The Brutalist

The Brutalist: To the cinephiles of Gotham city, the New York Film Festival parts its curtains every year on the last Friday of September (the 2024 edition runs on Sept. 27th to on Oct. 13th). However, to critics, journalists and other people within the industry, the event officially commences a couple of weeks earlier – when the festival press screenings ignites at Lincoln Center.

As many films as the schedule allows are screened for the invited press, but these do not follow the same order as the films will later run during the actual festival. Instead, the order they are screened in is in a sequence known only to the Film at Lincoln Center fest organizers. And every now and then, that psychology is used in a way that scarcely rewards the attending writers.

There is a Main Slate of the festival that includes more or less about thirty films as a rule every year. Until probably two summers ago, films were press screened at a rate of three or four or less in one day which contributed to the NYFF being one of the few major festivals where an enterprising critic could view every movie on the Main Slate of the festival.

That changed a couple of years ago when the festival’s programmers began scheduling days when there were too many films – some playing against one another in separate auditoriums – for any critic to review in a given day. ‘Ten’ tellings were scheduled to be showcased on Sept 23 in the year in question and other such dates were equally crowded.

The reasoning for this change was never explained. Still, it was counterproductive to the press that was covering the festival, more so to the film critics with a ravenous appetite for watching the films that were on display.

The sequencing of press screenings this year, however, did have one favored and unheroic aspect for this critic: the two titles out of the Main Slate that I was interested the most were the first to reach the screens

The two are, in certain respects compass and south pole, although these are aspects that attest to this year’s diversity of the festival. Mohammad Rasoulof’s ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ deals in politics, social issues, and family with foreign elements in it.

On the other hand, Brady Corbet eccentrically concentrates on the life, the works, and aspirations of an abstract war-ridden European architect who lifts himself from the ruins of World War Two and settles in America, establishing strong architectural foundations with his work.

The pictures also share some similarities. Both films failed in getting the top awards at European festivals, although they received secondary prizes (the jury at Cannes Award gave Special Award to “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”, while “The Brutalist” got Best Direction Award at Venice Film Festival).

Both these movies run for a much longer time than your regular festival feature film: Sacred Fig continues for166 minutes while The Brutalist lasts for 215 minutes (including a 15-minute intermission!).

I’d argue that those running times themselves shouldn’t be considered as a disadvantage. While generally I am in favor of a scant film process, here, in both cases so, I was carried away to the full by the two films and didn’t feel such lengths to exaggerate the dramatic invention.

One of the most astounding features of “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is the blistering criticism of theocratic Iran. Rasoulof is one of the two most recognizable oppositional directors in Iran after Jafar Panahi, and he has made nine narrative features — the last one is the first NYFF film.

These are two men who have been imprisoned or tortured by the Islamic authorities, and their works have caused them outrage; they have both made films that have outraged the Islamic authorities. Yet both have tenaciously (and gallantly) continued to work in secret in Iran, making films, whilst other filmmakers have preferred their Iranian stories in foreign countries.

It is astounding how Rasoulof made the film ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’ inside the Iranian territory and then left for Germany to edit the flick while there was an outstanding arrest warrant against him. However, the story unfolds in the year 2022 when there were countrywide protests following the death of the young woman Mahsa Amini in the police custody and collaterally, it is the promotion of this constitution which carried the ‘Woman! Life! Freedom!’ in it. (Most Iranian people I have met believed that this nude provocation would help dismantle the Islamic regime, as it did not happen in the previous revolts.)

Iman (Missagh Zareh), the central character of the The Brutalist film has recently been promoted to the new rank at the office of the prosecutor only to learn that he is to pretend as if the readiness to state that in a solved capital offense a formal investigation has been taken is reasonable, where the lie may end up with the execution of a prisoner. (Rasoulof analyzed the inhuman consequences of the execution system in Iran in his film There is no Evil. I called this film with morally encouraging content in urgent need “A timely and shocking film.”)

The type of problems which Iman encounters in the course of his work are to a great extent the same as those that he meets (or more often, is prevented from meeting) when at home.

As a part of the promotion, his seniors ask him to take a gun for self-defense and also take up a new post which consists of a new apartment that is located in a better place. But his household members are not exactly jumping with joy over the developments because they know that they are the cause of more risks and most likely ethical challenges on the part of dad.

Not only regrets the loss of her only son, but peculiar divisions also erupt on the domestic front fueled by the political protests that are currently manifested in the streets and on TV of Iran. A teenage daughter of Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki) expounds on the quaking knees of rebellion: a position that the mother Najmeh – awesome performance of Soheila Golestani- not only supports, but has to protect her spouse from.

Day by day, the internal discontent exists within the family and it finally climaxes into something and Iman’s gun vanishes under his care and in the household, among other domestic members, how many years is Iman looking at behind bars for that offence? (And yes, Rasoulof surely assumes his audience is up on their Chekhov.)

Rasoulof has been a filmmaker who more often prioritizes the political content of a film over its aesthetics. However, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is a thoroughbread in cinematic construction which, by far, is the director’s most successful and engaging piece of art.

Tension-filled yet completely sophisticated domestic sequences of the film are no less remarkable than the ones with compellingly and intelligently depicted personalities. Once the story moves outside the comforts of the household and into the outdoor expanse and the roads of Tehran, it pulses with the energy of a true suspense drama.

While to some the final point of the The Brutalist film may seem too schematic or even too propagandistic, it does depict a part of the Iranian political life, namely, the inter generational conflicts that have been left out of many of Rasoulof’s works.

‘The Sacred Fig’, which is more acclaimed internationally than any Iranian film made after the two Oscars won by Asghar Farhadi ten years ago, is on the verge of joining the Oscar race as Germany’s candidate for Best International Film, not Iran’s.

