Not Intellectually Stimulating

The Brutalist (2024) - Corbet Hype be damned. This overlong film about a fictional Hungarian Brutalist architect Laszlo Toth (dedicated performance by Adrien Brody) in post-war America and his encounter with a millionaire American industrialist Van Buren (Guy Pearce), propagating the view on bigoted white upper class oligarchy is as subtle as "I drink your milkshake!" of Daniel Plainview in There Will be Blood.

The Brutalist starts out promisingly with Toth's struggle- a famed architect in his native Hungary who survived holocaust but left his wife and family behind. He has to toil for food and shelter in salvation army breadlines. He lands a job at his sleazy cousin's furniture store which is obviously beneath his talent. After designing Van Buren's library in his mansion in Pennsilvania, the first part of the film before the long intermission is set for Toth's rise in rank in Van Buren's inner circle. So the first half is intriguing enough with strong performances. But the hinted inner life of Toth - the hidden drug addiction and womanizing doesn't add to anything for the later part of the movie. Are they supposed to show that Toth is no saint? Worse yet, the repeated presaging images of Toth's young niece Zsofia, about how she suffered and how she had to defend herself from groping paws of men, the film relates it to the completely unnecessary and over the top Italian quarry scene, equating the power dynamics of predator and prey - in war and in American capitalism.

As a commissioned job, Toth works on a concrete megastructure, a Christian chapel/ public space, dedicated to Van Buren's dear late mother. The Brutalist architecture here has a hidden meaning to Toth and his background as a Jew who survived unimaginable hardship - with the light beaming through the top, giving people hiding down below a signal of hope and reprieve. But as long as the fasçade has a giant cross, Van Buren will approve.

The point is made over and over again throughout the film - "Pick up the penny and return it to me," "We tolerate you," and so on. The rich thank you for your intellectually stimulating conversations and your talent and culture that they can afford. But you will never be one of them. But do they really need to go there with that Italian quarry scene? I hate any movie that uses a rape as a some sort of clutch as a plotpoint. And Corbet goes there. Yes, in America, the rich literally fucks you in the ass.

Corbet, along with his writing partner Mona Fastvold (Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux) confuse that giving the film a 3 hrs 35 min runtime and a historical background equals having that 'literary air'. Accumulation of these images and unresolved narrative threads don't automatically give the film depth. The old Vistavision 70mm format doesn't add anything to the film’s point that is so obviously, brutally made. No, Corbet is no new major American film director he and everyone make himself to be. He ain’t no PT Anderson, who at least has a sense of humor.

Death Drive

The Shrouds (2024) - Cronenberg Death, technology and commerce intermingle in David Cronenberg's new film, The Shrouds. With his bold exploration into our darkest human desires throughout all of his filmography, the Canadian body horror master still finds a lot of humor and irony in his storytelling after fifty plus years. Even the theme of death haunts every aspect of the film, The Shroud is suprisingly funny and engaging film that tells a lot about the current technology obsessed culture.

The death of his beloved wife Becca (Diane Kruger), prompted the tech mogul Karsh (Vincent Cassel) to create GraveTech, a technology that enables for grieving family to watch the images of their loved one's corpse as it disintegrates in ultra high definition, via app. The body is wrapped in shrouds with sensitive cameras attached to them. Karsh goes on about the gory details to an unsuspecting blind date, set up by his savvy and concerned virtual assistant named Hunny (voiced by Kruger with a yassified avatar). The blind date, uncomfortable and freaked out, excuses herself out the door.

On the cursp of his business going global with a dying Hungarian businessman's investment, someone vandalizes his GraveTech enabled cemetary with headstones adorned with videofeeds knocked down and smashed, including his wife's. With no one to trust, he brings in a desheveled tech expert Maury (Guy Pearce) who happens to be the ex of Becca's twin sister Terry (Kruger again). They suspect some underground environmental group based in Iceland is responsible for the vandalism. But it also could be other parties engaging in industrial espionage (Chinese company which makes the shrouds, Hungarians, etc).

Becca in intervals with her decaying body still haunts Karsh's dreams. The Hungarian mogul's blind wife (Sandrine Holt) gets into the act also. And he can't resist hooking up with Terry, a dog groomer who reminds him of his dead wife, at least in body resemblance. Terry has a tendency to be sexually aroused by conspiracy theories, which nowadays, there are plenty to go around.

