‘Like criticising a book that has 700 pages’: The Brutalist director defends long films

A scene from The Brutalist, which has a 215-minute runtime and a 15-minute intermission. Photograph: Courtesy: Focus Features

How do you properly do justice to the life story of a Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to the US, where he toiled in poverty and indignity in pursuit of the American dream?

According to the director of the highly anticipated new film The Brutalist, the answer is to push back against how long film-makers are given to tell the tale.