Hello, welcome to the extra credits of Brady Corbet's The
Brutalist. I'm Trey and.
I'm Kelsey. So the Brutalist, this has been
the most anticipated movie of the last six to eight months.
Yeah, a movie that came out of Venice with the Silver Lion.
So it's been a big deal since I think August.
And basically every critic going across like November to December
who was able to check out this movie early because apparently
was only playing in New York in LA the past few months, now just
got to us here in Colorado in January.
But basically every critic was like, this movie is all caps
monumental to the point where they like made a joke about it
on the poster where they said like 15 critics that said this
movie is monumental. And, you know, people have
discussed this film, even those who are critical of it, as this
towering cinematic achievement. So I did not go into January
expecting we would still be talking about or discussing
movies that others are identifying as a masterpiece
from 2024. But here we are.
We just finished our deep dive on queer, which is one of my
favorite movies of the year. That is a distancing movie, but
quite an achievement. And now we're talking about a
movie that some are calling, you know, the new, the next
Godfather, right? So there is a lot to discuss
today. This is a dense text.
This is a massive movie. It's very big.
It's ambitious. It is bold in scope considering
its budget. If you know anything about
Corbet's decisions to get this movie made at a $10 million
budget or the kind of scarcity of resources around this
project, about how he tried to get off the ground for like 7 or
8 years, was shooting it for four or five years.
This has been a long journey to get this movie made.
And the fact that a 24 is getting out on IMAX screens is
pretty amazing. It's shot on Vista Vision, so
there's a lot to love from a pretentious, like, cinephile,
Yeah, lens of this film. But also narratively, it is a
movie that we have seen before. It is like the Great American
Tragedy. It is a coming to America
nightmare. It is the American Dream is a
lie kind of story that we've seen in cinema, that we've seen
in fiction. And it is a 215 minute movie.
So a film that you would think people would hate considering
its length, considering the repetitiveness of this genre and
story, though it is a story that should be retold over time for
obvious reasons. But yeah.
What are your first walk away thoughts?
Because we just saw it last night.
So this is a reaction episode, even though we're trying to deep
dive in the moment. And so we haven't really taken
in too many of our, you know, favorite other podcast or
critics opinions on this film. So we're really kind of going
off fresh reactions here. But what are your walk away
thoughts? Did you walk away thinking that
was this a masterpiece? Was this two movies in one?
Is it being, is it overrated? How you feeling?
I think my first thought, just like take away from the movie is
I love an intermission. Loved the intermission.
We're in a packed theater. I do too.
And not only obviously does it like for practical reasons, give
people a minute to like, do what they need to do and not miss,
you know, parts of the movie. Take a break.
But also, I love seeing people kind of like catch up, talk
about the movie over here, conversations of how people were
receiving the movie or their thoughts or just like other
movies they had seen that year. I loved the chatter and the
energy in the room. It just felt like something that
you usually get from like a theater experience.
If you're seeing like a play or a different like performance
where you do have that intermission and you are able to
like feel the energy of the crowd.
I just loved it in a movie theater and I don't.
Like a micro monoculture. Yeah, it feels like you're
actually in a film community, in an artistic space in this case,
for like almost 4 hours. Yeah, so I completely agree.
You want so you would be fine with it in other movies too.
Give it to me in like 90 minute movies, I'll, you know, take the
break of the 4045 minute mark. I'm good to like stand around
for 10 minutes, talk to neighbors.
We were listening on people's conversations and everybody was
discussing this movie in like great length and there was all
ages at our screening. I would say they were more like
45 plus on average. And it was a pretty big show.
It was sold out. I would say there, there was
probably like 100 and 5200 people in there, but there were
some, there were some younger people, there were some under
30s, but mostly 45 plus. And people were discussing this
movie narratively first and foremost.
Obviously there's a lot cinematically to discuss,
especially that, you know, amazing, beautiful but also
haunting opening sequence that I'm really exciting to talk to
you about. But you know, people were
talking about the story about this Hungarian Jewish architect,
Holocaust survivor seeking refuge in a post war America in
pursuit of the American dream, only to be exploited by the very
myth makers of that dream. And then you heard people
talking about maybe the performances.
Someone next to us was talking about how crazy, funny and
absurd guy Pierce was in this young Logan Roy or young Peter.
Whelan for me, that's what I was thinking about yeah yeah, I
mean, I that, that was definitely really fun.
I, I guess you know, people can let us know in your comment in
the comments if you enjoyed the intermission 'cause I was
thinking if we're, you know, calling for an intermission in
all movies, like if we're a lot of times, sometimes we're the
only ones in the theater. If it's like a sure, there's a
few people in the theater. So maybe it wouldn't be the same
experience, but. If you're in a theater with one
other person, yeah, that's funny.
Or like, yeah. And also, like, you know, if
there's like a horror movie, you know.
Get your letterbox out. Don't make it weird, just.
Like, yeah, just us too swap, which we've definitely been in a
lot of horror movies and just like one other person.
Yeah, we have some bad stories, some tough.
Stories. So maybe, maybe not.
But in this particular, yeah, this particular atmosphere, it
was great. People, let us know your
experience. But for the actual movie, I
really, I didn't know how I'd feel.
I was trying not to, like, read anything, listen to anything
that would, you know, impact my experience with something that
was being lauded as like a masterpiece, like not only the
best movie of the year, but maybe like an instant classic.
Sure. And so I but I think that
obviously like did have some sort of while not hearing any
specifics about the movie that kind of like the the brutalist
is this 5 star yes, like and so going into obviously like that
does impact me a little. The first half of it, though, I
will say was great. I I thought that I was really in
and I didn't know if I would meet that kind of, you know,
this is a A5 star movie, but I thought I was going to get there
after the the first half when we went into the intermission,
which we didn't like share with each other during the
intermission, we were trying not to talk right.
It's the. Questions we had about the.
Yeah, maybe just because I had some like mysterious elements.
Didn't you love the Peter Weyland like piece of this or
Yeah, so, so very like light stuff.
I showed my family. I gave them a $500 check.
Yeah, yeah. That stuff was really, you know,
funny to to discuss. Definitely.
And also, you know, very similar energy in the Prometheus alien
world from Guy Pierce. But I, I think in the
second-half it lost me a little. I still think that it's a
cinematic achievement. I think it is an amazing film to
look at. I think part of that also has to
do with like incorporating kind of very smartly like the aspect
of beautiful architecture. Yeah, the actual brutalist
architecture, yeah. Yeah, so I was locked in for the
full movie, but there were some narrative choices towards the
end that I was not, I don't think really like it's it's not
me saying like I wish this was done differently.
It's I think it wasn't effective in the the fuller broader story
that was being told. While I also think though, like
some of the more surreal elements of the second-half
actually did work. So I'm interested to see like
what you think about it as a whole.
But what did you think? Like verse I I know they're not.
I know it is one full movie, but I did have a very like
interesting experience of dropping a little bit in the
second-half about you. Yeah, no, similar, similar
experience. I like this movie lesson you do.
I would say I like this movie a lot less than critics.
I really admire that. I read from all the time that I
listen to in different podcasts. I had a really conflicting
experience with this film because I loved it on paper.
I love everything cinematically that you're saying.
I love it visually, I love it sonically.
I like I really liked it structurally.
I think it is really ambitious to have people sit down for four
hours and to go through this epic without ever feeling the
pace, which I don't. The editing is wonderful in this
movie. The performances are very good.
I think the the tension of this movie between this this Jewish
man who was attempting to acculturate while trying to get
his family back from Austria is devastating.
And the kind of cost of acculturation and assimilation
in this movie is fascinating. And what that leads to what that
engenders is is a really interesting conversation that we
can have today in the spoiler section as we're still in non
spoilers right now. I think that a lot of the
dramatic tension that I love from Part 1 was lost a bit in
Part 2 and then comes back in the epilogue in a place that I
felt was underdeveloped. And what I mean is there's a lot
of there's a big commentary in this movie outside of just the
the immigrant journey of this conversation or intersection of
art and commerce and how we make art in a capitalist world, in a
post industrial world, like in a late capitalist world, even
today, because there are contemporary lenses on this
film. How we how do we do that?
Like, how do we do that without sacrificing our own ethics in
our own morals in different ways?
And so even though this movie is featuring this massive immigrant
journey, it also doesn't feel like an epic because we're not
seeing a start to finish of something in particular.
But we are seeing a sort of cost of myth making, a cost of who
controls history, a cost of who controls your art overtime, the
redefining of art overtime. So there's really big ideas that
I feel are are fascinating in this movie.
However, what I will say and what kept me back from loving it
throughout both parts is that it's a really self important
movie. It is really treating itself
seriously and it is about a story that should be treated
seriously. But it's also within a genre of
movies that I've just seen so many of.
And I will really felt like there was a missing contemporary
struggle or lens on this film outside of what art making is
like in our capitalist society today, which was which was
surprising considering the subject matter, considering what
you could do about the cost of the immigrant experience in
America in the exploitation of Labor in the ruling class versus
the working class. I was hoping for more
exploration of identities in particular that are not on the
forefront of these kinds of stories because we have seen the
Jewish experience in American epics before.
We have seen the Italian experience in American epics
before. So these are things that we have
come to be normalized to in American cinema from the greats,
right? From a Martin Scorsese, from a
Paul Thomas Anderson. And so I guess I guess what I'm
saying is the movie fits neatly in the Canon of a godfather of a
There Will Be Blood. But I was almost frustrated by
the the repetitiveness of what I was saying because if you have
seen these movies, there is a little bit of just like
mimicking going on. Yeah, I was.
I mean, it's hard obviously with the like, not to see There will
be blood, right? Yeah.
Not to see, you know, PTA like all over this movie.
And I don't mean theft, by the way.
I just mean, like, I was hoping for something a little bit
original, considering the runtime.
Yeah. And considering that this
director had, you know, the full editing power that, you know,
the studio allowed him to to do what he wanted.
We always tend to, you know, like fall on the side of like
people absorbing different choices, like as influences,
right? Like I unless there's something
that's I don't know, we never a lot of times we you hear critics
say like this is copying this movie and therefore, like, I
don't like it. And they Ding points off.
Yeah. Which is not what we do.
Yeah. Like movies are inspired.
Yeah, there's homages. It's not that for for me, but it
does. I think it the reason I had a a
similar reaction too, was like I'm seeing a lot of like
similar, you know, influences, but you would expect like in a
in a movie coming out in 2024 from a kind of a similar like
thematic story that we've seen in movies, tropes, I guess that
are. Outdated.
Yeah, that you see then like reoccur in this movie and then
also kind of like what you're saying, like maybe not
challenging the audience is as much as you could or, you know,
telling a more complex story as you could with because that
we've already seen, you know, different parts of this story.
