THE BRUTALIST REVIEW

With the Oscars coming closer and closer, many people are wondering which movies will win the coveted awards. One movie that experts think is very likely to win many awards is The Brutalist. 

The Brutalist is a historical drama film directed by Brady Corbet. Adrien Brody plays the main character, a struggling Hungarian Jewish architect who moves to the United States after surviving the Holocaust to pursue the American Dream. The movie received universal acclaim, winning three Golden Globe awards including the one for Best Drama Film. Needless to say, I went into the movie theater with great expectations. 

Before we begin, if you are actually considering watching this movie, I have a few words of discretion. Number one, this movie does contain very sensitive content. I won’t get into specifics, but I’ll just advise you not to watch this with your family like I did. Number two, this movie is very long. It has a runtime of 3 hours and 35 minutes, making it over twice the length of Toy Story. However if you do need to use the bathroom during this movie do not worry - the movie includes a gracious 15-minute long intermission. Now that we have all that over with, let’s begin the review, which does include some light spoilers. 

The movie is split into two parts. The first part starts when our main character László Tóth (Adrien Brody) first enters the United States. He is very poor, but he does manage to find a house and live with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola). By chance, he befriends a very wealthy and seemingly kind businessman named Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who presents him with the architectural opportunity of a lifetime and even helps him reconnect with his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones). But once disaster strikes, things start to take a drastic turn for the worse, and László realizes that the American Dream is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Overall, I thought this movie was very impressive. The highlights to me include the performances, especially Brody and Pearce, as well as the score and the editing. The movie also kept my full attention for the entire 3 ½ hours, which is by no means an easy feat. However the movie is not perfect, as I thought that the ending of the film was strange and slightly unsatisfying, especially when compared to the rest of the movie. 

All in all, I would rate it an 8.5 out of 10.