OK, let’s get this out of the way: yes, The Brutalist is long. Very long. Backside-numbingly long. Which is as you might expect of a decades-spanning tale of a Holocaust survivor architect’s bruising encounter with the American dream. Still, that three-and-a-half hour run time seems to have been presented as Exhibit A in the case against Brady Corbet’s film; that it’s too grand, too ambitious, too full of itself. It’s got a bloody interval, for Christ’s sake! Who does this Corbet fella think he is?
Which seems strange, because a lot of what the film has been criticised for is usually seen as an asset. For good or ill, American cinema’s high-water marks, from Citizen Kane to The Godfather and beyond, tend to be big, muscular movies that believe they have something profound to say about the country of their making. And The Brutalist certainly has things to say, however you feel about how it goes about saying them: about art and patronage, the US’s relationship with Europe, and the relentless churn of capitalism. With so many weighty ideas to pack in, that run time starts to look, if anything, a little stingy.
