It’s easy for a movie to become overhyped during the fall festival season. Every year, it seems like at least one film receives rapturous early reactions at festivals like Venice and Telluride, only to garner little more than a disappointed shrug from the general public. The Brutalist, due to no fault of its own, has seemingly all the makings of being one of those movies. The film came out of nowhere when it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in early September, but it was quickly hailed as a modern masterpiece by many and soon started to receive comparisons to iconic, unrivaled classics like The Godfather and There Will Be Blood.
In case that wasn’t enough, there has also already been a lot of talk about what a technical accomplishment The Brutalist is. Not only is it 3 hours and 35 minutes long (counting a mandatory, well-timed 15-minute intermission), but it was also made using camera technology from the 1940s and ’50s. It is, notably, the first American film to be shot on VistaVision — a long-abandoned 35mm film format — since 1961’s One-Eyed Jacks. All of this is now well-known among certain cinephile circles, and there have even been viral social media posts about how heavy its 70mm film reels weigh.
There is a fine line between positive hype and the kind that sets a film up to fail, and it would seem to most that The Brutalist had almost immediately crossed that line. Having recently attended the West Coast premiere of the movie at this year’s Beyond Fest in Los Angeles, though, I feel confident in saying that its early reactions were — if still a bit overzealous in their comparisons and superlatives — mostly justified. The Brutalist is an epic if every sense of the word, and it could be the best film of 2024.
A mid-century American epic
It’s not easy to make a proper period epic these days. For numerous reasons, Hollywood’s interest in funding ambitious adult dramas like The Brutalist has drastically plummeted over the past 20 to 30 years. Despite that, The Brutalist has emerged as a convincing, fully formed mid-century American epic. Set in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the film follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian Jewish architect who emigrates to America after barely surviving the Holocaust. The movie ultimately spans around 30 years of László’s life, but it focuses mostly on his decade-long effort to finish a strange, ambitious building in Pennsylvania for Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a millionaire who quickly recognizes László’s talent and wishes to own it in whatever way he can.
It’s in László and Harrison’s relationship that The Brutalist‘s early comparisons to There Will Be Blood feel the most apt. Much like how Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano’s characters in the latter film functions as a metaphor for the relationship between capitalism and religion in American history, The Brutalist‘s central dynamic allows it to explore the timeless bond and battle between art and commerce. Brody’s László wishes to simultaneously practice his art and exorcize some of the demons of his past, but in order to do so, he must accept Harrison’s funding and the feeling of ownership that the millionaire believes that grants him over László.
The Brutalist is a long movie that never overstays its welcome
The two characters’ journey together is methodically charted by The Brutalist, which has the patience necessary to let the toxic cracks in László and Harrison’s seemingly friendly bond organically begin to show rather than exposing them all right from the beginning. Director Brady Corbet (Vox Lux, The Childhood of a Leader) trusts Pearce and Brody to fill in the gaps left open by his and co-writer Mona Fastvold’s screenplay, and his faith in his stars isn’t misplaced. Pearce and Brody are astonishing opposite each other here. The latter turns in one of the finest performances of his career as László, with his stillness in the frame communicating a level of exhaustion and pain that The Brutalist only occasionally brings to the actual surface of its story. Pearce, meanwhile, is as sharp, commanding, and as charismatic as he’s ever been. His performance is one of titanic proportions, and it ranks high alongside Brody’s as one of the best you’ll see this year.
While you do feel the film’s length by the time it’s over, The Brutalist is — to its credit — never a slog to get through. It is well-paced and, thanks to Corbet and Fastvold’s shared, pitch-black sense of humor, far funnier than anyone would rightly expect it to be. The film features some of the most surprisingly funny dialogue exchanges of the year, and the delicate sprinkling of comedy throughout The Brutalist stops the sadness of it from ever becoming numbing. Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley’s decision to shoot the film on VistaVision and with cameras designed for that format also pays off in spades. It looks and feels authentic to its 1940s and ’50s American backdrop because it was made with technology from that time — meaning The Brutalist manages to achieve a level of immersion that is genuinely awe-inspiring, especially given the film’s purported $6 million budget.
The best movie of 2024?
Only time will tell whether or not The Brutalist is able to secure the kind of revered place in film history as the movies that it has so far been compared to by critics and festivalgoers. But its ambitions are no less lofty than its influences, and it has the scope, style, elegance, and — most importantly of all — wit to say a lot well, and without overexplaining itself. Even more impressively, it’s a film that lingers and haunts. It demands your attention and your consideration not just when you are watching it, but in the hours and days after its credits finish rolling.
Don’t be surprised if, like me, you wake up the next morning with certain images, expressions, cuts, and montages from The Brutalist still swirling in your mind. It is a movie of impeccable craftsmanship, timeless ideas, and rich, sorrowful wells of emotion. It is too early to definitively deem it the best film of 2024; there are many other, equally promising titles still yet to be released. I look forward to returning to it and reconsidering all of its choices — particularly those it makes in its final act — when I can, though.
For now, at least one thing seems clear. There are very few movies this year that try to accomplish as much as The Brutalist, And it may well end up being the case that none are able to not only manage to say and do as much as it, but to do it as powerfully as it does across its staggering 215 minutes.
The Brutalist opens in select theaters on December 20.
