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.

A Haunting in Venice: Gothic nonsense

A Haunting in Venice (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong violence and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.15.23

Agatha Christie must be spinning in her grave.

 

I can’t fault Kenneth Branagh for wanting to play her famed Belgian detective again; it’s a great role, and Branagh fills Hercule Poirot’s patent leather shoes with a delightful blend of aristocratic condescension and shrewd, sharp-eyed deductive analysis. It’s always fun to watch Poirot’s narrow gaze scrutinize the comparative heights of his twin breakfast soft-boiled eggs.

 

Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) initially has no interest in the challenge offered by
longtime friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey). But his curiosity eventually is piqued, and
he agrees to tag along for what becomes a most unusual evening.

But must Branagh continue to work with scripter Michael Green?

Green’s repeated efforts to “improve upon” Christie’s meticulously crafted novels ran 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express off the rails, and his 2022 disembowelment of Death on the Nile went under not only for the third time, but also the fourth and fifth.

 

This time out, Green doesn’t even try to adapt Christie’s Hallowe’en Party. The only thing this film has in common with her 1969 novel is the presence of one character, and he treats her in a manner that will enrage the celebrated author’s fans.

 

Why adapt a famous author’s book, if you’re just going to ruin it?

 

Matters aren’t helped by the fact that Branagh — who also directs — and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos allowed their Gothic sensibilities to run amuck. Branagh’s third Poirot outing is a classic example of style over substance: cockeyed camera angels, darkened hallways, smash-cut close-ups of worried expressions, Hildur Guönadóttir’s shrieking score, and the repeated squawking distraction of a cockatoo that swoops into numerous scenes for no good reason … all of which do nothing to conceal Green’s clumsy plot.

 

The setting is Venice in 1947, as Italy struggles to rebuild itself. Ten years have passed since the events in Death on the Nile, a decade has left Poirot disheartened by the fact that another generation found itself in a war even worse, in some respects, than the “Great War” he endured during his younger days. Poirot has retired and retreated behind the gates of a Venetian appartamento; he employs a bodyguard, Vitale (Riccardo Scamarcio), to dissuade anybody wishing to engage his detective services.

 

Even so, Poirot tolerates a visit from longtime associate Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), a mystery novelist who has based her series character on him. She offers a puzzle: a supposed medium, Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh), whose “performance” at a recent séance left her baffled. Ariadne, inclined to accept the notion of communication with the dead, believes that if Mrs. Reynolds can convince Poirot that she’s the “real deal,” then the result will be a certain best-seller about “the woman who stumped Hercule Poirot.”

 

(It must be mentioned that, in Christie’s canon, Ariadne is a friend who helps Poirot in seven novels, and would never, ever bait him so callously. But we move on…)

 

Clearly stung by the notion that he could be fooled by such an obvious charlatan, Poirot accepts the challenge. The setting for the next séance proves foreboding: the crumbling palazzo owned by retired opera singer Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly). The place is believed haunted by the ghosts of young orphans who met a terrible fate therein, decades earlier.

 

Worse yet, it’s also where Rowena’s beloved daughter Alicia died one year ago, having apparently jumped from her upstairs bedroom window and drowned in the canal below.

 

It also happens to be Halloween. A particularly stormy and wind-swept Halloween. What could be better?