THE BRUTALIST (2024)

Nowadays, the bench for budding film auteurs, the ones born with celluloid in their veins, is deep.  And fresh off the bench Brady Corbet reminds me of one who got called up decades ago, Paul Thomas Anderson.  The two sharing a preference for character & theme over narrative; and in taking the long view on composition & pacing.  (In spite of a 3'34" running time, Corbet keeps BRUTALIST from feeling long by doing what Anderson would, refusing to push.)  Less happily, they also share a big fault in not being able to wrap things up properly.  (Corbet’s first two films not seen here, so take this with a grain of salt.)  This intimate epic certainly comes on strong (though putting intermission dead-center in the running time a serious unforced error), its Agony and Ecstasy story following a traditional path with genius artist receiving the commission of a lifetime but running up against Mr. Needy Benefactor; an antagonist who thinks since he’s picking up the check, he owns it; lock, stock & conception.  But rather than Michelangelo & Pope Julius II, we have WWII Hungarian Holocaust survivor Adrien Brody (exceptional, as is the whole cast), a Bauhaus-trained architect who's at first misunderstood by eventual patron Guy Pearce, fierce & unknowingly funny behind scare tactics.  Jumping from micro to macro-projects, he’s hired & fired & hired & fired creating Pearce’s mother-love tribute in the form of an art/community/religious complex on the rolling hills of Pearce Family Property.  (Imagine Lincoln Center plopped down not far from Levittown.)  But Part 2 messes up the situations with post-war refugees (invalid wife of dubious affections); financial realities, rich man’s whims, and a trip to Italy for marble.  The last, with echoes of Bertolucci & Visconti throbbing away, the best thing in the second half.  Mysterious, and making sense of the weird sexual undercurrents running thru every character.  Possible threesomes, incestuous glances, closeted longings, and an obsession (from Corbet?) with breaking the norms of personal space in one-on-one conversations.  You’d think these people were all actors!  Then a rushed ending and hard to read coda that Paul Thomas Anderson might perhaps be able to explain to us.  Stumbles and all, an impressive piece of work at the price: Ten Mill!  A remarkable shaming of regular major studio practices.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  See where a lot of this comes from in two surpassingly silly, weirdly entertaining major disappointments of their day: Carol Reed’s THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY/’65 and King Vidor’s nutso version of Ayn Rand’s nutso THE FOUNTAINHEAD/’46.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/06/agony-and-ecstasy-1965.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/09/fountainhead-1949.html