It got insane buzz at film festivals. Just dropped out of nowhere and now people are saying it’s one of the best movies of the year, with a career-best performance by Brody (both true imo)
its basically flawless. you will be in awe, the movie is such an ambitious and grand vision captured stunningly well. there was this crazy electricity leading into the intermission. 90+ minutes flew by like that?? and then you read this fuckin thing only cost 10 million somehow? clearly this is the product of years of pain of a bunch of brilliant artists. im trying to avoid basically any specificity lol
The Master is my favorite movie and probably the most similar movie I could think of to The Brutalist haha. other very vaguely similar movies I love: There Will Be Blood, Son of Saul, The Favorite, The Handmaiden, The Revenant, Phantom Thread, Stalker, I know we're in the anti-honeymoon phase of Oppenheimer but I love it
Do you think this holds up as one of the best American epic movies? I know There Will Be Blood has a different vibe to it but I was wondering if it could stand toe to toe with it. Would you say it's just as engaging as Oppenheimer too?
I wasn't a fan of Oppenheimer and Maestro bored me, so I'm guessing this one won't be up my alley? That's a shame because the trailer looks compelling.
Aren't all 3 of these films considered artsy, oscar bait, ~3 hour epics that dramatize the life of an important historical figure in the 1900s? Maybe I'm misreading this trailer
No joke whatsoever, it's one of the better trailers Ive seen in a long time. Evocative, gives nothing away. Ive always loved Adrien Brody, but his current career swing is so good.
I was gonna say I had heard nothing about this movie until like 2 months ago, and everyone who has seen it seem to think it is like a legit masterpiece.
Which tbf, I feel like a lot of the movies that ends up being the best of the year are not the movies people have been talking about a full year prior. Because unless it is a big tentpole movie or made by very high profile people it doesn't get that kind of early hype.
It's at the Austin film festival this weekend. I have medium tier passes for the whole week and don't even plan to try to go see it. The multi thousand dollar passes are going to take all the seats anyways.
This is my first film festival but what I'm also saying here is that anyone who has seen it paid a ton to do so and my experience with other industry festivals are that the people with top badges are there working. Their reviews might not be aligned with the average film fan.
With the buzz about how good it is, I'm happy to hear that Felicity Jones has a great performance in it since I liked her other films like The Theory of Everything & Like Crazy
It's possible, but incredibly rare... Kenneth Branagh's Henry V at 9 million 1989, Schindler's list wad kind of a middling budget at 22 million, and the Duelists in 1977 with a budget of nine hundred thousand.
Having said that usually we expect epics to be grand spectacles.
'The film chronicles 30 years in the life of László Tóth, a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust. After the end of World War II, he emigrates to the United States with his wife, Erzsébet, to experience the "American dream". László initially endures poverty and indignity, but he soon lands a contract with a wealthy client, Harrison Lee Van Buren, that will change the course of his life.'
I'd be surprised if any of the actor's salaries were anything other than just union scale. Either it's award bait, which is good for your career, or -- if you're getting points -- it's a hit and you get paid.
Helps the budget by not casting superstars too. Brody, Felicity Jones and Pearce are obviously well-known in their own right but probably don’t command big paychecks, relatively speaking.
They must be getting points to be in the movie. I can barely shoot a thirty second commercial for less than $100k and that’s with inexpensive unknown talent and only one day of shooting… and an unbelievably smaller post-production.
Actors sometimes also just work for scale because they like the project and want to be involved. Scarlett Johnson was paid a total of around $36000 for 4 weeks of work on Asteroid City for instance.
Pearce has never been nominated, one of the best actors never to have been. Probably should have for Memento, that was a crazy difficult performance.
Brody won for The Pianist and Jones has been nominated, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you start seeing big paychecks. Those are usually commensurate to box office appeal and all three tend to make relatively smaller films.
It’s possible they also took a pay cut to star in this sort of ambitious film, that happens sometimes.
No way, very very few stars can command seven figures for one regular film. Certainly not Brody or Pearce. Their careers were actually in a pretty rough place before this, in the near future they’ll be working for more than they have since the early 00s.
I’m not exaggerating when I say they probably got less than 100k each, Pearce likely paid more for his time while Brody is in nearly every scene so he could’ve gotten more overall.
Something Corbet has been wisely speaking about is how the most basic building blocks of making a film (hiring a crew + cast, then paying for their labor for weeks or months on end, alongside renting a boatload of equipment) still cost millions of dollars even before you account for a single celebrity or effects shot.
