The Brutalist got a lot of hype, didn't it? It got a lot of nominations and awards at the Oscars, and many sounded like it was the movie to watch, like it was one of those top movies that should be archived like The Godfather, Shawshank Redemption, etc.
I saw all the hype but nothing pushed me to watch it like this comment I saw on Facebook. It's really true that all Publicity is good publicity:
LMAO. You see all this guy said about the movie?
So I decided to watch it and I didn't totally agree with the guy, but I didn't totally agree with the guys hyping this movie either.
Impressive Sides
The acting from Adrien Brody was great, the cinematography, score, setting, were all great. So seeing it win Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Actor (for Adrien Brody) at the Oscars was applaudable.
The architectural talent of the main character (Laszlo) was obvious, they were able to make that truly impressive, we could see why anyone was in awe of his talents. The home library was the bomb, the pictures of his buildings from Europe, the idea for the complex. They were all truly great and such a pleasure to see in a movie.
Unimpressive Sides
The story itself, which is supposed to be truly great for it to qualify as a movie of a generation, was just good. There was nothing about it that made you say this is one for the ages.
Secondly, the rape scene with Van Buren and Laszlo was one of the clumsiest things I've ever seen. It was too clear that Van Buren didn't pull out his phallus, and it was also too clear that he didn't pull down Laszlo's trousers. Also too clear that there was no penetration.
It was too clumsy, and an embarrassment that they decided to show the rape in that way that was so brazenly effortless and unconvincing.
For me, this took so many points away from the movie. This part looked like the kind of thing you see in a school play where they're satisfied to just make it look like something happened without properly trying to convince you it happened.
Thirdly, it was clumsy the way Zsofia who was supposed to be someone who didn't speak much speak a lot when she was asking to go to Jerusalem. She also didn't sound like someone who didn't speak much, and she didn't sound like it took much for her to come out of her shell and talk that much.
This is someone who survived a war and a lot of hardships and finally met her uncle after all those years but didn't say a word to him. Didn't say a word at dinner or to her uncle's wife or to all the many interesting people who tried to get her to talk.
Someone like this who takes silence so serious shouldn't have been made to just say that much all of a sudden with no effort to make it sound like the person who is speaking is someone who doesn't fancy a lot of words.
Lastly grown up Zsofia having a child that looks exactly like her young self looked off. It wasn't convincing at all, especially as they couldn't find an older version that looked like her in anyway and very little was done to make the child look different from her mother at all.
It was just off, you just got the impression that this was clumsy once you saw it.
The End
Source of Cover Photo
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