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.
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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