And so I think that's that's ultimately where I came out on a
toot and you know, part of the going into the brutalist as a
masterpiece conversation, discussion rate the expectations
that I that also obviously impacts a part of, you know, it
has to. But I I do think just like if I
were to see it without that, I would still have like similar
thoughts, right? Like.
Yes, yeah. And and I guess to contextualize
what we're talking about when I said self importance and that's
kind of what we're talking about with this movie.
Like it does it is it self congratulatory in a sense?
And I think it is, but. It's not that the story
obviously like, isn't. Important.
Yes, the story is. The it's acting like the movie
is almost like already a Canon movie.
Yeah, it's. Because of the influences it's
playing with. You know, exactly.
And I appreciate that about it. Like I love angry radical
storytellers who are telling you what's important about the world
because I like artists with a vision who are unafraid of a
studios, like maybe opinions on what that vision should be.
I think that's what's fascinating about movie making
in particular, because we're seeing dozens of artists in
their opinions on screen, like Adrian Brody's performance as
this lead character, he might have a very different view of
Laszlo's journey in this movie then that filmmaker and the
writers did right. So like that's a really
interesting part of the movie making process in this movie
feels very self aware of those things.
So there's a lot of like subjectivity in the film, but
there's enough dense layering of symbolism and visual metaphors
or literalizing some of those metaphors.
But in such like interesting ways sometimes, sometimes that
allows for so many different, I think interpretations of the
film, which I really appreciate. But I think that self importance
can also be good in in other ways.
Like this movie, a lot of in a lot of ways is about an artist
trying to not sacrifice too much in order to make their art to
stamp their legacy. Now who co-ops that legacy in
the future is an interesting conversation.
But this movie is like using a historical or contemporary
struggle to get a movie off the ground that is about movie
making. Like Brady Corbett is doing
that. And I think that's fascinating.
Like, sometimes we, you know, as people in the film critics space
will go, OK, do we need another movie about what it's like to
make movies? But if you can do it in this way
where it's through a story that is like, authentic and about a
marginalized experience about something that is very poignant
today too, unfortunately, that is very interesting.
And I think he was able to accomplish that.
Now, one of the reasons it's not going to be one of my favorite
movies of the year is what I've been talking about, which is
that it didn't stand out enough to me as an original piece of
movie making to actually warrant its 4 hour existence.
And I'm not saying that from a pace, a pacing point of view.
I'm saying that from like, I watched 4 hours of scenes and
sequences, absolutely. But I watched 4 hours of scenes
and sequences where I was like, oh OK, I'm being odd in moments.
These film makers did their homework.
This is like a 20th century, mid century immigrant tragedy.
But the movie also feels like it's not interested in being
provocative. It's interested in making a
statement. And so it's very loud, it's self
assured. It's gorgeous.
It's undeniably gorgeous. But I feel like I was conflicted
walking out because it's the kind of movies that I've seen
sometimes that are far too controlled, far too formal, far
too unmessy and sanitized. And I do feel like this movie
could have been a little bit more radical and what it was
trying to say, considering, especially if you take into the
fact what we know about the filmmaker and him having access
to doing what he wanted to do with the movie, which is
amazing, right? And he still wants to make it
commercial. But I was just really surprised
considering like our current climate that this is as far as
it went. And I guess we can get into
spoilers in a second because I feel like we've had all the the
non spoiler stuff. But again, I'll, I'll, you know,
recommend it to any listeners or anybody watching at home, even
though we're talking about this movie maybe lacking a new depth
or original depth and layers throughout the entire runtime.
And maybe it does retread like an archetypal story that we've
seen before. It does it at such a high level
that it's hard to deny it as a successful work.
You know, it is a successful work.
It knows what it is and it's certainly doing it at a high
frequency and at high level, but I'm just not sure I, I just
expected more considering the subject matter.
That's like, that's where I was leaving the movie.
I was, I was impressed by the cinema of it all and let down a
little bit narratively in terms of where it went with it by the
second part of the movie. Yeah, I think just I think
observing our vibes after the first half, I think I still like
it more than you. But well, I mean, we'll see in
the spoilers here as as we go into as to like why we both I
guess felt like it felt a little short in the second-half.
But yeah, I mean, it's definitely obviously well worth
your time to go see it on the biggest screen possible.
It is beautiful. And there are just some, I think
what we'll get into in a second different like things that I
was, I was maybe like underwhelmed by.
Yes, no, yeah. OK, so let's put a spoiler
warning out now. I'm putting out a little bit
early just cuz there's a lot of movie to talk about, a lot of
movie to discuss. OK, so like I said, on paper
this is a tragic immigrant tale, one that you may seem familiar
to you, but Corbett also is more interested in exploring that
relationship between art and power that we were just
discussing. Specifically, the Patreon artist
dynamic between this character named Harrison, who is played by
Guy Pierce, who is this charismatic and repulsive patron
of the arts, but also industrialist, war profiteer.
And Lazlo are main character who is consumed by his desire to
leave a legacy, but also to get back his family and the
conflicting goals of those things sometimes.
And what the American spirit or ethos can do to someone as a
sort of parasite, even somebody who's coming from such a tragic
life as somebody who escaped and is seeking refuge from the
Holocaust as Lazlo did. And the film leans on
archetypes. So we're going to be talking
about those and blunt symbolism. We'll try our best to unpack
that as much as we can after just seeing it last night.
And we also have other characters like Laszlo's wife
play by Felicity Jones, who is a classic like troubled
intellectual wife trope, which we'll definitely discuss.
But she's also like the moral compass character, a little bit
like the Kitty Oppenheimer situation from Emily Blunt's
character a year ago in Oppenheimer.
And then we also have their niece who is a symbol of trauma,
and we'll talk about whether she could have gotten more to do.
There's a subplot with a heroin addiction for our lead character
that feels well executed because it's used for dramatic tension,
but also feels overly familiar and also feel sometimes forced,
especially his relationship with his friend who who is a single
father, who we'll discuss as well.
And so there's a lot of tropes that we're we're talking about
that we'll get into the story and in terms of why it feels
hollow. And there's, you know, design
stuff in this movie that we'll talk about too that we loved
quite a bit. All right, so this film opens
with a breathtaking sequence. We have a monologue from a yet
to be named young Jewish woman who is the niece of Laszlo or
lead character and is Laszlo, I believe, right.
I apologize if I'm I'm mispronouncing that.
And it's actually his wife who's writing the letter.
Oh, is it? Yeah.
Oh, OK. All right.
Well, as she's writing the letter to our lead character,
we're overhearing that that letter, reading that monologue
while we're for watching a group of refugees aboard a chaotic
ship being greeted by this inverted image of the Statue of
Liberty, which is a wild shot. And I'm sure those of you who
have seen the movie or haven't seen the movie and you're still
listening, you know what I'm talking about because it's been
everywhere online on film Twitter.
And we have this troubling monologue paired with this
striking visual, which is then again paired with another tool
of cinema, which is this great score from Daniel Bloomberg or
Bloomberg. I apologize.
This is a this actually I think deserves the word monumental.
The score is phenomenal. It's my extra credit of the
movie. It's what I think deserves more
recognition about the brutalist. It is a subversive American
anthem inspired score because it also feels like a little bit
fascistic. It is a very, I think
conflicting tone running through the score.
It is a really interesting a piece of music and this sequence
really sets the tone for the story and the exploration of the
journey of this refugee in his journey of a as a struggling
artist attempting to create a legacy for himself and their
identity. So it is a, you know, right away
this is going to be a massive story of displacement,
acculturation, survival, reinvention, something you
probably would realize on rewatch.
But something I thought about last night is when we see him
waking up from like this deep slumber that he may have just
been given the drugs at that point in time, the heroin that
he eventually becomes addicted to because I think he gets woken
up by somebody on board. So after the 1st 5 minutes
you're like oh this movie not only feels like an important
movie, but it also knows it's important which goes back to
that. Yeah, I mean when, But when we
to be fair though, like when we first saw that opening sequence,
I was like, whoa, OK, this is what everyone's talking about.
I felt really emotional, genuinely watching it, yeah.
Yeah. And also I think that I really
enjoyed the the like pieces. Every time we had a letter
reading over images, I think it was really successful.
I think this is the only piece that you shared with me when
during intermission. But you're like that feels like
that's been in his mind for a long time.
Like to just open that movie. Yeah.
I mean, it was so well executed like just an amazing opening to
a movie cinematically. And I I think also like the
emotional aspects of it all this like overlapping, right like
history in a moment to was was really well executed.
And we see that like as we continue into the story, also
towards the end when we see the wife writing a letter to.
Yes, yeah. I mean, it's I felt like I was
trying to think what, when's the last time I felt that kind of
awe inspiring feeling where cinema evoked like these
multiple different feelings at once just from specifically the
score. And I rewatched the, I think the
25th anniversary of Phantom Menace, Star Wars Phantom Menace
in theaters like a year ago and which was a great experience.
I'd never seen it in theaters. We were too young when it came
out originally. You were sick.
So I had to go see it by myself and I did not realize because it
was a daytime showing, that a bunch of parents are gonna be
taking their little ones their kids.
That's amazing. So there was a little boy
sitting next. To their first experience.
Yeah. And we would get that Star Wars
opening crawls like da, da, da, da and the crawls like about
trade tariffs and all that. And this boy is like, you could
feel like he was talking, eating chicken fingers.
And he, like, I, I could tell like, this was going to be an
experience. Yeah.
But as soon as that crawl hit and the music started playing,
he couldn't move. I could, like, sense him being
like, wow, I'm watching something important.
Yeah. And it felt, I felt similar to
that kid watching the beginning of the in a much more tragic
way. Also Duel of the Fates.
I guess I'll just give this kid a shout out.
I don't know who he was, but like, he's going to have a great
life, I think. Because as soon as the Duel of
Fates pop up and Darth Maul is fighting Obi Wan and Qui Gon
Jin, he literally gets up from his seat and just stands there
watching the Duel of the Fates. And I felt that.
I felt seen. He's just stubbed with him.
Oh man, yeah. But anyways, it's a strange
tangent for this movie, but I'm sure you guys are.
But yeah, no, I mean, I think that.
It has that feeling, yeah. When watching score is really.
It's almost like pressuring you to stand up.
It's like it feels like you. Mean like the that kind of
anthem. Yeah, the anthem of it, it feels
like it's subverting the Pledge of Allegiance or something like
that. I felt like that.
I I didn't think about it that way, but I do think, you know,
dramatically that that does make sense in terms of like the
subversion of the American dream.
And you're right. I mean, it does have like
aspects of like an anthem type of musical piece.
So yeah, I mean, that's that's really interesting.
I felt like this kind of like melancholy in moments.
It was played in slower moments. I thought it was just a really
well used I was. Going to ask you like, did they
reuse it throughout the movie and they play it, they slowed
down. In the second part, yeah, there
was like, yeah, it was, it was just used in different again, we
just saw it last night. But but yeah, I think it was
used in different ways with it was slowed down in certain
sequences, but I I've always felt like emotional when it was
in the background. So we are introduced to Laszlo
who we see at a a brothel with a sex worker and then we see him
kind of enter into the New York scape.
