The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s epic drama starring Adrien Brody as a Hungarian architect making a new life for himself in post-World War II America has been the topic of conversation in the cinema world as of late. While critics continue to sing the praises of the upcoming A24 movie, other circles can’t stop talking about its three-and-a-half-hour runtime and its intermission. The actor-turned-director himself is even talking about it, and I have to agree with his take on it all.
On the red carpet of the 2024 Gotham Awards in December 2024, Corbet shared more info with IndieWire about the 15-minute intermission that breaks up his latest directorial effort into two parts. He noted it was a creative decision and not some edict from the studio:
It was always scripted, the intermission. It’s funny, it’s gotten more attention in a way than we expected it to. I personally have a hard time sitting still for three-and-a-half hours, so I needed it. And it was a public-facing decision.
Honestly, I totally get where Corbet, whose previous films include The Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux, is coming from when he says he “needed” the intermission. I attended a screening of The Brutalist back in November, and without getting into the nitty-gritty details, the 15-minute break about 90 or so minutes into the movie allowed me to stretch my legs and freshen up before settling back in.
After sitting through Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s 2023 biographical crime epic with an intimidating runtime, and I thought it needed a break. So, I was excited to learn The Brutalist would offer those of us in the audience a quick reprieve halfway through. But unlike Killers, which made news upon release when a handful of theaters inserted an unsanctioned intermission, per Variety, Corbet and partner Mona Fastvold always wanted to break the runtime up:
Yeah, we always knew we wanted to have that break in the middle. You know, people sit at home and they watch eight to 16 hours of a limited series with little breaks in between, so if you apply that idea to this film, you’re just binging this movie with a little break in the middle. So, don’t be scared of the intermission.
All this talk of an intermission shouldn’t distract you from the brilliance and greatness of The Brutalist, which features Oscar-worthy performances from frequent Wes Anderson collaborator Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce, as well as a remarkable story and some of the best cinematography I’ve seen all year.
Spanning nearly 40 years, the movie follows Brody’s László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who emigrates to America and meets Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren, a wealthy industrialist with whom he partners to dream up and construct a massive community center that is unlike anything seen before. Rich in story and themes, Brady Corbet’s historical drama is an achievement in story.
The movie is also a crowning achievement in filmmaking. Shot using the VistaVision process and cameras, The Brutalist features sprawling shots of the picturesque eastern Pennsylvanian landscape that is comparable to classics like Lawrence of Arabia and Once Upon a Time in the West, and more recently, There Will Be Blood. And all of that on a reported $10 million budget makes the experience all the more breathtaking.
The Brutalist opens in theaters on December 20th, at the tail end of the 2024 movie schedule. But expect to hear much more about the film as award season begins to heat up in the coming weeks and months.
