The Brutalist is Three Hours of Pure Copium for People Who Think Suffering = Art

Look, I respect the hustle. Brady Corbet made a 215-minute black-and-white film in VistaVision about a Hungarian-Jewish architect rebuilding America after World War II, and somehow convinced a major distributor to release it in actual theaters instead of exclusively on a film festival circuit for people who wear turtlenecks to brunch. That takes either genius or a truly spectacular ability to convince people that suffering through something equals experiencing something profound.

I'm going with the latter.

The Brutalist isn't bad, exactly. It's competent. Adrien Brody gives a performance that's so committed to being Serious that you can practically see him internally narrating the entire film in a European accent. Guy Pearce shows up occasionally to remind you that charisma still exists. The cinematography is gorgeous in that "I'm going to slowly pan across the same architectural detail for forty-five seconds because beauty is patient" way.

But here's the thing: being slow doesn't make you profound. Being long doesn't make you important. And shooting in black-and-white in 2024 doesn't automatically mean your film transcends the medium—it just means you're betting that audiences will mistake aesthetic choice for artistic depth.

The film wallows. It luxuriates in its own heaviness. Every scene takes twice as long as it needs to, which would be fine if there was actually something being said underneath all that deliberate pacing. Instead, you get a bunch of wealthy Americans looking concerned while an architect discusses the spiritual weight of geometric forms. It's the kind of movie that makes you feel like you should be having a profound experience, which is exactly how you end up pretending to have liked something you didn't.

Here's what kills me: there's a genuinely interesting movie buried in this three-hour sludge about American reinvention, immigrant trauma, and the cost of ambition. But Corbet seems terrified of actually engaging with those ideas directly, so instead he drapes them in ponderous silences and meaningful glances at buildings.

The worst part? People will defend this movie to death because admitting you wasted three hours feels worse than just saying it's a misunderstood masterpiece. That's not criticism—that's sunk cost fallacy with a 70mm camera.

Watch it if you genuinely love slow cinema or if you need something to help you sleep. But don't trick yourself into thinking that length equals weight, or that black-and-white equals truth. Some of the most important films ever made told their stories in ninety minutes. Corbet forgot to have anything to actually say first.