I think the sexuality of this movie and like what of the
characters in this movie is fascinating.
That's probably like a deeper discussion on multiple RE
watches and the kind of psychosexual relationship
between a few different characters.
But we do see that as the opening scene of this movie.
And then we see him as this like, Hungarian Jewish
architect, Holocaust survivor, basically just trying to find a
job. Yeah, he goes to meet his
cousin. He arrives in post war America.
Also a really emotional like moment of them embracing and him
finding out that his. Bus.
His wife and his niece are still alive.
Yes, we find out later on in a really also like sad moment,
that that's his sister's child, right?
And that she was sick and so like her his connection to her
that we don't know yet. But I just the performance from
Adrien Brody immediately was I I was really again, I was just
like continuously like, OK, this is what people are talking
about. Like this is this movie is
really going to go somewhere. But I think the those moments I
never totally got back to. But I but still like a very
impressive opening and an amazing performance from Brody.
Right. And I think especially because
Brody comes into America with that dream that we know so well
to be much more complicated when examined.
But like, you can feel him knowing that he's entering a
place that accepts immigrants and he knows that because he's
been told that. And he's also like on the ship
and he, you know, lands and then only realizing throughout the
movie, slowly but surely, this is a place that might be
excluding immigrants. And really they only accept
immigrants when it's convenient to their labor, like the the
country's economy. And depending on what families
control, the economies of which regions will depend on, like
what immigration status looks like in that region.
And so in this case, you have somebody who is like looking for
something better than cheap to free labor.
He's going to work with his cousin who owns a shop who is
completely acculturated and like, sacrifice his own identity
really, right? He.
Changes his name right to like Miller and Sons.
He's Catholic now, as he says. Yeah, and I thought, I thought
also that was like a not completely like in the
second-half where I felt like there were some narrative
choices that felt like they were really like, I, I felt the
choice like written on the page that here I felt like the
conversations between him and his cousin and and Laszlo of
like, you know, the Americans like family and they want a
certain name, right. And like the the kind of like
stakes, like an and political like landscape that is embedded
in that conversation where you like kind of feel the tension as
well of his cousin's experience, like living in America.
And we kind of know where Laszlo's, you know, story might
go. I I thought that was all like
really well done in terms of dialogue and in the first part.
What did you think about the relationship to Laszlo, his
cousin and the cousin's wife? The partner, because that I
think was a confusing aspect of the movie for me.
I couldn't tell how much. And I'm, I'm forgetting her
name. I don't have it here, but the
partner of the cousin, how much she was making xenophobic
comments or how much that she was in a relationship with
someone who was toxic, who was manipulating her, which is the
cousin figure who is Miller now. But the person who owns this
furniture store that Lazo is going to work at for the next
like 25 minutes of the movie until he's inevitably kicked out
after a deal with Guy Pierce's character goes wrong.
And he's also told by his cousin that he made in that, that
Adrian Brody's character made an advance at his cousin's wife,
which we know not to be necessarily true.
If you trust the POV of Adrian Brody's character, which I will,
I'll take that part of this movie literally.
So I was going to ask you, what did you think about the wife
figure? Because she makes a comment
about his nose, which I couldn't tell if it was a xenophobic
comment, a comment out of prejudice, or if it was
literally a comment of him hitting his nose because he took
drugs because it. Was supposed to be both?
Both like it's supposed to be like the prejudice embedded.
Interesting. OK, that's what you're talking.
About yeah comment of like care and so it was kind of this right
how he later and this has been like the big scene that has is
used to market the film is like Adrian Brody in the car leader
with his wife. If they don't want us here
explaining to his wife, like, why would his cousin's wife say
that? Right.
And so I I viewed like this kind of her as a character of what
we'll later, you know, see in the I'm forgetting Guy Pierce's.
Harrison. Harrison.
Character right and basically like everyone that Lazla will
will come to like interact with mostly so I I just viewed it as
like the kind of the first step of this.
There's always a second meaning, yeah, behind this American
acceptance of somebody who ultimately they have a strong
prejudice against, if not racist against.
So, yeah, that's fascinating. I well, the the the reason I'm
asking is because the cousin inevitably tells them after a
long party together and the deal breaking through with Guy
Pierce's character, that yeah, you made an an advance at my
wife, so I'm not going to hurt you, but you have to leave.
You're no longer working with me.
And we do know from being in, you know, Adrian Brody's
characters POV that night when he was forced to dance with his
cousin's wife, that when he was leaving, the wife said you
should find a job elsewhere. You could be used elsewhere.
You're really good at what you do, which could also be read as
what you're talking about. That double meaning of Oh, is
this a xenophobic person, a Catholic American who's trying
to push this Jewish person? Outside of her family, right?
Or does she actually like or does she actually care about
him? And she does think her husband
is a little bit volatile, which we do know from the way he was
just. Out meaning that she maybe
didn't even say that to her husband, her husband just or the
cousin just said that. The way I read it, which is why
I asked you, because I did read a few reviews from like Ehrlich
this morning and out of Navin and I didn't see this anywhere.
But the the way I read that scene where the cousin comes
into Asian Brody's room and kicks him out was that he felt
shame for what he did that night.
And also the way that that deal fell through and he put the
blame on Adrien Brody's character as to not reflect on
himself. And also to tell his wife that
it wasn't his fault. Because we saw there were
moments where we saw we were left with the wife's POV that
dance night that they had. And she felt kind of
uncomfortable by the whole situation.
She was telling him to stop forcing Adrien Brody's character
to dance with her, which again, the double meaning could be
because she, you know, is anti-Semitic, right?
But it also could just be that the cousin had basically because
of this American disease that the movie is trying to explore.
In this film, he just was a volatile person that she felt
uncomfortable around. Yeah, Well, yeah, I mean, we
definitely saw the this piece of like, you know, forcing Adrian
Brody to dance with his wife in terms of like, this is like my
property look like that the life I've built sort of strange.
You know, I think again, it's obviously like a comment not
necessarily totally on the character, but of like the
environment of like this capitalist, right, like system
that his cousin is now having to participate in and like where he
is assigning his worth. He also like at one point during
the conversation asked Laszlo, like, is it smaller than you
thought it was going to be? And Laszlo says I had like no
expectation. And so like this idea, right, of
like measuring yourself against like like money as so I think
that was definitely like a, a piece of it, but that's
interesting. That's a really good point
because there is a level of like Laszlo being kind of confused by
self-interest. He seems like somebody much more
interested in collective interest.
Like he doesn't maybe even know that there was like a a debate
between those two things. And he comes to America and his
cousin, who is like fully assimilated, has like turned
into something he doesn't know like from name to the the
performance he's putting on as an American.
Well, I think that's why the conversation was so interesting.
It was like you felt the reason for the, the distance of like,
like I don't recognize you anymore, sort of, right.
And and then, yeah, we obviously have that moment of he goes to
build the library Guy Pierce's house, right?
Because Guy Pierce comes home and during, well, I think
they're like basically done building the library.
They should put the books in. Yeah.
And can we get? One of those for our movies
that'd. Be safe.
Yeah, all those shelves. But but then right Guy Pierce
obviously it was like just throws this huge fit.
He can tell us like in a very aggressive man and he.
Also racist because we already met Adrian Brody's character's
friend at this point, right, Who we'll talk about in just a
second. But yeah, he makes a comment
that is racist. And so we're recognizing that
who this is at this point, this is like a industrialist.
This is one of these tycoons who sell what sold weapons to who.
Question mark is like an interesting conversation, so.
Yeah, but I think it was like smart to introduce us to the Guy
Pierce character this way because then we also understand
like immediately what's underneath this kind of meeting
at the coffee shop later on, also like his children, right?
It's not a surprise when later on, like the hairy character or
just very soon after the hairy character, his son decides not
to pay them, right. And even though they've built
the whole library like and what he says later on to Laszlo's
character. So I I think that it was smart
to introduce us to the Guy Pierce character in that way.
Yes, and we're about to get deeper into that.
Let's talk about the friend real quick of Laszlo, where we meet
Gordon, who is played by Isaac Day Bencholi, I believe, is how
you pronounce his name. I apologize if it's not.
He does a very good job in this movie.
Doesn't get a lot to do. Is this black single father
who's just trying to meet ends meet, you know, or make ends
meet as as Laszlo is and Laszlo eventually hooks him on heroin
as they go out that's. What we're supposed to
understand from the, like, jazz club, Yeah.
Yeah, as they go to jazz clubs and they don't use heroin as
like a judge mental device in this movie.
It's really just a way for these, like people to self
medicate during this like, tumultuous period in American
history post World War 2, or at least for groups who have been
historically marginalized. And so the movie is doing a good
job of not this movie sometimes does condescend to audience to
the audience, and we'll get into that in Part 2.
But it doesn't do that here where we just realize that these
are, you know, socially, emotionally, intellectually,
like people who deserve more than what the these elitist have
but ultimately are like stuck in this like oppressive,
exploitative position of Labor. But I will say this next to the
intellectual but troubled wife figure in this movie, I think
the most cringe archetype or trope of this movie is the white
protagonist having a black friend who's underdeveloped and
not really a character, even though we learned something
about his son, even though we learned that they're the mother
and the and the partner died when he was very young.
Yeah. We have like the dinner scene,
but still. Yeah, it feels forced.
It's the character is basically like a device to then tell us
about Adrien Brody's character. Exactly.
Yeah, in the worst part of it is politically like black
characters are used all the time in in whites, quote UN quote
white stories like this because they're trying to get the
audience to attach or project morals onto the white
protagonist. And so in this case, while it
might seem totally normal for people to see a a middle-aged
Jewish man coming into a community that is not his own,
but he's being accepted by it. And he's in a bread line and he
makes friends with a single black father and his son in
front of him. And he says, I'll save your spot
in line the next day. You might think, well, that's a
common thing to do, maybe in the Jewish community, a collective
interest in in your fellow person in your community.
That's perfectly a fine reading of that.
But historically in movies, this is usually a trope that has been
evolved from like a standard of practice to try to get audiences
to connect to the lead character.
Historically, usually it's not individuals like human beings.
It's usually like Ripley's saving a cat from the Nostromo
and Alien, the save the cat trope, which is like, oh,
Ripley's a good person. We swear because she like wants
to save her cat. That's my favorite movie of all
time. She is a good person, but in
this film with the Brutalist, what was troubling about it is
it plays in so many tropes like this, yeah, that feel
unexamined. And it does make you reflect on
how much of this movie is just so archetypal that it just does
not have any originality of its own.
