31/24
When a visionary architect and his wife flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of the modern United States, their lives are forever changed by a mysterious, wealthy client. This film has an intermission built into the 70mm film that counts down from fifteen minutes. Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.: When dogs get sick, they often bite the hands of those who feed them until someone mercifully puts them down. Featured in The 7PM Project: December 10, 2024 Episode (2024). Brutalist is full of surprises. The characters are not what you expect, not in the ultimate Scooby Doo style, but in the subtle, gradual ways in which real people reveal themselves, revealing themselves over time, in a new context, or when forced by circumstance. Here the situation is a post-war horror. Adrien Brody’s Laszlo, a Jewish architect who has escaped the clutches of a bloodied Europe, enters the welcoming arms of America—or confronts it—in a frenetic opening sequence that evokes the literal birth of the Statue of Liberty. His journey becomes one of constant passage through various horrors of life: existential, professional, familial, intimate—he never takes his eyes off the prize of great success, and he never assesses the value of that prize in the beginning. What follows? Is it a shame to realize that his success was not born in spite of trauma, but precisely because of it? Do we owe abuse? To the forces of culture, country, power, and those who wield it in the construction of our brutal legacies (and homelands)? Are our lives more meaningful than the gasoline burning on the way somewhere? The film is fascinating, it looks interesting, and it’s not boring (did you hear it’s long?). It feels to me like it’s based on an old novel, a mysterious tome I’d love to dig up because of some details the film refuses to share. But there’s no novel. This aging man’s search for meaning becomes our own. And any greater understanding of Lazslo’s arrival, his families’ machinations, his landscape and his uprooting, for better or worse, is up to us to build. From Alien: Romulus to Road House, take a look at some of our favorite posters of 2024.