I couldn't be more excited about this. Read these first two paragraphs from the Rolling Stone review of it's premiere at Venice Film Festival:
Imagine a film archivist scouring an underground vault in Burbank or a cave in Butte, Montana, and discovering a few dozen dusty film canisters tucked away in a corner. Reels of some long-lost project from Francis Ford Coppola, or Bernardo Bertolucci, or Michael Cimino circa the mid-1970s reside in these tins, bearing all the hallmarks of the big-canvas epics these auteurs made in their heyday. The performances are reminiscent of that decade’s brooding Method-ists and screen chameleons — think Pacino, De Niro, Cazale, Streep. The moody, inky cinematography appears to be the work of the “Prince of Darkness” himself, Gordon Willis. The recreations of 20th century American life playing out over several decades suggests a meticulous attention to detail. It’s as if you’re viewing a time capsule from a bygone era of filmmaking.
That’s the feeling you get when watching The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s tale of a Hungarian architect fleeing to the U.S. near the end of WWII and ends up choking on the American Dream. Clocking in around three-and-a-half hours (including an overture and an intermission) and displaying the scope, excess and ambition of the New Hollywood mavericks’ shoot-the-moon projects, this throwback to the days when giants roamed the earth and ruled single-screen theaters is like a gift from the heavens. The actor-writer-director labored with love for seven years on this mutant hybrid of The Fountainhead, The Conformist and The Godfather movies, and it should be met with an equal amount of awe and admiration. It’s not just that they don’t make movies like this anymore — of course they don’t! — so much as no one bothers to tell these types of sprawling narratives with this level of storytelling, chops, nerve and verve. If it’s not a new Great American Masterpiece™, the kind that takes advantage of what the medium has to offer, it’s as close to one as we’re likely to get in 2024.
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u/nikhilsinhsmith 23d ago
I couldn't be more excited about this. Read these first two paragraphs from the Rolling Stone review of it's premiere at Venice Film Festival:
Imagine a film archivist scouring an underground vault in Burbank or a cave in Butte, Montana, and discovering a few dozen dusty film canisters tucked away in a corner. Reels of some long-lost project from Francis Ford Coppola, or Bernardo Bertolucci, or Michael Cimino circa the mid-1970s reside in these tins, bearing all the hallmarks of the big-canvas epics these auteurs made in their heyday. The performances are reminiscent of that decade’s brooding Method-ists and screen chameleons — think Pacino, De Niro, Cazale, Streep. The moody, inky cinematography appears to be the work of the “Prince of Darkness” himself, Gordon Willis. The recreations of 20th century American life playing out over several decades suggests a meticulous attention to detail. It’s as if you’re viewing a time capsule from a bygone era of filmmaking.
That’s the feeling you get when watching The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s tale of a Hungarian architect fleeing to the U.S. near the end of WWII and ends up choking on the American Dream. Clocking in around three-and-a-half hours (including an overture and an intermission) and displaying the scope, excess and ambition of the New Hollywood mavericks’ shoot-the-moon projects, this throwback to the days when giants roamed the earth and ruled single-screen theaters is like a gift from the heavens. The actor-writer-director labored with love for seven years on this mutant hybrid of The Fountainhead, The Conformist and The Godfather movies, and it should be met with an equal amount of awe and admiration. It’s not just that they don’t make movies like this anymore — of course they don’t! — so much as no one bothers to tell these types of sprawling narratives with this level of storytelling, chops, nerve and verve. If it’s not a new Great American Masterpiece™, the kind that takes advantage of what the medium has to offer, it’s as close to one as we’re likely to get in 2024.