But what it's archetypal in, like the Canon that it's playing
in and what it wants to be anointed in, is such a high
degree of filmmaking that you can't help but respect it or
admire it, but you're just hoping for a little bit more
considering the fact it's 2024. You're like, if you're going to,
you know, basically, I don't want to say completely reused,
but right, if you're going to like incorporate influences like
from these kind of epic stories that we've seen, you should,
even though it was written seven years ago, who cares?
Like you should definitely be updating a lot of these like
problematic tropes, which we, I try not to say like the word
problematic, but. Yeah, it's like a trigger word
for so many people. But in this case, like tropes, I
mean tropes, they're a reason they're tropes.
They're always like the successful bits of movies to get
a genre film made. In this case, we're watching a
melodrama, really. And so like, this is a big trope
of it, which is the white protagonist has a black friend.
And it's great for like black actors like this.
The man who plays our our lead friend in this movie, who gets
paid to be in this movie. But unfortunately, like, he's
playing an underdeveloped character, much like Felicity
Jones's character is the wife in this movie.
She gets a lot more to do than he does, but her character is
really a tool or a device to really explore the the brutal
genius. Exactly.
It's not that, like it's not that Kitty Oppenheimer, but
yeah. Yeah, it's not, but it's still,
she's used in a very similar way like I, you know.
If only she had the code to understand her husband's brain.
Yeah, although I thought that was AI did think it was a
beautiful line at the end when she was like the man I married
is locked inside and like I can't, I don't have the code to
decipher. And the movie does feel poetic
and yeah, like. That Yeah, yeah.
And I was like that like sounds great, but I and also I felt,
you know, the I I think I like understood obviously.
And like there were successful pieces of like going or
following their marriage too, right.
But in terms of like how she was used, it was like so again, like
a a trope of a woman, like essentially, especially during
the sex scenes, I was like, this feels so from like.
A male gaze. Yeah.
It felt so like, you know, her character was specifically a a
device to like tell us that he's a genius.
It's just like an eye roll. And then also then like, you
know, there's this a duality that's often in these like very
unexplored roles or like, I guess just like not complex
where it's like she is supposed to be kind of like, again,
uplifting our main like male protagonist.
The great woman behind the great man.
Yeah, But then like with Guy Pierce's character, she gets to
like, intellectually spar with him.
And it's just this like, cringy use of like putting in like a, a
woman literally what Guy Pierce says, which is like supposed to
be ironic of like, oh, the woman behind the man, right.
Because she is basically right. She's like they're saying like
you're insulting me when I went to Oxford and like basically
like we see what we'll go into that in the second-half of like
how the family is treated by the guy Pierce character.
But I was so I I think, like put off, I guess, by how her
character is written. And I get I guess, again, like
this is a part of why I can totally understand like the
cinematic aspects of how this movie looks and also like story
elements of why it is an important story to tell.
But these dated tropes just felt so much like I obviously can't
say this is a masterpiece level. And I'm just surprised that like
people are saying that because it feels like AI don't know, you
know? What's?
Strange to see now. Can I bring up a movie that's
very divisive? Well, first of all, to expand on
your point, if anybody's like, all right, I don't know if the
great woman behind the great man trope is that big of a deal.
It is a very big deal right now. Like last year alone we had
Oppenheimer, Ferrari, The Iron Claw, there are several films
that all Bradley. Cooper.
Oh yeah, Maestro. Like, there are several films
where they are attempting to be historically accurate but
socially progressive, where they're like, actually there's a
pretty smart woman behind this guy who's a genius.
And so like, we should shout her out for a few scenes.
We'll give her like a monologue at the.
End but just a few. To save the lead and Kitty
Oppenheimer gets to do the I don't like your phrase.
And then in this movie, Felicity Jones gets to make the metaphors
of the movie very blunt. And so she does get like a a
tragic scene in her own right. And that's supposed to be
empowering of Laszlo. We'll get to that at the end.
I was about to say, oh, a movie I thought a lot about while
watching The Brutalists. Well, first of all, I thought a
lot about Martin Scorsese. Obviously, as we're big Scorsese
heads, thought a lot about Paul Thomas Anderson heads or Paul
Thomas Anderson because we are PTA heads and he's probably the
best director of the 21st century.
And we thought about you too, yeah.
And all. The Paul Thomas Anderson.
Heads we did and then I thought about Damien Chazelle because we
had Sean fantasy. We had Sean fantasy from the Big
Picture, The Ringer's Big Picture and Amanda Dobbins
podcast as well. Great show.
They just talked about the Brutalist a month ago with Adam
Naman, who we've also had on the show.
But we had Sean on recently for Ridley Scott, but two years ago
for the Damien Chazelle episode. And the reason we had him on is
I wanted to ask him like, hey, do you think Damien Chazelle is
our next PTA, next Martin Scorsese, next Spike Lee?
Like, is this somebody that's going to going to be exploring
the the plight of the American dream, the plight of the
American experience or the lies of it?
And I don't know if he was completely sold by that idea,
but we did discuss it for quite a while.
And I'm bringing that up because Chazelle's made some of the
great like tragedy of being an American of the modern era
contemporary world movies like from Whiplash to La La Land.
First Man, which is arguably his best film that explores this
very well and very complex ways where there is a a brilliant
woman behind the man. Except the way that Ryan Gosling
portrays that man is very flawed and very like, not genius man
coded. But the movie I was going to
bring up is Babylon, which is a movie about cycles of
exploitation, which is a movie about an immigrant experience,
which is a movie about marginalized communities that
are not usually portrayed on the forefront of these kinds of
stories. The Manny character in that
movie and that lead actor who played Manny, like, not getting
much love for that film. And Margot Robbie, of course,
getting love, but not not even enough.
I don't know if she was nominated as a for an Oscar.
I think it was just the score from Justin Hurwitz, which was
phenomenal. But that movie was treated not
very seriously because it didn't treat itself so seriously.
Yeah. Because it was aware of what
genre it was playing in. It was aware it was.
Like very explicitly talking about like the film industry,
which the Brutalist also is, and in terms of like the creative,
right, like choices and the constraints, right.
But but yeah, it's interesting to see like such a negative
reaction to Babylon when it is like playing in similar, why
people are so interested in the Brutalist as well, in terms of
like the film commentary or the creative commentary.
And I really think it's because like Diego Calvo is like playing
like a Mexican immigrant in that movie.
And it just doesn't to the film going audiences who are still
primarily being targeted for white audiences or like the the
industry is still targeting the demographic white audiences and
overly representing them. I really think it's as easy as
that, which is that people came to Babylon to see Brad Pitt and
Margot Robbie and realized it was not their epic.
And it was actually about them leaving the history of cinema
and the reasons behind that. And actually like introducing
people who have not been in the forefront of movies and art and
commercialism throughout the history of this country in that
movie, not being explored or examined that thoroughly with
such like importance. The way the brutalist is as
really made me like reflect on even though we love that movie
when it came out, but now I even love it more like I want to
rewatch it because the brutalist seems like I'm bringing this up
because of the trophy figures in this movie.
It seems kind of very much targeted at an older white
audience who deserves to like. Yeah, audience to or a Ward's
body. And in a Jewish community, who
deserves a movie like this? And it's not just directed at a
Jewish community, obviously, it's for like any groups who
have been marginalized in their immigration or their in their
immigration journeys. But I don't know, I just thought
about Babylon and was frustrated by the lack of support for a
movie like that. Babylon's an interesting like
movie to bring up. Because it is exploring a lot of
again, like the the constraints within the industry that Corbett
is, has like talked about, you know, in terms of how he is
writing Adrian Brody's character as an artist and how he
identifies like with the specific artistic themes of the
movie and, and putting things into movies.
But Chazelle noting how self serious of a concept that is.
So he finds absurdity. Yeah.
And he makes like fart. Jokes, I know there were
something so like, I mean like for Babylon, I wasn't like this
is like 100% masterpiece. Even though I love Damien
Chazelle there, there were certain pieces of the humor or
like parts of it that I didn't love.
I just don't totally land. Yeah, but there's a fear of
being too serious. I will say with like the
Brutalist, there were elements I think that in the first half
reminded me of PTA in like a good way in terms of the like
when Guy Pierce, you know, says we're going to build a library,
a church or I guess the church comes after the funding, but
what else? Like a gymnasium and a Community
Center, whatever. But yeah, the swimming pool
comment is what I'm thinking of is where he he starts to he
calls Adrian Brodian at like the crack of dawn and he is hungover
and he's like, just wait a second.
Like I need to get this idea out, you know, like dreams slip
away. And and then Adrian Birdie gets
his notebook out to kind of write down the ideas, obviously
that that guy Pierce wants to incorporate in this giant
Community Center. And he's like, let's we got to
build a gym and I loved wrestling.
So like we have to have this and Adrian Birdie's like, well,
let's make a swimming pool maybe, right, like a a good
suggestion. And Guy Pierce is like, I don't
swim. I don't swim.
Yeah. Why would I do that?
Why would we need a swimming pool?
I don't swim. So like those moments I think
we're we're like deserved and like natural, like in terms of
the humor and the absurdity of this Guy Pierce character.
Similar to when we're having the conversation between the two of
them over drinks or like when he continuously, you know, keep
saying both at the coffee meeting and over drinks at his
house for the dinner party of like, you know, I've said this
before, but I find our conversations intellectually
stimulating. Like, you know, just basically
like showing us that he's like a clown, you know?
He's a pseudo intellectual who made a lot of money from his dad
or his family. Like he has generational wealth.
Yeah, and it's not just him, right?
He's like representing, right? The this like elite class who
basically holds this status and gets to like make these choices.
Who also have like the jewels of exploitation.
Like there's slow Mos in this movie that are brilliant.
Slow Mos. Yeah, you.
Start seeing Adrian bodies character start recognizing the
amounts of wealth and then maybe connecting it to what we assume
off screen is that he maybe saw in this post Holocaust world.
And so like that connection of like exploitation is really
important. It's not connecting America to
the Third Reich, but it's connecting a sort of ethos that
would lead to something like that, like a genocide.
And I think that is really smart filmmaking that is like visual
metaphors at its finest in this movie.
That PTA also does really well in most of his films.
And I think there would be blood the master.
But then Phantom Thread is the movie I want to bring up.
But because that movie finds humor in a depravity, that movie
finds humor in like really tragic elements of that of the
lead character almost journey in that movie as somebody who if
you watch that movie close enough, it's one of our, you
know, favorite movies of all time.
We did it for New Year's. We did from last year, yeah.
One of my favorite episodes we've ever covered.
I'm all sad we did it because like now I don't.
Know well yeah cuz it's not forever over we could do it
again in a couple years whenever they release that next PTA film
but her character is someone who is fleeing from the Holocaust as
well and the resources of the of of what Daniel Day Lewis was
doing to build the dresses is very similar concept to what
we're watching happen except the roles are switched here.
I think as the artist sort of the roles are different and the
brutalist. And so I'm bringing that up
because Phantom Thread finds humor in the elitism, which is
what the brutalist does. But that's the easiest thing to
find humor in. The hardest thing to find humor
in is the actual like scathing commentary that's being made.
