The Brutalist

(Directed by Brady Corbet, 2024)

The Brutalist has some fine scenes, some interesting set pieces, but it is all tip and no iceberg. Deadly at 3.4 hours, it makes Last Year at Marienbad look like an action film. We didn’t believe anything in it, which is a pity, as the film attempts to weave fact with fiction. The actors all act like clown statues and the ending is as pointless as the dénoûment to There Will be Blood. Even the architecture, bastardising the ‘F.U.’ style of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret or Marcel Breuer, is excessively repulsive, the “Community Centre” Adrien Brody glumly designs for his patron (played by Guy Pearce as a bland and only of-interest-in-a-bad-way character) looking something like a cross between Dracula’s castle and Buffalo Bill’s cellar.