Film Review – The Brutalist

“The Brutalist” is an ambitious undertaking, which is not something that’s commonly found in the marketplace. Co-writer/director Brady Corbet is trying to explore the American Experience on a lower budget, turning to older filmmaking technology and pacing to capture the movement of life as various horrors are visited on the main characters. Corbet previously helmed 2018’s “Vox Lux,” struggling with the messiness of his ideas and execution. He returns with a more structured endeavor in “The Brutalist,” tracking the festering emotional wounds of a Hungarian architect trading the nightmare of World War II for the unforgiving power plays of the U.S.A. Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold strive for something artful and sweeping in the offering, which is, at times, a powerfully realized feature. The “Vox Lux”-iness of the picture is hard to ignore, as Corbet asks a lot from viewers, spending 215 minutes on this tale of misery, periodically revealing its indulgences, throttling dramatic momentum. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com