Yesterday I went to my cinema, it is the Curzon underneath the Oxo by the river Thames and it had one performance of the Brutalist that I could go to. My partner is away and I had a wish to see this , because a friend told me to. The cinema did not have tickets but the lady at the box desk drew me one. Here it is – kind of brutal.
I don’t pretend to be a cinema goer, I am interested in music, have seen biopics of Dylan and Queen and a firm about Springsteen but it was clear that this film about László Tóth captured the same dynamic that fascinates cinema, the old world of Europe and the new world of America. If you want to read about the Brutalist, you can do so here, but I recommend some time to watch the film.
Brutalism at play
We have seen brutalism at play this weekend , in the behaviour of Trump and his henchman and the atrocity delivered on Kelenskyy
The Brutalist is at one level, a film about Brutalist culture, a culture that American brutalism (in business) tries to embrace. The American entrepreneur is accused of raping Toth by Toth’s wife (herself physically incapacitated by famine while in a concentration camp). It is left open whether the “rape” is physical or mental, Toth loses touch with his humanity and is turned in on his nature and its expression – his architecture. My take is that when you lose your love for others , your humanity has been raped.
No one wins in this film, except those Jews who make it to Israel and find a way to carry on outside the memory of Europe and the lack of understanding in America.
I feel that what went on in the Oval Office has something of the brutalism I watched for 215 minutes on VistaVision.
The clips are only 5 minutes , but what we witness has nothing to do with the good that is in the shot of Zelenskyy and Starmer (above or below)
or the shots of Trump and Zelensky above or below
It will be interesting to see how the Brutalist performs at the Oscars tonight. Will the film be rejected as too close to a truth that America does not want to acknowledge about itself? Or will the riven- Hollywood accept that what makes America “great”, is only “great” in its own terms?
In the 215 minutes I watched the Brutalist play out, I saw the negro culture offering an alternative to post-war America getting rich.
When Zelenskyy told Trump and his henchman that the horror that Ukraine had experienced could be meeted out on America, the other side of the ocean, he was told not to make such statements. America is to have no introspection but must, like industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren, look for success through ruthless violence.
We know of course that this is not the only America as we know there is another America, epitomised to us by Obama and to me by Jenny Smith (my Minister).
I am glad that we will offer Zelenskyy the consistent support that we have offered him for over three years. I hope that America will see both in the Brutalist and the brutalism we witnessed on Friday night , the fiduciary responsibility for the world it has taken care of for 80 years.
None of us in the UK should forget that America’s capacity to help Europe and the world has been what has made it what it is. It should make Brutalist the show of the year at the Oscars and send a message to those who bullied Zelenskyy, that the values of Putin and his thugs are not much removed from those of the National Socialists in Germany in the thirties and early part of the forties.
Some consider us at a point like 1938 when we lose touch with our capacity to resist the destructive force of violence. I hope that they are wrong and that we stand up and promote the vision that created a very good film.
No doubt The Brutalist will “win big” at this evening’s Oscars.
Not for me, however, and the film is not without its critics.
The Brutalist has been criticised for its depiction of architecture, its narrative, and its treatment of certain topics or themes within the film.
Architecture
* The Washington Post said the movie “gets architecture wrong” and “perpetuates a colossal cliché”
* The Financial Times also said the movie “perpetuates a colossal cliché” and is “a flawed paean to perfectionism”
* Architecture critics recorded a podcast called Why the Brutalist Is a Terrible Movie
Narrative
* Thelma Adams said the movie was “overwrought, [a] monochromatic unfolding of persistent misery”
* Dr Jonathan Romney said the movie had “longueurs and narrative inertia”
* The New Yorker said the movie’s construction was awkward and led to absurdities and vulgarities.
I have to agree with some of these criticisms were the film taking sides. But I don’t think it is that strongly advertising the colossal cliche. There are many more interesting things going on than a discussion on architecture.
More to the point, it does go on a bit ~(4 hours with two sections and an epilogue). I think it could do with an hour lost (at least). Take the indulgent postcard show of Vienna at the beginning of the epilogue – indulgent.
Agreed, but it’s present day architects who highlight how “off” the film is.
It struck me as a film planned and executed to garner Oscars, riding roughshod over the real lives and networks of successful Bauhaus architects in America and their wives.
Searching the past to find similarities with today often
Produces unhelpful conclusions.
In pensions we seem to be trying to support the three stage
model of education, work, and retirement (65) then die at 70
when the reality is we should be thinking about living to 100.
Nobody seems to live very long here, but most Europeans we meet had a horrid life in the decade before the 1945 peace. I do not want to draw too many comparisons with Ukraine but they were in my head last night.
Understood, but before you assert a moral centre for GB you may wish to re-consider appeasement, particularly 1936-38, not just Munich, but colonial Africa, Hungarian and maybe the Spanish Civil War too.