Helga without the H

Almost every year I attempt (with varying degrees of success) to watch as many Oscar nominees as possible before the ceremony. I post half-assed reviews here on my blog, and then at the end I write up some sort of silly analysis, predictions, reactions, etc. The quantity and quality depends entirely on how much time and energy I have each year, and I’m not gonna lie, this year’s already starting pretty dang rough! But let’s see how it goes. Today we turn to:

The Brutalist

[10 nominations for best picture, actor (Adrian Brody,) supporting actor (Guy Pearce,) supporting actress (Felicity Jones), director, original screenplay, cinematography, editing, production design, and score]

I put off watching this one. It cleaned house at the Golden Globes and has a whopping 10 Oscar nominations, including in most of the major categories, so it’s one that I definitely should have wanted to watch for this binge. But on the other hand, this movie seemed to go out of its way to be unwatchable. First it was only limited to a few theatres in the entire country, then it refused to start streaming until the week of the Oscars, and as of today (ceremony day) it is only available for expensive purchase rather than rent. On top of this, this pretentious Oscar-bait movies clocks in at a whopping 3.5+ hour runtime!!!!!! THAT IS TOO LONG!!!

But, like I said, today is Oscar day. And as I looked at my list of remaining films (which is quite a few), this was the heaviest hitter, and so I went for it. I’m glad that I did. This movie is great and deserves all of the Oscars. All of them. Is it perfect? No; I’ve definitely got some bones to nitpick. But it’s lightyears more deserving than all of the other best picture nominees this year. Was it too long? Yes. It easily could have been chopped. That being said, its runtime felt much more proportional to me than other nominees. As in, if a movie deserved to be long, this one deserved to be long. I also appreciate that this movie had a built-in intermission with a countdown timer (streaming it’s one minute, but I read that in theatres its 15 minutes), so at least the film is acknowledging that the audience isn’t actually expected to sit through it, and that it’s totally ok to take some breaks (which I did repeatedly as I kept getting up to switch laundry and do other chorin’.) Would I have found this intermission pretentious in another film (ahem, Christopher Nolan, ahem)? Probably. But in this case it worked for me.

I’m short on time because the Oscars are in just a couple hours and I haven’t started my wrap-up post yet. So I’ll keep the actual review brief, which is a huge shame, because I’ve spent all day thinking about this movie and couple probably write a novel. But the CliffNotes:

• Adrian Brody and Felicity Jones were both fantastic, and easily deserve the acting Oscars based on the nominees I’ve seen so far. I mean easily; no comparison. They both had to do so much, and they both nailed it.
• The story has a lot to say. It’s a scathing critique of the American Dream. Yes, poor immigrants who arrive here can and do achieve prosperity, overcoming obstacles through hard work. But it’s often a much darker tale, one of significant prejudice in an unwelcoming and often naive community. Perhaps it is no mistake that all the major roles in the American dream were not played by Americans.
• I really appreciated Felicity Jones’ role as the tormented wife of the protagonist. Does this movie pass the Bechtel test? No, not at all. And usually I roll my eyes at the suffering wife roles as their cheating husbands excel in the world while also committing adultery. While all of that was true here, the wife has a lot more going on (even though it is secondary to our actual plot), which is highlighted in the scene when she arrives in America and meets the wealthy family that has facilitated her rescue from Europe. The family is asking her small-talk questions and complimenting her English, when she reveals that she’s actually an impressive Oxford-educated journalist. “Did you tell them anything about me?” she asks her husband (probably paraphrasing- I can’t remember the exact words.) The character expresses the exact frustration that I feel in these movies at having female characters relegated to just being supports to the impressive menfolk. Good stuff. She also [spoiler alert] is a badass who confronts out villains at the end head-on, never cowering from a challenge.
• I hate Brutalist Architecture. I mentioned it briefly in this review of the National Building Museum (ahem, shameless plug, ahem). But I’m open to learning about it and why other people don’t hate it (again mentioned in the above review), and this film does a decent job making me appreciate it a little more than I did before.
• This movie is all about juxtapositions, and I couldn’t get enough.
• This movie had a whopping 3 handjob scenes. That’s 3 too many jandjob scenes.
• Guy Pearce is up for best actor. Does he deserve it? I dunno. He was fine I guess. But even though he’s playing a complex character, I felt like Pearce played it kinda one-note.
• That being said, Alessandro Nivola was FANTASTIC as the Americanized cousin. I thought his performance was more deserving of a nomination, but alas, he did not receive one. That being said, he had way less screentime.

There were some details of this movie that kept me from loving it too much. I thought Joe Alwyn was terrible as the snooty rich heir. I just could not understand what he was doing with his delivery. The character was cartoonishly evil, and his expressions just weren’t nuanced at all. His appearance constantly took me out of the story. There were also weird little things, like a confusing continuity error early on where Pearce sends a car to pick up Brody on “Sunday morning” but when he arrives at the mansion everyone’s chugging champagne and it appears to be an evening party (or at the very least lunchtime.) There’s also a scene where he’s driving a car and is looking everywhere except for the road. I know this is a trope in most movies, but come one, dudes; this is a serious film! Has Adrian Brody never driven a car before? (Tangent, but I watched a movie earlier this week where Lily James bought paint at a hardware store and then started painting her house, and it was very clear that Lily James has never been anywhere near a hardware store, nor a paintbrush before.)

All that being said, I struggle to understand how anybody could think that any of the other nominees this year deserve best picture more than this movie. It had superior substance, ingenuity, and execution out the wazoo.(That sentence made no sense, but I’m tired and need to move on, so we’re leaving it in!) Bravo to the filmmakers.