What is the meaning of the film’s title as well as the threats that Rasoulof is exposed to because of the Iranian government at the moment? I am confident that many detractors would like such questions to be put to him, but the NYFF has unfortunately reduced the number of press conferences they provide. It has been the usual business: Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut are only some of the directors who addressed the press during the first festival I came to in 1980.

I do not doubt that, of course, it was quite a treat to watch these masters in the flesh, but perhaps even more valuable were the views and points that the critics were able to listen to in the course of these famous directors dialogues with them.

However, I would guess in 2024 that if critics were asked which festival auteurs they most wished to be afforded the opportunity to interrogate at press conferences, then Rasoulof and Corbet would perhaps be at the top of the list. (Both directors will do Q+As after the public screenings, so in fact they are available).

Surely Corbet will attract the attention of the critics not only because “The Brutalist” seems to be the most sought after film at the festival (burn all the negatives but it was reported that over a hundred critics were turned away from the films press screening which obviously should have been held in the comfortably large Alice Tully Hall rather than the much more compact Walter Reade Theater) butalso because the 36 year old writer-director is still an acquaintance of a majority of the journalists.

There is an interesting possibility to talk about Corbet’s trajectory as somewhat reminiscent of Todd Field’s story who presented his “Tar” as part of the program on the New York Film Festival 2022 and delighted the audience. For instance, it appeared that both of these men intended to become authors themselves since their childhood hence, started off acting in films directed by some of the same directors they wanted to be like.

Field was acting for Woody Allen, Kubrick, and some others while Corbet starred in films directed by Assayas, Haneke, Von Trier, and the like. They would debut as directors with motion pictures that had been, in fact, difficult to classify attribution-wise, but their key artistic gestures met the expected reviews.

“In the Bedroom” by Todd Field was even nominated several times for an Oscar, such was the acclaim the reviewer argued upon Corbet’s “The Childhood of a Leader”, that it must have been, “the making of an unusually great movie, this was tremendous first effort.”

Then came the sophomore offerings: Little Children (Field’s) and Vox Lux (Corbet) which were more divergent reactions to rather mixed reviews and I felt both directors then made up their minds to go for broke.

This they did with all in, brilliant, and highly skilled, high serios dramas with evidenced focused their drawing on the European forms of art narrative accounted for classical music in T.A.R. architecture in The Brutalist. The directors also made one of the copy editors provocative by introducing character names which had pronunciation from other languages.

While “TÁR” swept three Best Film wins at the L.A and N.Y. film critic associations and the national society of film critics and six Oscar nominations, I was amongst the dissenters of the Smashing success or crowning turd that The Brutalist film turned to even though I was quite impressed with. Cate Blanchett s lead role. I have found Field to be a very emotional but often puzzling and to be very emotionally precious, films.

Suffice it to say that “The Brutalist” has the appear of being an instant classic within rating and reviewing circles, and unless I’m much mistaken, will perform well at the Academy Awards, with an ever possible win of Best Picture in the offing-more so considering it has won many awards.

There is such a feeling when you watch Corbet. He is not just another director fascinated by American culture and trying to recapture its glamour on screen. Consequently, this is how a complex period drama looks, and I could not help but enjoy this from the very first minute and to the last. The story opens towards the end of World War II, in chaos and destruction.

Budapest architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) narrowly escapes to America, forced to leave his wife and niece behind. In New York, being a Jewish refugee is pretty unfun most of the time—it’s probably because he was taking heroin for some pain in the course of the traveling—and he meets an America which is essentially a large slum.

Things begin to get better when he relocates to small-town Pennsylvania and stays with a sleazy cousin (Alessandro Nivola), a furniture maker who also does custom jobs. Hired by the heir of some affluent family to transform the reading room of an estate into a personal library, Tóth expends his entire arsenal to design a splendid room, but it turns out that house’s owner, tycoon Jackson Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce in one of his splendid roles), doesn’t like to be surprised and reacts furiously when he sees it.

This anger does not tend to linger. As soon as it wanes, Van Buren looks for Tóth and asks him if he would like to help him design and build something massive for the benefit of the people: a structure that would consist of an auditorium, a gym, a library and a chapel. He also advances Tóth about relocating together to his big house where their professional boundaries begin to cross to the personal relations zone.

The tycoon, although explaining that the architect is “an intellectually interesting person”, looks like a peacock demonstrating an exotic piece of jewelry to his wealthy friends. This possibility, however, makes Tóth a bit uneasy. Mostly, however, it has one important advantage: an entirely new network can bring Tóth’s helpless wife (Felicity Jones) and deaf-mute niece (Raffey Cassidy) to his side.

The movie “The Brutalist” possesses remarkable achievements as well as many interests. The story in the documentary film makes for exciting reading – it is about the contours in the building industry in America after Second World War and the changes which came with it, and the cultural contribution of the displaced Europeans.

Jews as well as Christians, immigrants as compared to the native born also make a powerful sub-current in the entire motion picture. The cooperation between Corbet and Mona Fastvold interestingly and simply tackles these and many occurrences which are worthy’s of great American literature, where both plausible and unforgettable characters and performances are created respecting their intricacies. Best of all is Adrien Brody’s Tóth, a role that comes closer to greatness than awkwardness than Giannini.

As some critics claim, Jim’s “The Brutalist” is akin to Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘There will be blood’, and I understand the reasons for this, for example, towards the end both have similar incidents of climactic violence which seems unreal and unnecessary.

They have also pointed out that the The Brutalist film stays rather shallow and neutral on the appreciation or depreciation of the Bäuhaus style that was brought by the real Tóths to the US. Although these criticisms may be assessed in any number of ways, they will surely be among the conversation generated by this wonderful film when it is widely released later this year.

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