And I think that the Phantom Thread PTA is unafraid to do
that. Whereas I do think, and I'm
sorry to be comparing directors in movies here because they're
different, obviously, but you could tell how much the DNA and
formula of those movies is they the brutalist would not exist
without Phantom threat is what I'm trying to say, or there will
be blood or The Godfather. And so like, it's important to
like, if a movie is trying to hold itself to those kind of
standards, to examine it with a similar lens.
Or it's being lauded as. Or of being lauded by others
critics. Yeah.
So it kind of demands this kind of critical conversation.
And I do think he misses a little bit more of that scathing
humor that would need a more interesting and dense commentary
that some of alluded to. And I'll give credit to some of
those readings at the end of this conversation and epilogue
in particular. But yeah, I just, yeah, I just
wish there was more of that dark, dark humor.
Yeah, it's, and it's not necessarily that I I don't think
I need levity. That's not why I want the humor.
Yeah, right. That's how it's used though.
Yeah, but it's I do appreciate the moments of seeing like of
showing us, right, which we can already observe.
But like the Guy Pierce character, like his clumsiness
and like him basically again, like having this myth of
meritocracy, like explaining why he deserves his wealth kind of
idea. And again, like that being him
telling him his like life story of like making his business,
which he says, like the press was saying, you know, this was
my like first business. I was doing so well.
I was actually like going under like.
And then we have the insert shots of like jewelry and
dollars being put down for like a card game, right?
So those insert shots were also really well done.
And that's why I like the first half of the movie so much as I
felt like it actually had moments of like highlighting the
absurdity in its own way of this wealthy figure and the
contradictions through a humor, again, that wasn't serving as
levity, but was actually like serving as a part of the
thematic characterization of the Guy Pierce character.
And then when we get into the second-half, it's, again, it's
not that I need humor. I don't need humor in a movie
like this, but I do think that it was like missing maybe like a
almost like not self-awareness. That's not the the best way to
put it, but but almost like a an awareness of like the the kind
of self seriousness that you're talking about that made it not
as impactful in the second piece of it.
Again, not because it's not a serious like story.
It's just that it it it was hitting too hard on a lot of the
like plot points that felt then undeserved, weirdly, because
it's like a four hour movie with intermission.
But that's just like how I kind of felt at the end.
And I don't need again like you like I drink your milkshake.
Like I don't need like that kind that kind of humor like that.
I think it would be fun though. Yeah, but but I think the the
kind of. But there's a repetitiveness.
Yeah, and what's? Exploring, which I think is
deserving considering the subject matter to a certain
extent because we've also seen this so many times in movies.
So like, if people were coming out of this film, going back to
expectations and going like 3 1/2, four-star film, pretty
good. Hopefully get some room for best
picture, that'd be great for like independent cinema.
Yeah. I'd love that conversation if
that's what was happening. That's how I feel currently.
Yeah. And I think if it was that it's
a five star movie that should win best picture that's being
talked about as the XYZ movie. That's kind of unfortunately
what our role is like movie podcasters is like have a
conversation in a vacuum about the film and also have a
conversation about the conversation around the film.
And this one is in particular, like kind of very challenging
because people that are notable critics are like talking about
this in a dense way that I just didn't have the same experience
with it. Yeah.
And that's totally fair of like audiences.
You did too, like, just like normal movie going audiences.
If you thought you'd like this like layered out of body
experience with this movie, I get it.
I think what you're speaking to in Part 2 is that the
repetitiveness of the themes or explorations of what it's trying
to do and then the peppering in of like spicier subjects that
are a little bit more complicated to make it seem
smarter, more provocative than it is.
Really irritated me in the second part where I was like,
you can't just like bring up the state of Israel, like not
explore that a little bit more, which some have argued that this
movie does. And we'll talk about like the
ethno state, you know, consequences of what happens in
this movie in the epilogue. Just shortly, because I'm still
thinking, thinking about the film.
Yeah. And so there's a lot going on in
the movie, but also not a lot in some ways that people have like
projected onto the movie. And so yeah, I, I hope we're
giving context to where we're talking about the humor at
least. Yeah, and I think I, you know,
also appreciate that the second-half is like tonally
supposed to be a shift from the first half, right?
Like we see the gates when they're opening and in the first
like moment we see the home and it's like kind of this lavish,
like, you know, home that we. Bruce Wayne's Manor.
Exactly yeah, like it's in there's a lot of like land
around it right. It's almost like what we have
been taught through like the just like American culture to be
like, I want this wealth sure thing, right?
Like I'm seeing Architectural Digest like celebrity homes on
like. And so.
But in the second-half, right when we go back to the gates and
it's like we're closing out when the Felicity Jones character,
right is going into the mansion, we see like the the gates in the
dark. You're like, that place is like
rotten. It's like haunted, right?
It's like, yeah, like you feel like the the rotten roots like.
And so that was effective in. The full journey of the American
acculturation experience is effective, yeah.
The nightmare, right? The nightmarish like second-half
of the movie completely changing tones for the first half again
to highlight what we've been talking about.
This like American nightmare of, of commenting on the American
dream was effective, but it just didn't work for me.
I think I was I was responding emotionally to like the
historical aspects of the story, but to the story itself.
Again, like having knowing the influences that the filmmaker is
like incorporating was again like underwhelming in a lot of
ways because it felt weirdly stitched together.
Yeah, because there's multiple commentaries going on, like when
he find when his wife arrives on the train in the second-half of
the movie to start the second part.
Yeah, I'm getting I'm tearing up like because you don't think
she's coming. At one point he's like, no,
that's not her. Yeah.
And and then you see her in a wheelchair and he's like, what
happened to you? I'm taken.
I knew in that moment I was like, oh, I like this story.
I like what's going on in this self-contained melodrama.
And then we have the kind of like the art verse commodity and
the kind of commodification of your interest or creativity of
American culture that Laszlo has to deal with a reconcile with a
man who arguably like profited off of his own cultures, like or
his own identities, like genocide.
And so like you're reckoning with that watching this, this
this almost like elevated scenario of the cost of being a
capitalist in America that is really successful and effective.
And those two parts of the movie are the most interesting.
I think when the movie starts leaning too much in a meta
commentary of like, this is what it's like to make something.
This is what it's like to make a movie or a monument to
something. I find it to be really
pretentious and like over saying it's welcome and I think.
Using this like story as a vehicle for that is strange to
me. Well, because then it just feels
contradictory because it's a it's about the the cost of
wanting to make something as a monument to the cost of making
spectacle while criticizing spectacle is like a really
confusing idea. We talked about this with Jordan
Peele's Nope a few summers ago, where that movie was so amazing
as an allegory and so dense about the history of
exploitation in North America. But like what was in about
Hollywood is like this kind of manifestation of that
exploitation and the fallacy of the American dream.
But with the irony of that movie that Jordan Peele was reckoning
with it was that he was creating a spectacle in IMAX, exploiting
spectacle, talking about the exploitation of others based on
people making money off of spectacle.
And so like that movie knew it was in this kind of catch 22
almost parody situation where it was doing what it was
criticizing, which I still thought was brilliant because if
you're going to, if you're going to do it, be aware of it.
And the brutalist sometimes didn't feel aware that it that
it was doing that, if that. Makes sense.
I think that like the it's not that we can't explore like
Laszlo's artistic ambition, right?
Like as an individual and like what he's not willing to
compromise and like as a a full complex like figure, right?
Doesn't need to be this like tragic archetype, but to
incorporate like the the constraints within Hollywood in
a contemporary sense into the story felt strange because other
aspects weren't as explored in a story that we have seen before.
Yeah. The biggest one being Laszlo's
political ideologies or the way he viewed his art.
There was a moment when he's talking to Guy Pierce at the end
of Part 1. We're going to go to Part 2 soon
because we've, I think, stuck on a few different issues for too
long. And sorry if we're rambling.
I think we're doing things that are coherent here, but.
I feel like we're figuring it out this.
Has been a really interesting conversation.
It's like revealing. I think of like of the different
interpretations people are going to have on this film.
But Laszlo tells him, like, I look at my art as like a
political vehicle essentially. At least that's how I
interpreted what he was trying to say without revealing that,
like, I'm also looking at my art kind of being this radical
contrast to whatever you got going on.
Like that's kind of what he was saying without without Guy
Pierce's character being totally aware because he was so
delusional and talking about like his mommy daddy problems.
And, you know, him not giving money to people who need it and
him trying to do this commentary or, or let's say, like justify a
conservative ethos or traditionalist ethos of like
pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just make it
work. I'm not going to give you a
handout. Which he then, you know, the
director and writers then literalize the end of the movie
when he like says that to Laszlo before he assaults him.
And so like this movie is is doing so many things at a high
level. And then as soon as it tries to
treat itself as a, as a. Has a political commentary as
soon as it brings in Israel, as soon as it brings in like an
ethno state, as soon as it brings in like the consequences
of American imperialism and exploitation have led to others
like violence begetting violence, others wanting to
commit violence against others. That's where it gets complicated
because we don't really know a lot of Laslo's internal life.
We don't know a lot about what he thinks politically about the
world. And I know that's a part of the
character arc because he is a Jewish man in a time where that
his identity is not accepted and he's being forced to like shift
his identity around. But the movie, it's epilogue in
the second part of the film, demands you care about the
political commentary or political ethos of this figure,
at least in my for my perspective.
In terms of the focus on the art.
The focus on what the art means, yeah.
And ultimately, I think Laszlo treated the art, treated the the
movie, if you will, for the meta commentary that he's making of
this era as a part of his personal legacy.
The only thing that he can actually have a say on in in
this culture that says that you need to like stamp something,
you need to own something and you need to turn that into your
own kind of brand or identity. And he and he felt like he was
like really being poisoned by this American culture ethos.
And by the end of the movie, when he finally gets the
monument made and we have the epilogue, then the movie
transforms into something else that I think the whole film
didn't actually contextualize or demand.
Then it makes you re examine like what the movie was actually
trying to assert or explore that I think is actually not well
explored. And and we're going to get into
that on that blog. And I want to be too ambiguous
because we're already in spoiler section, but it would take a
whole like conversation about it so we can move on in the plot.
But I'm only saying that to say that the reason why we're maybe
sound conflicted is because there are like two or three,
four different stories going on in this movie.
And I like 75% of them. And the other parts that don't
work I think really don't work for me.
Yeah, that, that makes sense. Yeah.
And I think like there were, you know, moments of layering the
story and also like arch archival footage, right.
And I feel like if you're going to incorporate archival footage,
like it, it didn't fully, I think explore what it was
featuring in the kind of like radio broadcasts or the kind of
like advertisements or the, you know, the, the specific like
images that it was showing. Like it wasn't really.
I think I I felt unexamined by the end for me.
