Fans are buzzing after the first look at the film dubbed ‘Next Oppenheimer’ and will succeed at the Oscars in 2025 – which was made for only $ 10,000,000.
The Brutalist premiered at the Venice Film Festival in early September, wowing critics across the board and emerging as a surprise runaway favorite for its astonishing scope and performances.
And now the first trailer has been released, giving people a taste of the bold style of filmmaker Brady Corbet and the scale of the big ‘American Dream’ movie.
With a cast led by Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn and Alessandro Nivola also appear in this major awards season contender made at the expense of several other hyped releases this year, such as Joker: The $200 million budget Folie à Deux and the price worth $120m Megalopolis.
In my password 4.5 star review for MetroI called the epic of nearly four hours ‘compelling’, ‘enthralling’ and ‘a film to beat at the Oscars’ – also describing it as ‘a cinematic version of Arthur Miller’s stage play’.
For many others, comparisons to films including The Godfather and There Will Be Blood are top of mind – as well as Christopher Nolan’s intellectual blockbuster Oppenheimer, which won best picture at the 2024 Academy Awards.
Available, the budget is reported to be $100m, making it ten times more than The Brutalist.
‘Sometimes you start to lose faith that we’ll ever get a certain movie again, then something like Oppenheimer or The Brutalist comes along, and you’re filled with relief to still hope for the next one,’ tweeted associate editor for Roger Ebert, Robert Daniels, in reaction to The Brutalist trailer.
‘Baby, this is Oppenheimer level stuff. This is Orson Welles. This is the closest filmmakers have come to kissing heaven,’ commented an enthusiastic Kyle Pinion at ScreenRex.
Others are also swooning over the trailer, which shows a sense of the film’s sweeping score and brief glimpses of Brody’s Hungarian-Jewish immigrant László Tóth, when he leaves behind the horrors of his past in post-World War II Europe for a new life. American.
‘How I cried just experiencing the trailer again!’ wrote film programmer Jenny Nulf in X, while OB quipped: ‘A film that ends with “ist” where Adrien Brody stars in (sic)? Yes, this is going to be an Oscar.’
This is surely a reference to the 51-year-old star’s best actor win for The Pianist in 2003, when he became the youngest actor ever to win the award at the age of 29.
‘The Brutalist is the most anticipated film of the year. Can’t wait to check it out,’ shared @jasperjay40, while @TazeWilson posted that he was ‘uncontrollably excited about this’ and the film’s writer Will Bjarnar suggested: ‘The film of the year to come.’
“A beloved American epic that we will never see again, let alone finish on this scale,” he said.
Another take on The Brutalist – which currently has an impressive 97% score from critics on review sit aggregator Rotten Tomatoes – has been hailed as a ‘major moment in cinema’ and a ‘modern masterpiece’.
‘The Brutalis is an out-and-out masterpiece; A wonderful beast of a film with glorious set pieces and a final gut punch, the most invigorating four hours I’ve spent at the cinema for years,’ tweeted Jonathan Dean of The Times as the trailer came out, echoing his colleague Kevin Maher’s review, which described the film’s performance as ‘savagely good, with Pearce and Brody both in award season form.’
Alexander Harrison of Screen Rant also promised that ‘every second is well spent’ during the film’s 215 minute runtime.
In Brutalist, visionary architect László (Brody) and his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their heritage and witness the birth of modern America.
After a difficult start in his new country, his life is changed forever by a mysterious and wealthy client, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), as we follow him for 30 years.
The Brutalist premieres at the Venice Film Festival on September 1st. The film was released in UK cinemas via Universal on 24th January 2025. The film will be released in US cinemas on 20th December.
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