Film of the week: The Brutalist remains wholly absorbing despite its lengthy runtime

Brady Corbet’s epic three-and-a-half hour film is an account of post-Second World War America

Adrien Brody in The Brutalist

The Brutalist

★★★★★

If you build it, they will come.

The Brutalist

(16s) opens in 1947 with Hungarian Jewish refugee László Tóth (Adrien Brody) arriving in New York, although the fact that his first sight of America is that of an upside-down Statue of Liberty suggests that László’s experience of the Land of the Free will not be uncomplicated.

A renowned architect of the Bauhaus school in his native Budapest who has left his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) behind in his flight to the New World, the former ‘maestro’ is reduced to scraping a living as a construction worker.

Until, that is, he is employed to redesign the library of the fabulously rich Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who recognises László’s genius and commissions him to build an ostentatious memorial to his late, beloved mother.

Brady Corbet’s epic, three-and-a-half hour account of post-Second World War America is precariously built on the fault-line that is revealed when a wealthy but moribund Wasp establishment collides with poor but talented immigrant arrivals.

A scene from The Brutalist.

To a certain extent it’s the old story of money versus art and the complex give-and-take between artist and patron, which Corbet — who also co-writes with Mona Fastvold — sets up as a clash between the munificent Van Buren and the visionary László, who belatedly comes to realise that he is merely tolerated by his antisemitic hosts for the sake of his talent.

Not that László is an entirely innocent pawn in Van Buren’s game: possessed of an ego as vast as his buildings, László is a difficult man who ‘worships at the altar of only himself’, as he pursues his private obsession with building a monument to a Wasp matriarch that is inspired by the death camps of NaziGermany.

The fictional László, of course, is something of a personification of a wave of Jewish immigrants who reinvigorated America in the wake of the Second World War, bringing a new energy as they revitalised architecture, film, art, and the sciences — a heavy burden for Adrien Brody to shoulder, but one he carries with a kind of bloody-minded grace that could well carry him all the way to Oscar glory. 

A towering edifice in its own right, Corbet’s film indulges itself at times — one scene of sexual violence is utterly unnecessary — but remains wholly absorbing despite its lengthy runtime.

Presence

★★★★☆

Callina Liang as Chloe, Chris Sullivan as Chris, Eddy Maday as Tyler and Lucy Liu as Rebekah in presence.

Steven Soderbergh’s bid to make every possible kind of movie continues apace with Presence (15A), in which Rebekah (Lucy Liu) and Chris (Chris Sullivan) move into a new home with their teenage kids Chloe (Callina Liang) and Tyler (Eddy Maday), only for Chloe to realise that they are not alone.

Grieving the recent death of her friend Nadia, Chloe is sensitive to, and vaguely aware of, the phantom that follows the characters throughout the house,
observing them from the point-of-view of the camera lens.

It’s a creepy sensation, although the presence is initially benign and merely curious; but as we become privy to snippets of conversation, and realise that Chloe is a fragile young woman whose mental health issues are being largely ignored, the ghostly presence becomes protective of Chloe, and increasingly sinister in its interactions with her family.

A poltergeist movie from the poltergeist’s POV, Presence isn’t actually a horror movie, but a drama in which a paranormal entity is as vital (if unseen) a character as any of its flesh-and-blood peers. It’s a bravura piece of filmmaking, as quietly brilliant as it is gripping, with a wonderfully mature performance from Callina Liang in the lead role.

Kneecap

★★★★★

Kneecap

In the wake of its six Bafta and 17 IFTA nominations, and currently Ireland’s entry for this year’s Oscars, Kneecap (16s) is re-released in Irish cinemas this weekend.

‘A scabrously funny and hugely entertaining rockumentary like no other,’ we said at the time of its original release, and we see no reason to change our minds. Take this second opportunity to go see it on the big screen.

All theatrical releases