Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
Director/writer Brady Corbet gifts film/art/architecture/ history lovers more than one’s digestive system can masticate in almost four hours; it is an epic masterpiece worthy of intense analyzation; knowledge of the Holocaust and the detritus of its evil, shadowing, stalking survivors like Jewish emigree “Laszlo Toth” (incomparable Adrien Brody); the Bauhaus movement, a revolutionary school, founded in Germany (1919-1933) sought to combine the entirety of artistic disciplines, resulting in mass production; artists worked together as a community; innovation soared in Germany’s1920’s; Brutalist architecture, fathered by Swiss architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965) influenced the Bauhaus sensitivities and proliferated throughout postwar Europe. Concrete its major property.
Laszlo Toth arrives in America in 1947, a visionary Hungarian architect, survivor of Buchenwald extermination camp, housed in a storage room at his totally assimilated cousin’s, “Harry Lee” furniture store (Joe Alwyn, sunny, stunning and uxoriously devoted to his Shiksha wife, “Audrey” (Emma Laird, suitably cast). Serendipitously, after a few false starts Laszlo is employed by industrialist “Harrison Lee Van Buren” (Guy Pearce, layers his characterization with massive complexity, keen intelligence, wit and the inbred entitlement of the magnificently wealthy). A pinnacle performance from a master of the medium.
After a brief intermission Laszlo is reunited with his wife “Erzebet” (astute and shrewd Felicity Jones) and intentionally mute niece “Zsofia” (Raffey Cassidy); the entanglement of this trio intensifies the flavor of the scenario. Laszlo’s flaws (alcohol, heroin abuse, insatiable, uncompromising devotion to his mission) lead to catastrophic chasms in his personality and charged relationship with Harrison and his family.
Profundity explodes: cinematography, (Lol Crawley) commencing with the tilted Statue of Liberty, landscapes reflecting the blocky, unfinished, repetitious, utilitarian components of Brutalism; a musical score by Daniel Blumberg, seven years in the composing, lyrically overpowering; meticulous acting referencing the Jewish angst of being an untrusted outlier trying to adhere, blend into the American aesthetic.
Here is a film, testifying to the highest form of freedom. The American dream may be actualized, regardless of origin by “anyone with enough guts, gumption and diligence” to persevere. “The Brutalist” is a masterful salute to those who succeeded.
FIVE STARS!!!!!
Peneflix