Yeah, it felt like supplemental stuff there.
It felt like it was like almost, and maybe this isn't fair
because I'll see it again, but it felt like it was almost like
I'm not going to totally have the conversation in the
narrative. I'm just going to put maybe some
different like contextual aspects in the background with
this archival footage and then let the audience come there on
their own. And I don't think that in a epic
this big that that's actually like necessarily it's not like,
oh, that's interesting subtextually and like for the
audience or trusting the audience, right?
I actually think that it's doing something uninteresting again,
because we've seen the story before in in like movies or like
a special, like telling the story at this particular time.
So that's why I felt like it was not where where people could be
like, oh, it's just trusting the audience.
I felt actually like underwhelmed again.
Well, also considering the convenient choice of when to be
transparent, when not to be. Because this movie literalizes a
lot of its visual metaphors. Yes.
Exactly worth thematic aspirations.
It just it picks and chooses like when to be.
Really the easiest thing to be on the nose about, but it's not.
And so like that. And again, I think sometimes
when we have these conversations and I'll move on to the plot,
but. This is the first time we've
like talked to each other about it too, so we're kind of like
making sense. Yeah, yeah.
But like I, like, we just watched Ocean's 11 recently and
we're going to be covering that in the Patreon soon because
Soderbergh has a few movies coming out soon because he's a
king. He's making two movies a year.
But Ocean's 11 in caper movies, like in heist films is a 5 star
masterpiece. If you compare if Ocean's 11 was
like, I'm a Great American tragedy, well then I you're in
that sub genre now. So I'm going to be comparing you
to the movies within that sub genre, like within that vacuum
and that space. And so that's why we keep coming
back to this movie on like so many different levels.
Because normally if a if a normal movie was like this
ambitious and this good in a let's just say A1 to $2,000,000
drama of like a family drama, a Noah Baumbach movie or something
like that, I'd be like, you know, it is one of the
masterpieces of the year, you know, and like DD earlier this
year, like considering that movie's budget, it's scope, like
I thought that was one of the best films of the year that
nobody discussed, right? This movie is like I am pig.
I mean business. This is a serious film or like.
Queer like we just talked about or probably mentioned earlier in
the podcast also, yeah. OK, I don't want to be
repetitive. So we meet Harry who is the son
of Harrison. Just realized the the name
similarity there played by Joe Allen.
Best performance we've ever seen from Joe Allen.
I haven't. I mean the.
Favorite. He's really good.
He was good in. He's good some Claire Denise
stuff. He's good in Yorgo stuff.
Yeah, he's almost, it's interesting.
Like I feel like him and Nicholas Holder both doing this
kind of like entitled right. Manchild.
Yes, exactly playing this like bratty figure almost, and I feel
like Joe Allen. I, I, I guess I didn't like, I
haven't seen him in a lot and so like, I was impressed by his
performance. Yeah, he's like a third or
fourth supporting role in most of the good work he's in.
I haven't really seen him as a huge lead in anything.
So listeners, let us know where this ranks up for you.
But I I thought it was the best performance I've ever seen.
From yeah, I've only seen him using like comedy and like the
favorite. So that's.
Why I wasn't sold on the accident at first, the beginning
of the movie. And then by the end, when he's,
like, infantilized by what he just heard about his father and
you see him kind of like, retract back to this younger
self, which, you know, there's a lot suggested there about his
life when his relationship to his dad, He killed that.
Yeah, I thought so, too. When he's running around the
house and he's screaming out for his father, I was like, whoa, I
didn't know he had this kind of depth as a as an emotional
actor. So, yeah, we see Harrison
dismisses Laszlo and his cousin. They make that racist comment.
Eventually, Laszlo has to go back and find work with his
friend and then he's called back by Harrison to look at some
pictures he made across Europe or or sorry, buildings he
crafted across Europe with the the brutalist design or or
style. Also like an emotional moment
too of Adrian Bird's character, just like having the realization
that there are pictures right? Of like what he's built right.
Like he has to keep it. He I like that when he gets the
check it's like almost like the pictures are far more right
meaningful to him like in folder.
Yes, and it's a lot to revealed here about this character, which
is unsurprising. But this elitist, you know,
Harrison figure only cares about this man's skill set.
He does not care that he is a refugee seeking asylum in
America. And that's not why he's giving
him a job or access to labor. Yeah.
He's like, oh, you're a European architect with a with an eye
that is not here present and your cheap labor.
Yes. So he's going to manipulate him
to serve his own ambitions. And you're hoping Laszlo can do
the same, which obviously he does to a certain extent.
And Laszlo gets injected into this world of a young Logan Roy.
And we have this this kind of first part of the movie standout
moment, which is the party that we keep the kept bringing up
between these two individuals, talking about their their dreams
and Harrison revealing a lot of his greed and exploitation.
And then eventually we get to I think the second part of the
movie after this. I don't want to mess up this
structure here. But yeah, we have Part 2.
I think it's called the Hardcore of Beauty, which I should say
Part 1 was called the. Enigma of arrival.
The enigma of Arrival. I think these are allusions to
popular novels or poems. But the second act shifts focus
to the Laszlo family, as his wife, played by Felicity Jones,
arrives and his niece, played by RAF Cassidy.
I believe that's how you say her name.
I apologize if you don't. She's very good in this.
And as far as what she's asked to do, which is play somebody
who is silent or mute because of like what had happened to her in
the Holocaust, you're not sure if it's because maybe she
doesn't speak English, even though it's been told us that
she does. And you don't know if her
family's trying to protect her. But both of these women, like,
have deep scars from the war. We see that Felicity Jones's
character is in a is wheelchair bound from a bone disease.
And we've talked about her as like this trophy figure.
But I think the performance is is good again, as far as what
she's able to do with that role, she's not giving a lot.
And then we have the kind of that, the nice figure she does.
Again, she doesn't get much to do.
But there is a moment I want to ask you about with Harry, where
I think there's a there's a suggestion of assault that's off
screen. Is that how you read that?
Yes, definitely. I feel like it was confirmed at
the end of the movie. I think so, yeah.
That's. Considering what the dad does.
Yeah, I mean, I definitely thought so.
I think we turned to each other to like almost confirm like,
yeah, did that just happen? I think it it did.
And then but yes, at the end of the movie, it's like we almost
are are sure, right. Yeah.
So assault becomes just like a
major motif of the movie essentially because like you're
watching like kind of a, an implicit assault based on like
labor exploitation, which is an interesting way to frame it to
like parallel sexual assault with like labor exploitation,
like these people, their their bodies being used for free to
cheap labor. And so like that, that part of
it is, is interesting. I think some of this stuff about
that commentary feels a little bit forced.
That's also where I kind of like had.
Under examined. Yeah, exactly.
Like it felt like a again, like a narrative piece or choice that
was not fully explored and just kind of used to.
Create dramatic tension. Exactly dramatic tension or like
further a theme but not actually explored for kind of the
seriousness of it on its own. It felt like a metaphor, which
was like, I think of a strange way to incorporate violence in
in a movie. Well, I would have.
The metaphor makes sense to me. I think literalizing the
metaphor into that actual act is questionable, and I think
because it's underdeveloped as the dynamics between the
characters to do that. It's the underdeveloped piece of
it is the. Is why it feels like a problem.
Yeah. And so, I mean, this is one of
the gonna be one of those big subjective things.
If people felt like they weren't, they were, you know, I
think, let's say provoked by these things and it works for
you, then I get it because it is a very long movie that is
immersive. So if you're falling, falling
into these characters journeys and it's tragic, then I
understand why. It distanced me a little bit,
but I understood why. He really wants to get across
this exploitation inherent to America's economic culture.
So we see the two woman in Laszlo's lives start to adapt to
their new lives. Laszlo is starting to become
increasingly consumed by his obsession with completing the
Community Center. And there are really some funny
beats of this movie along this line of the beginning of Part 2,
particularly in the moments about the actual, you know,
architecture debate, like what should be made in the in the
monument. Versus it's just kind of like a
funny conception at the start of having like a church, a
gymnasium, a library, like the that kind of concept like adds
to like and almost like PTA like piece of it, like you feel like
but the architect they bring in. Who's debating and like Laszlo
thinks he's like a hack. Oh yeah, the guy who had, he's
like, what have you made before? He's like a shopping centre.
Right. Yeah, yeah.
Like, that's good. That's good stuff.
And like, the meta movie commentary works with that thing
too. Because like, I'm sure Brady
Corbet has worked on movies where they brought in another
director to look at something or another writer to look at
something who's maybe only made Thor 2 and you're like, does
this person really deserve to be looking at my screenplay that I
worked on for like 8 years? I could see that kind of
commentary between artists who are forced to like be at the
will of patrons. Like I understand like that as a
commentary is really interesting, but inevitably.
Worked as far as like the artistic team that they're
exploring with like film making as like a, you know.
Yes. So the project starts facing,
like, very massive obstacles, derail supply trains, financial
setbacks, clashes with Harrison's other developers,
like we were talking about. Now, the dynamic between Laszlo
and Harrison gets much more complex in the second-half of
Part 2 of this film. There's a key sequence that
takes place in Italy, I believe, at a marble mine.
Probably my second favorite sequence of the movie because
it's experimental. Yeah, which I enjoy.
I really love this elements of like having the, the speech over
the visual and not having it syncing up.
I, I guess like, you know, with the, the actual man telling us
his story. And also I, I think the, IT was
also what, what maybe what I wanted more of the movie in
terms of like learning about different people in Lazlo's
life, like the idea, like, right, like dropping the rocks,
right. To bring up another movie,
Killers of the Flower Moon, that platformed the Osage community
at A at a dire time where you have like these American
industrialists oppressing, exploiting, and taking advantage
of a community committing like a local cultural genocide.
That movie platforms Lily Gladstone's character in such a
way where she is like the main character of the movie, but it
also spends a lot of time with Leonardo Dicaprio's buddies and
like Robert De Niro. And you are wondering at the
into that movie, like, am I watching a masterpiece or am I
watching something that almost actually platformed a
marginalized community in an actually accurate way with
actual screen time? And you do have to wonder that
when watching, I think Killers of the Flower Moon is a better
movie than the Brutalist because it does do that a little bit
better. But you have to wonder when
you're watching this movie. I feel the same way as you when
I meet his single father friend, like Laszlo's friend, I'm like,
I want to know about this guy. When I meet the Italian guy who
fought with his counterinsurgency against
Mussolini's people and dropped marbles on them.
Where's that movie? Like I, there's a part of this,
of these stories that are attempting to be more
progressive but still focusing on like white protagonist and
antagonist that they can't get away from for whatever reason.
Probably because of the market system of movie making in
America, that you can't help but be a little bit underwhelmed
because the movie does feel like ultimately it is exploiting like
tragedies of people in the periphery that you never really
see to create drama and tension. And I felt that in this moment
where I was like, he was talking to his Italian friend, you could
feel like the, I think he was Italian.
