The Brutalist: A monumental effort

The Brutalist (2024) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, rape, profanity and drug use

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.2.25

This film is impressive in many respects. 

 

Director/co-writer Brady Corbet ambitiously tackles an overwhelming, quite possibly unattainable endeavor much the way this story’s protagonist does.

 

Immigrant architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) has an uphill battle, persuading old-money
movers and shakers that his cutting-edge structure will be an asset to their community.

Alas, Corbet’s reach ultimately exceeds his grasp.

From the very first frame, this film Calls Attention To Itself. Lol Crawley’s cinematographic choice is 70mm VistaVision, a throwback logo and widescreen variant long discarded since its 1950s debut. Sebastian Pardo’s title credits design mimics the shape and style of the Brutalism architectural movement that erupted in Europe and — as in this story — Pennsylvania during that same decade.

 

Further mimicking this Old Hollywood approach, Corbet’s film opens with an overture, then proceeds with a first act — “The Enigma of Arrival” — a 15-minute intermission (with a clock that counts down against a key photograph), followed by a second act — “The Hard Core of Beauty” — and an epilogue.

 

Daniel Blumberg’s wildly eclectic score often clashes — deliberately — with the cacophonous “slabs of noise” from Andy Neil’s sound design. The result is jarring, startling and disorienting, reflecting the central character’s professional, mental and emotional journey.

 

It often feels like this saga is based on actual events, and actual people, but no; aside from acknowledging the post-WWII Brutalism movement itself, Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvoid’s entirely fictitious story and characters are merely suggested by Brutalist architects Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph and Ralph Rapson, with a narrative arc that owes much to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and a soupçon of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.

 

László Tóth (Adrien Brody) is introduced in a confusing blur of motion: a Hungarian Holocaust survivor newly arrived in the United States, on a ship laden with fellow immigrants. Tellingly, his first view of the Statue of Liberty is upside-down, and then sideways, as he emerges from the ship’s bowels: a warning that America’s promise of opportunity is skewed.

 

That, coupled with the preceding Goethe quote — “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free” — promises that László’s subsequent journey will not end happily.

French Exit: Comme ci comme ça

French Exit (2020) • View trailer

2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and sexual candor

By Derrick Bang 

Few films follow their source as closely as this one: not really a surprise, since scripter Patrick DeWitt has adapted his own 2018 novel.

 

Newly arrived in Paris, having fled Manhattan ahead of creditors, Frances (Michelle
Pfeiffer) and her son Malcolm (Lucas Hedges) wonder what they're going to make
of this new life.

Add a director — Azazel Jacobs — who clearly studied at the altar of Wes Anderson, and French Exit becomes a slice of absurdist eccentricity: a character study filled with people who (mostly) seem to exist slightly out of phase with the real world.

 

The degree to which they’re likable or sympathetic — as opposed to annoying and contemptuous — will depend on your ability to laugh at their foibles. In fairness, moments in this unhurried narrative are laugh-out-loud funny … but they’re few and far between.

 

To cases:

 

Despite years’ worth of warnings from her accountant, Manhattan socialite Frances Price (Michelle Pfeiffer) has exhausted the inheritance left when husband Franklin died 12 years earlier.

 

“My plan,” she insists rather vaguely, “was to die before the money ran out.”

 

Which means that she gave no consideration to leaving anything for her directionless adult son, Malcolm (Lucas Hedges), who has put his own life on hold, in order to be her faithful companion for the same 12 years. (Nice mother, eh?)

 

Given the way Pfeiffer swans condescendingly through every scene, we immediately realize that this is typical of Frances, who rarely (never?) considers anything — or anybody — beyond herself. She’s all appearance and no substance, given to grand gestures of generosity — such as inappropriately huge tips — solely because they call attention to herself.

 

Acting on her accountant’s advice, she quietly (and quite illegally) sells everything in her lavish home, converts the proceeds to Euros, and accepts a suggestion to move into a Parisian apartment owned by best friend Joan (Susan Coyne, as one of this saga’s “normal” characters).

 

Where Frances supposedly will “figure things out.”

 

Malcolm somehow has accumulated a fiancée along the way: Susan (Imogen Poots), a nice young woman who quite reasonably cannot understand why he’s abandoning her in order to follow his mother. Their parting does not go well; Malcolm pauses outside the restaurant, looking back inside at her, clearly having no clue how to do the right thing … or even what that might be.

 

Shaft: Still the man!

Shaft (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, sexual content, drug content, brief nudity and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang

Sometimes you can go home again.

That's my boy! After a long day of sleuthing — with a violent encounter or two along the
way — John Shaft II (Samuel L. Jackson, left) proudly drags his son, John Jr.
(Jessie T. Usher) to one of his favorite, babe-laden watering holes.

The humor is more frequent and deliberate than was the case back in 1971, and this new action thriller is unquestionably set in our modern world. And yet director Tim Story, along with scripters Kenya Barris and Alex Barnow, frequently evoke the feisty spirit and atmosphere of the half-century-gone blaxploitation era.

They also honor this film’s predecessors, with sly dialogue references, acknowledgments of past events, and — most crucially — generous nods to Isaac Hayes’ jazz influence. And not just the iconic main theme, but also several familiar underscore cues.

To be sure, this updated Shaft — as a character — owes more to Samuel L. Jackson’s 2000 revival, than to Richard Roundtree’s initial portrayal. The best one-liners are tailored to Jackson’s smug, sly delivery, and most of the plot gets its momentum from his ultra-cool presence. 

But Jessie T. Usher’s third-generation John Shaft Jr. definitely pulls his weight; he has been granted a personality engaging enough to carry a future series on his own shoulders, should fate (and box-office returns) move in that direction.

He’s introduced as an infant, during a flashback prologue which depicts the near-fatal ambush that proves one violent event too many for the baby’s mother, Maya (Regina Hall). Frightened beyond endurance, but still clearly in love with Shaft II (Jackson), she nonetheless begs him to leave them, and keep his distance. Which he does, reluctantly, his presence a reminder to John Jr. solely via a series of hilariously inappropriate birthday presents, as the years pass.

Along the way, Maya does everything in her power to groom her son into a sensitive, clean-cut, well-mannered and responsible young man: as unlike his father as possible.

Flash-forward to the present day, where John Jr. is the proud recipient of an MIT diploma, and is newly ensconced as a rookie FBI data analyst in an office overseen by short-tempered Special Agent Vietti (Titus Welliver, utterly wasted in an underwritten, one-dimensional role). John Jr. has retained two best buds since childhood: Karim (Avan Jogia), who always had his back; and Sasha (Alexandra Shipp), now a doctor at a New York City hospital.