Dubbed an epic, one of 2024's best films, I had great expectations for The Brutalist. I thought it was about an actual Hungarian architect-immigrant, maybe a fictionalized Frank Gehry, who emigrated to the US in 1947 and became a world-famous architect. Gehry's life journey was similar to the fictional Lazslo Toth, though his parents emigrated from Poland to Canada in 1929 and on to the US.
What a feast such a film would be -- to put myself into a great architect's shoes and see my creations materialize on the big screen. But my post-film wikipedia-ing disabused me of that. The film is totally fictitious, and its exercise in symbolism and tired critique of US post-WWII soulless materialism fell flat. 3 1/2 hours of creaky, pompous, overwrought melodrama, culminating in a weird philanthropist-architect rape scene (a movie patron in the front row gave it his golden raspberry award) that was supposed to be a crucial moment. The most sympathetic character was the nice philanthropist robber baron and he was the villain!
It starts off strangely with young, frightened Zsofia being interviewed by Soviet soldiers who were friendly, nice, sherpherding her out of harm's way. I like that, as any mention of Soviet soldiers in our gutter press automatically requires qualifiers like rapist, sadist, cruel, etc.
But it was downhill after that. We are forced to endure Israel's birthpang speech at the fledgling UN about 'Eretz Israel the new home of all Jews for ever and ever'. I had to explain to my friend that 'Eretz' means Greater, as in Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates. Then (to this point in the film) mute Zsofia finally announces in a loud, grating voice 'My husband and I are making aliya.' Lazslo is angry, having moved heaven and earth to get her to the US. 'It's our duty as Jews. Make aliya with us. Come 'home'!'
ARGH. This is just the latest B holocaust film, dressed up as an 'epic'. lol. That explains the uniformly rave reviews, making a silk purse out of you-know-what. Even as Eretz Israel is perpetrating genocide. Probably a dozen Palestinians (babies first) were murdered as I sat squirming in my seat. Nary a hint anywhere of any of this.
Just to make the point of how religious 'aliya' supposedly is, how alive and beautiful it is to perform genocide, we join Lazslo at the synagogue several times throughout the film. We are told his faux lecherous patron is Protestant (Jew good, Christian bad) and that Lazslo must include a chapel with a cross. Lazslo complies, and at the end we are shown the vaulted cupola (the soaring height of Lazslo's architectural style is to evoke transcendence of earthly persecution), where the Christian cross is upside down. YIKES! Nothing like some satanic imagery thrown in for good luck.
Director Brady Corbet started Hollywood as a child actor. His first big film was Mysterious Skin (2004), a coming-of-age drama film about two pre-adolescent boys who both experienced sexual abuse as children, and how it affects their lives in different ways into their young adulthood. One boy becomes a reckless, sexually adventurous prostitute (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt), while the other (Brady Corbet) retreats into a reclusive fantasy of alien abduction. Clearly Corbet moved on. Any link with the upside-down cross?
There were some good moments. I can never get enough of the Carrara marble quarry (minus the rape bit). How to explain a mountain of exquisite marble. Sorry, i have to fall back on God.
2024 will not be remembered for The Brutalist. It will be remembered for Eretz Israel's genocide, unmourned in Hollywood.
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