I apologize if he wasn't, but that you can feel the, the, the
history between the two of them and you wanted to know more and
you don't ever get anything else.
And so I don't know if that's a credit to the movie for some
people, because you, there's a lot of moments like that where
you're like, oh, this is dense. Or if it's a criticism like how
I feel more so. So it wouldn't.
Be a criticism if we I think explored more like in the actual
narrative timeline of the story. I think so, too.
It's. I shouldn't have to be like, I
want an extra hour for this. You know what I mean?
So yeah. OK, so we get in that night, we
find out that Harrison is in love with the marble.
He wants them to bring it over. And this whole sequence is the
only part of the movie that shot in a surreal way, as you said,
it's very hypnotic. We're like the, the words coming
out of this man's mouth or are not, you know, in line with his
actual physical body, which is a, a really great shot.
We just watched Moonlight the other night.
They did a very similar thing. Was I did?
Did I see this right that the subtitles were in red?
During the sequence. Maybe I didn't notice that.
In other letters they were in yellow.
Oh, interesting. Maybe I'm like totally
misremembering. That's cool.
Yeah, I thought maybe that. Some color changes.
And then later that night, something integral happens to
this plot, a big reveal. The movie literalizes a power
abuse that Harrison had over Laszlo psychologically and
financially. And then it becomes physical.
And we had moments in Part 2 where things like this almost
happened, where Harrison throws a coin at Laszlo at one point
when his family comes and he tells Laszlo to pick him up, to
assert the power dynamic, to make sure his family sees that
he is ultimately like this object to him this this
commodity. And, and I don't think the film
makers of the brutalists or the writers who I think are
partners, the director's partner, and she's a film maker
of her own in her own right. I haven't seen her movies yet,
though I will. But this is a moment where I
don't think they totally trust the audience because we get this
really abrupt, sexually violent scene of Harrison assaulting
Laszlo, where the movie shatters any kind of illusion of mutual
respect that they may have had for one another, but also
shatters the audience's interpretation of, like, what
was going on between them psychologically.
And I think that was an important aspect of the movie
that really held me in as like, oh, this could be something that
is a classic. Like, I really, it felt like the
Master where you're watching Joaquin Phoenix.
Yeah, yeah. And I, I think that that is like
the kind of literalizing and almost like not fully, I guess
to me, I guess at least considering again, like how
violence is incorporated to literalize the exploitation and
the like power dynamics of their relationship.
I just think that it, it almost felt like, oh, like let's
incorporate this because it will really like allow the audience
to understand the true symbolic and physical violence.
But yeah, like I felt, I felt similarly and.
I felt like it diluted the message because of what you're
saying. Felt like almost for shock
value. Exactly.
And I felt I. Felt unbecoming of a movie like
this. Yeah, especially with like
sexual violence to be almost used in that way.
That's what I felt like it. It was just again, like
something that we are we keep coming back to of like to see
this in 2024 or you know, it it it's something that I am not
going to just be like, Oh yeah, this is I know some people were
again, like will see it as like this metaphor or like something.
Like an illusionary. Or like an aspect that just adds
to the thematic right, like piece of the American Dream and
of the the Harrison character. But I just think again, like,
yeah, I just, I, I think I was off put because it felt like it
was used as a device as like something that was inserted into
the story that I actually felt like because it was unexplored.
Similar to the the scene where we it's alluded to with the nice
like I, I. Just felt.
I I felt like it was weirdly not rushed, but like in this massive
again movie, because it's just like a piece of it and it felt
like it was there to to further a theme, further a plot, but
wasn't actually like totally. I don't know.
Does that make? Sense no, there's two well to I
think you're what you're saying is right on.
I think the reason why it's hard to discuss is because this movie
is so dense. But like it's not wrong for
doing what it did. It's just that it's using
something that's very serious, such as people self medicating
with drugs and alcohol in marginalized communities that
have been pressured to by the state where they only have where
people only have access and, and like lower class or impoverished
areas to barely any jobs or any access to unemployment.
But like, you see liquor stores everywhere, like there's drugs
being pumped into like. Urban areas and so like that
kind of commentary being squeezed into this movie through
the heroine felt very unexplored.
And I also feel like the same way when it comes to like
connecting labor exploitation with sexual assault.
It felt like these are big ideas that a writer had who was very
good at writing, almost like a novel that tried to squeeze into
a movie that didn't have enough evidence, like through its
sequences to actually deserve or demand those kind of very
complicated parts of American culture.
But it did it to again, create drama or tension where there
wasn't enough of it to demand a four hour sitting of a movie
like this. And I think a lot of those
sequences, like the the bar sequence at the jazz club where
it's all hazy and our characters are on drugs, or the sexual
assault scene at the end of this movie between Guy Pierce and
Asian Brody's characters. They're very similar to me in
terms of like inserts to create like attention moment or a shock
moment of like what's actually happening to our lead characters
because the film makers and writers are needing something to
like something propulsive. To keep the story going.
Deserved. And it's an undeserved tool.
You're 100% right to us, to me, you're a 100% right.
Also, commenters, chill out in the comments if you don't like,
if you don't like some things that we've been saying, Just it
would be nice to get like critical conversations about the
movies, about the movies that we discussed in the comments.
Anything negative or like mean energy deleted.
So we start seeing the end of this movie emerging.
You can feel it. It's about to conclude.
Something's about to pop off. You don't know what it is.
We see Felicity Jones's character emerge as like the
quietly powerful figure in the narrative, which was a surprise
for me. And I was interested to see
where they were going to take that.
And she has a confrontation with Harrison in a really harrowing
scene where in a sort of public act of defiance against the
people who were at his table, who I'm not sure that who they
were, I think there was an engagement going on, an
engagement party. Yeah.
We can assume though that they were like important business.
It seemed like there was or something.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so she accuses Harrison of assault in front of his family
and associates, the daughter of Harrison, who haven't really
discussed because she doesn't really have a serious character
in this movie because of, like, how masculine heavy it is again.
But she is like, kind of really thrown off the most by this.
Yeah. And Joe Allen almost saw this
coming. Like his character saw it
coming. And like I already said, it felt
like the end of Oppenheimer, a little bit like a a wife
sticking up for her genius husband who can't express
himself because of the era, because of the time, because of
the politics. And so she did it for him
because she loves him, and she was.
Definitely written to be like an an almost empowering like
feature. Yeah of yeah, this this
character. But again, like it felt so much
like she is the like wife character taking a stand.
Like it felt very much within that to me at least.
And so it it almost again, because of how I felt like what
we just talked about like was not deserved.
Then that was a strange way to end the movie too.
That felt like undeserved for her character.
That's especially why the second-half of this movie kind
of like fell flatter for me. Yes, I totally get that
epilogue. And then we'll end out today's
episode, which is one of our longest episodes in a minute on
YouTube, I think. But this movie kind of demands
it because it's 4 hours long. We are shot into the 80s and you
get an 80s version, like a techno version of the score,
which I enjoyed as we're kind of roaming through Italy at one
point or Rome and. Venice.
Thank you, Venice. And we get a retrospective of
Laszlo's work, which is held in Venice.
And it features the Community Center finally completed after
years of us not seeing it completed and a now adult.
The niece is now an adult. The.
The wife figure has passed on, I think.
And Laszlo is aged. And the niece figure as an adult
has also a child who is played by the same actress who played
the niece throughout the film, which is a little bit confusing
at first for me personally. Yeah, just for a second.
And then they say the names in the camera pans and you kind of
figure it out. There's a really important quote
as they're talking about how these these cathedrals that
Laszlo was building in the name of like judeo-christian culture,
which is a part of like something we didn't discuss of
the Pennsylvania committee arguing to Guy Pierce's
character that, you know, in order for you us to be OK with
you building this, it needs to have a church in it and this one
against lassos principles. Also, it's like a just a Jewish
man, but also someone who just wanted to build the architecture
as like a political statement or a place of refuge.
Didn't want it to include any individual religion because of
how that can obviously exclude others.
And so we get a powerful quote though from the niece character
at the end here she says no matter what the others try and
sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.
And I've read some different readings of what the end of this
movie means. But we do know that the niece
with her partner in Part 2 moved to Israel.
They hate America, they hate what it's doing to Laszlo and
his partner as well. And they're saying that we need
to leave. We have a this ethno state that
will accept us. This movie is not ready to
interrogate or have a conversation about the history
of Israel and whether or not it should exist.
It is not ready for that. However, it is also being
allotted as a movie that is about that in a very troubling
time for Palestinians. And so like, you can definitely
see how an Oscars or an Academy could convince themselves that
this movie is about that subject.
And this movie Peppers in the word Israel or the state of
Israel enough times to make it seem like it's about that
subject, when in reality, it's less about that.
And it's more so to me about how Lazlo's art was being Co opted
in front of him as he is now this mute figure, you know, in
his old age. And he's watching somebody who
is interpreting their art how they see fit.
And they're using it maybe to justify something that he might
be terrified of, which could be an ethno state that could lead
to genocide in the future. And like that, I think it's more
of the commentary that Corbett is trying to get at, which I do
think is really noble and admirable if that is the
interpretation that many people have or but it feels like the
overall interpretation is actually this movie is about
these people's experience of the destination of actually coming
back to your homeland, which I think is way more complicated.
And I don't think, again, the movie is ready to even have that
level of conversation. It's more so about history, art,
commercialism, the crossover of these things who tell stories,
who takes someone's art, who reinterprets it and why and how
and for what reasons or purposes that I think makes this movie
good. At the end, though, it didn't
leave me kind of feeling like because it's so ambiguous and
it's not as successful and it's commentary something like last
year with his own of interest about exploitation and and the
effects of capitalism. Then I then I am left to kind of
be like, it feels like it took a safe route to not explore some
of these ideas and it took the more Oscar bait route of just
planting some of these things that are very topical.
You know, the script was written like seven years ago.
That conflict still existed 7 years ago.
And so I, I think that was a little bit of a sell out to me
as an audience member sitting in a four hour movie that is trying
to treat itself as this massive epic that is like a thematically
dense story. And I know people are going to
feel very differently about that.
That was my interpretation of the epilogue.
I will just add again, just to kind of end my point and you can
you can add anything else you want to say here.
It is very ambiguous, I think what what it means at the end of
this movie, which I do appreciate about any movie doing
at the end of their film. But what it's being ambiguous
about, I think is actually is something that I am skeptical
of, of being ambiguous about that certain subject.
Yeah. And I think the zone of interest
is a great comp because again, we don't need I wouldn't say
that movie is like completely straightforward and direct,
right? But it's clear.
And so, and I think that you again, you don't need the
audience to like immediately leave with this like message
that they can, you know, verbalize right at the end of
the movie, right? Like often in in these epics,
like in these long, you know, movies, you have a lot of
different themes and you're feeling a lot of different,
right messages that you experienced throughout this,
this, you know, journey. But I think you're right.
