think this movie says anything, but I don’t think it ever had the faculties to do so in the first place. I think Corbet felt as though he was leaving the movie as an ambiguous, yet optimistic beacon for Jewish people and their continued struggle, regardless of which interpretation is the “intended” one. But aside from that being an incredibly cowardly decision, this movie couldn’t find any footing in any sort of substantive way. I think this was an attempt (yet more a mimicry) of a critique on capitalism and antisemitism.
I think he wanted this to be his The Godfather (1972). I think he wanted this to be his There Will Be Blood (2007). But he doesn’t come even slightly close to those epics—simply mentioning them in the same vein as this feels insulting to me.
He fails in meaning, theme, substance... practically everything that needs to be good for this film to succeed in its purpose.
I was completely hooked in the first hour and a half. I was on board with whatever he was doing and I was pumped to see what came after the intermission. But as soon as we were no more than five minutes into part two, he had lost me completely. Even after putting aside the obvious qualms I have with this potentially being grotesque Zionist agitprop, post intermission, this movie had no understanding of what it wanted to be or say. It started to feel as though Corbet thought he had something special and got carried away in the image of what he felt was his piece de resistance. He overindulged and overindulged without any care for what he was actually making. And I want to be clear, I had no issue with the runtime, but rather how that runtime was used—ineffectively.
I think this is a nothing movie. It truly felt as though it had no heart. It feels completely hollow. It was shot, produced, scored, and acted beautifully on an incredibly impressive budget. For that, and that alone, I am giving it a single star. But ultimately, for me, this is still a nothing movie.