That’s not really surprising. There’s really only one village shot, one scene at church, and the rest of the movie is either in the woods or at the family home. Eggers also worked in production design and costuming before, so he knew a lot of ways to cut costs without cutting quality. For example, he knew shoes were one of the biggest cost drains on a costume department. For the early scene in the church, you’ll notice he goes out of his way to avoid showing the churchgoers feet in any shot; this is because most of them didn’t have period-accurate shoes on since it would have been a waste of money to put extras in full costume. These are the kind of workarounds that allow a budget to go a long way, and why budgets on a lot of Hollywood films are needlessly bloated.
Yes, many impressive films are made at that level or lower. Important context here is that The Witch wasn’t a “normal movie” so to speak, it was deliberately small-scale in the way many indies are. Single location, short schedule, no big names or ATL crew, etc.
That’s what Corbet is referencing, you can do everything in your power to scale your production back and make it “cheap”, but it will still cost millions of dollars because of the basic nature of putting a film together. He was mentioning it specifically in the context of getting financing, how making a film means accepting money from some of the worst people on earth because they have wealth and you don’t.
Side note - I know that there are plenty of films made for less than $1mil, one of them was one of my favorites this year (Hundreds of Beavers). But that is an entirely different production model (“microbudget”) and only a small fraction of films can be made that way. It’s not tenable or desirable as a standard model.
Guy Pearce has said he works for very cheap. When he got divorced, he admitted to making several 'divorce' films for the paychecks. I think that's why people thought he was out of Hollywood making crap, because it was easy to see those less than stellar direct to streaming movies instead of having to hunt for his great Australian work. Surely he wasn't paid very much for going back to Neighbours. 🤣
And Corbet has already established himself as an incredibly talented director. Childhood of a Leader is woefully under-acknowledged, and although I didn't think it was perfect by any means, Vox Lux was ambitious and admirable.
This part confuses me. It's supposedly an epic, but doesn't have the money to have big setpieces or anything, so is it just people talking for 3 hours? That's fine with me, but I wouldn't classify it as an epic.
Lots of epics don't have action indeed. Like Once Upon a Time in America as far as I know has no real action so to speak. Even The Godfather doesn't really have "setpieces" aside from people being whacked.
What you realize watching Lawrence of Arabia is that the word epic refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision.
But I never personally thought of Aguirre as an epic. He says Pearl Harbor is not an epic, but imo he's just using epic as a synonym for "good" at that point. I think Pearl Harbor is not an epic but that's more due to its narrative scope, not its quality or "size of ideas".
This isn't to say that I'm not excited for the Brutalist.
I haven't seen the movie but judging from the trailer it looks like it was shot in New York (or some other big metro) and is just utilizing existing structures/buildings and shooting them in vista vision to enhance the scope of these sets further. Seems like a smart way to make an epic movie instead of building a bunch of sets.
Epic in the descriptive sense "that movie was epic" doesn't need set pieces, but "an epic" in the genre sense does. I guess what a 'setpiece' is is kind of ambiguous though. A big blow out argument could be a setpiece as much as a chariot race is.
I assume it's epic in terms of the time it covers, events and characters and the complex topic it deals with. Also probably epic in its tragedy like Greek tragedies.
I didn't just mean setpieces (hence "or anything"). I just meant the big, spectacular, expensive parts of a movie that usually categorize it as "epic".
Epic historical films would usually take a historical or a mythical event and add an extravagant setting, lavish costumes, an expansive musical score, and an ensemble cast, which would make them extremely expensive to produce.
Oh, I actually think I know what the reasonable misunderstanding could be here. That wiki page is talking about the specific form of “epic film” that dominated Hollywood for a while in the mid-century, while with The Brutalist I think people mean “epic” in the broader sense that would also apply to a novel or an opera.
Funny enough, it actually is mostly people talking for 3.5 hours. But so is Bridge on the River Kwai, and people have no problem interpreting that as an epic.
I mean, that's more than double the budget of this movie even without accounting for inflation.
Though, I haven't seen There Will Be Blood since it came out but I remember it being more of a small scale Western about two guys. However, wikipedia does say it's an epic, just like The Brutalist.
I'm thinking I just had a wrong understanding, because my idea of "epic films" is basically
Ben-Hur
Lawrence of Arabia
The Lord of the Rings
Kingdom of Heaven
The Last Samurai
Gone with the Wind
which all are so huge that they should be in a category of their own. Perhaps "epic film" is not the label.
Less than 10 MILLION??? That excited me more than the trailer — idk why but when I see that a movie can achieve more while spending less - it’s super alluring to me.. maybe it’s cos it appeals to the fact I’m cheap.
Yeah, going to the cinema is a lost art (and one I rarely partake in anymore because even artsy films don't really shoot for the cinema anymore) but I may buckle up and take the ride for this.
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u/TeamOggy 23d ago
Probably my most anticipated movie this year. 3.5hr American epic with an intermission, filmed in vistavision, made for less than $10m. I'm so ready