Like, I think the ambiguity is, especially in a movie that we
know and is being marketed as like having final cut, that's
where the problem comes, right? Because it's not that I need,
again, a movie to tell me exactly what it's trying to say.
It's just that. Even though it's been doing that
in many moments throughout the film.
Yeah, it and. Then conveniently not here.
Exactly. It's the not avoidance
completely, but the sidestepping a lot and where it becomes like
unclear. And again, so this is what we
saw last night. So we're still like, we'll we'll
see it again. But I think that I I had a
similar reaction to the different interpretations that
I've seen coming out of this of like, I actually don't think
even when I view it on a second time, though, that like I'll see
this like strong, right? Like thematic exploration, the
local exploration of what people are saying that it's about.
But we'll see. I just think we're we're also
just kind of skeptical or dubious of period pieces that
treat themselves really seriously.
So we already went into this movie with a little bit of like
a bias against those kinds of movies because and to defend
ourselves a little bit here, because many period pieces such
as this epic, the brutalist really try to not challenge
their audience to grapple with the present implications of what
the movie in the past is about. Instead, they treat to the
history as if it's real and you're in that moment, in that
part of history, because it's easier to it's much harder to
like connect the past in a contemporary world because
there's a responsibility with those stakes.
And I do think that this movie attempts to do that a few times.
But once you step into that pool, you got to dive in.
You know what I mean? Like any because it doesn't.
And instead of something like the zone of interest literally
shoots you forward is something that I find in rewatch now, I'm
sure on rewatch whenever, whenever I rewatch it, that's a
tragic movie to rewatch. But when we do, I'm sure it'll
be something I look at is like very impressive and really bold,
like and big. And and however this movie is
being talked about monumental, you know what I mean?
Because then that actually demands a debate, you know,
about those kinds of things. And Jonathan Glaser using his
Oscar time to talk about those issues.
And I mean, that would be great if Brady Corbett does that too.
He might. And so we'll see in the future
if he does that, because it seems like he might win best
director and best picture. I got to ask you one question
before we get out. Yeah, because we're about to.
Get out. Yeah, do you think so?
Adrien Brody won the Golden Globe.
A lot of people hadn't seen right, the brutalist.
So a lot of people were like, OK, best, you know, motion
picture for Golden Globes and Adrien Brody over Timothy
Chalamet, which, you know, Timothy Chalamet is running an
All Star Oscar campaign. He's about to do a double
feature on SNL. But do you think now that you've
seen the Brutalist and now that more people are able to see the
Brutalist and people that let us know in the comments too, I'm
interested because everyone was like Timothy Chalamet needs to
win this Oscar at playing Bob Dylan.
Do you actually think that the win was more deserved for Brody?
Wow. Timothy Chalamet brought biopics
back. Yeah.
And Adrian Brody expanded on his character from The Pianist.
You know what I mean? Like there, there is a level of
like, I've seen this guy do this before and he's really good at
it. And he also has like a personal
history attached to this movie that I think is really profound.
If listeners want to check that out online or or watch those
conversations on YouTube. And I'm sure he'll talk about if
he wins the Oscar. I think it is much just it's
easier to play a fictional figure than it is to play a real
life figure. That's why somebody biopic
struggle because there's so many responsibilities or there's so
many hands on that script and what Chalmay did to.
Play expectations, obviously, of like real life footage with Bob
Dylan, Yeah. Yes, I think Chalmay actually
added a sort of self criticism of not only himself as a
celebrity, but Bob Dylan, the figure within that movie that is
supposed to be like a not necessarily like a great man
myth film, but it is supposed to be like praising Bob Dylan, you
know, that biopic. But I do think he adds an
element to that figure that is a little bit not scathing, but
critical. That is really actually an
important thing of biopics right now because they're so
sanitized. And so and to add to that, Bob
Dylan is like this like cultural icon to so many generations of
people, not to our generation, but like certainly somebody that
we're all thinking about more now because Chalamet is such a
star for people our age. So I think it's just a really
important performance that is going to elevate a genre that I
do think matters when people are like saying biopics are the
worst thing that's happened to movies.
I just disagree. Like I think Malcolm X is one of
the best movies ever made and it's like a biopic.
Wolf of Wall Street, one of the best movies ever made, that's a
biopic. Like those movies can have
significance because they take real life figures and they add
commentaries to them, and they also bring environments that are
in recent memory back to life to show you how maybe history
hasn't changed that much. Or maybe it's even regressed in
some ways. Like societally we've regressed.
And I think Timmy doing a service to that Bob Dylan
performance to make it a little bit critical is a big deal.
I'm also a Chalamet head and so like, don't trust anything I
just said. So like I'm also, I don't mind
saying that. Before I saw anything.
Yeah, I honestly, Asia Brody could give the best performance
of like of his lifetime and I probably still would have said
Chalamet. So I am not to be trusted.
But I just feel like I've seen the Brody performance before,
though he is excellent at doing that performance, if that makes
sense. I just I can't I can't see
really any actors doing what Chalamet did with Bob Dylan tape
Blanchetta side. But I feel like I can see I can
think of many actors like a Jeremy Strong or someone like
that with an emotional presence and depth that could bring a
level of brevity to that kind of character and gravity and the
and the brutalist as Laszlo. So that's really where I come
down on it. Do I think Asian Brodie's going
to win? Yes.
OK, I I'm going to save this for our Oscar prediction.
You're going to save your answer, but you put me on the
spot. I was just curious.
You had an answer you could have said, but I think right now,
right now I am. I think I was like, I'm leaning
more towards the Brody deserving this and but I can't tell.
I have to like search my own bias of me also being like,
well, it's because Timmy's young and he'll have other
opportunities kind of thing going on in my mind in terms of
like these awards shows, you know, which we're not an award
show podcast, but obviously we we cover the different awards
because this is these are usually the movies of the year
that people see get attention. So similar with actors career.
So they're important in that aspect of like.
But I think that I, you know, I think Brody deserves the award
more for me right now. But I have to examine if I just
think that because Timmy is young.
And also like we saw in the Golden Globe speech, Adrian
Birdie was like, you know, I'm, you know, honored to be amongst
the people who were also nominated.
And he said everyone's name, but he said Timmy.
He said Timmy and not Timothy. Yeah.
Which Timothy has talked about, you know, like he's.
Trying to get away from Timmy. Called Timmy.
Because he doesn't want to be seen as this like Young.
Actor. I noted that as well.
So that that was. Kind of like you're a kid who
still doesn't deserve it. Yeah, even though he should have
won it. 21 years old, But call me by.
Really. What we're not saying, like
Adrian Brody was like, actively trying to do.
That no, we're starting that. Now that's kind of like what he
is. That's like why?
Dissed Timothy's. Challenge right Maybe why people
also might be like, well, Timothy, I can call him Timothy.
Timothy Timothy might be not in the the conversation.
For our Brody heads or anybody else who thinks there's other
actors who we, you know, haven't mentioned, there's so many that
you could, you could bring up and oh, of course, Josh O'Connor
Challengers. But like, there's a lot of
actors you can bring up for this role.
But for the the Adrien Brody heads, like to give you some
credit here, he maybe should win just because like Shalom, his
best performance isn't even in a complete unknown from 2024.
It's Paula Tradies from June 2. So do you know what I mean?
Like, he's not even getting nominated.
He's brought going to get nominated for his best
performance. No.
Yeah. So that's crazy.
You know what I mean? It's absurd.
But like, maybe that's even more of a reason to give him the
award, because that's pretty wild.
Yeah, I mean, I understand what you're saying.
We'll talk about this more on awesome.
But I just think the emotional moments of of Adrian Brody in
this this movie were extra cross.
So I'll go first. Give me a second to think.
I'm going to go the score, which I think I said at the top, and
the composer's name is Daniel Bloomberg or Blumberg.
I apologize if I mispronounce that.
I've never heard a score from this composer.
I think he's in his mid 30s and he's a Jewish electric guitarist
composer. And I thought the the obviously
the booming again, I don't know what to call it.
What do we say earlier? The anthem, the subversive
American anthem was a really successful and impressive, but
also the way that you spotted like how they toned it down
throughout different parts of the music.
I thought that was really wonderful.
I also have the 80s tone they used for when they shoot us
forward into the 80s. I thought that was really cool.
So yeah, I, I really liked, I think without the music, this
movie wouldn't have hit the same.
I don't even think it maybe it would get nominated for an Oscar
because that trailer is doing such numbers.
Like the music in that trailer is wonderful.
I do think trailers like have like a an editing of them.
The design of them have a big impact about whether even Oscar
voters watch a movie. And this trailer is like one of
the best of the year because of the sound.
Yeah, that's a great one. For me, I think it's just like
in the writing, making Adrien Brodie's character and
architect. I think in a movie like this
long too, it really helps. Like even in There Will Be
Blood, which I love. And again, I'm referencing
because there's obviously PTA influences all over this movie.
But I think it's just so smart to like basically turn an oil
rig into something that is beautiful to look at, like these
buildings and having these kind of sinister darker aspects,
especially like at the end of the movie when we see, you know,
different people in this search party for Harrison, like going
through the building where we see like flashlights going
through these like beautiful like openings in the, the like
entrance of of the building. And then when they're underneath
in the the kind of like water room, whatever.
But you know what I'm talking about.
But the kind of the playing with, right, the beauty and the
darker undertones of the movie thematically.
And also obviously it's just like just really smart in terms
of making a really like long movie beautiful to look at and
also having you know, conversations about like
creative ambitions and integrity and the kind of like
commodification, right of art. Like I think that was all really
interesting to incorporate into the story.
So I think that deserves extra credit.
And also every single time we see a Rd.
OK when we're like driving down the road and we get the the.
I really like the camera placement on the cars, whatever
they're doing. Yeah, it's.
Like speed up, right? Like increase frame rate of the
of us. Just like speeding down these
roads. It's sick.
Yeah, feel like we're in Ferrari in my command movie.
I'm there for it every time. What you were just describing
about his journey in this film as an architect was really
reminding me of Tar, and that's what this movie makes me think
about. It was like Tar was really
successful at A at a with similar commentaries with a
completely different narrative. So maybe that's another rewatch
for for listeners at home who are looking for some more
brutalist movies to watch. Epic.
Yeah. To get to get your taste of it
again. All right.
That was the extra credits of the brutalist.
I'm sure we'll be back talking about this movie come Oscar
season. The nominations are this week.
Yeah. So I think they got delayed but.
That's right. Yeah.
Yes. And we hope everybody is safe
out in California. We're in Colorado.
But yeah. Let us know what you thought
about the Brutalist in the comments.
Let us know what you think about.
It's Oscar chances. Let us know nicely what you
thought about our criticism of the movie and what we
appreciated about it. And we'll be back soon.
See you guys.