As always, Cronenberg meshes both our skepticisms and fascinations about the advancement of technology into a great, thought provoking film without ever succumbing to sentimentality. Added layer in The Shroud is self-reflexivity in grief (Cronenberg lost his wife in 2017 and with Vincent Cassel with his silvery spikey hair, closely resembling the director). There's plenty of humor in The Shrouds, but the grasping at the loss of a loved one and the hard act of letting go of the earthly, bodily attachment rings true. Here is what I wrote about Crimes of the Future in 2022.

Through a Glass Darkly

Mildred Pierce (2011) - Haynes

Michael Curtiz's 1945 noir classic with Joan Crawford became an unofficial Mother's Day film and made Crawford an emblem of saintly mother for generations of people, even though the ending suggests even a saint won't protect a murderous offspring. Written by pulp writer James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, Postman Always Rings Twice), the Depression era Southern California set Mildred Pierce is a highly melodramatic film about conflicting American values which are surprisingly not too different from our current society in the 21st century: a very Ayn Rand style self determination, the pitfall of class differences and star envy, thankless motherhood and the bad seed....

I'm not a fan of old Hollywood melodramas and don't claim to be Douglass Sirk aficionado. I haven't seen Haynes' parody/elegy to Sirk, Far from Heaven. But I really dug I'm Not There, his inventive take on Bob Dylan's public persona and Velvet Goldmine, about Glam Rock era and admire his artistry on parodying something he loves with so much affection and care. With this five part mini-series, Haynes is apparently a lot more faithful to the Cain's source material than Curtiz's very studio version with 7 writers credit attached (William Faulkner was supposedly involved).

Haynes's version is a handsome, impeccably recreated period piece. The great Kate Winslet plays a title role, married to a good-hearted but luckless, ambitionless Bert living in the Los Angeles suburb. After debts pile up and Bert's not up to providing, she divorces him and starts looking for menial work. Just like any mother would do, she wants to provide her two daughters with all the material goods. Older daughter Veda resents her working as a waitress at a hash diner. Mildred builds up an empire of restaurants named after herself, but nothing of her success is impressive under the scornful eyes of increasingly hauty Veda. Talking like Grace Kelley in pictures, Veda becomes a manipulative and unbelievably snotty bitch.

Haynes, obviously loves the hightened melodrama - a younger daughter dies of pneumonia while Mildred is having a night of passion with a LA playboy Monte (Guy Pearce), who largely figures in to the fiery finale, Veda's ridiculously theatrical mannerism, Mildred keeps saying, "I'm size ten!" out loud to anyone who care to listen. There are a lot of face slapping, a lot of yelling, a lot of emotional fireworks.

Edward Lachman's sumptuous cinematography reveals something more sinister from the chapter one. Throughout the whole series, Mildred is seen through a glass windows and display cases, giving the audience the slightly distorted images of her. It becomes all clear in Veda's final accusation in the series's finale- that she used all the men around her to her advantage - Bert, Wally and Monte, non of whom are portrayed as a typical male bruts or evils but rather sheepish and powerless. That her rise and fall has more to do with the highly materialistic world we live in. That in fact Veda, however manipulative and artificial she seems, is the one who saw, unveiled eyes, Mildred's pathetic middle class ambition - the hollow American dream, while sacrificing 'family'.

Evan Rachel Wood who plays older Veda eschews the hammiest role in the latter part of the series. Her spiteful, opportunistic beauty gets the ultimate revenge on her forever low-class mother by becoming an opera singer, then sleeping with Monte, a has-been playboy and emasculated, newly minted husband of Mildred. When it is first revealed this handsome playboy is dating her dumpy mother, Veda's thought is surely not "oh fuck, my mom rocks!" As she snarls through the dark sleeping chamber of her Monte, fully naked and touching her vagina in front of her mother is perhaps the most perverted and delicious revenge scene in any films in recent history.

This deconstruction of the saintly mother Crawford is what's most interesting about Haynes' interpretation. As Crawford's Mildred finally abandons her bad seed to incarceration, Winslet's Mildred finally, bitterly utters, "To hell with her!" But there is no recognition in her eyes registering what Veda said about her being an opportunist. Mildred Piece shows how skillful Haynes is at presenting a melodrama so perfectly put together but at the same time, sees the cracks in this otherwise sordid story and elevate it to a subversive social commentary.