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Guy Pearce’s brilliant baddie in The Brutalist · The Front

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: There's a brutalist kind of shopping mall in Camber called
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: belconn and Mall Belcon Blcnan. I love the staircase is
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: like the Museum of modernat Isn't that that they've got?
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Except it's in Canberra.
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  Speaker 2: And there's a Peter Alexander here.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Who needs MoMA From The Australian. This is the weekend
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  Speaker 1: edition of The Front. I'm Claire Harvey. Today. I'm joined
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  Speaker 1: by our entertainment reporter Jordie Gray, one of the Australian's
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: youngest and brightest. She covers cinema in the Marvel era
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: of Rippling ABS and CGI, when films are enormously expensive
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  Speaker 1: but creatively boring. But for Jordy, the film that is
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Shaping is the year's best. Her contender for the Best Picture, Oscar,
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  Speaker 1: cost just ten million dollars to make. It's a period
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  Speaker 1: drama named after a type of architecture that's particularly hard
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  Speaker 1: to love, starring a couple of actors who aren't Pemsworth's.
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  Speaker 1: It's so long. There's a fifteen minute interval baked in.
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  Speaker 1: It's the Brutalist. Here's the plot. A Hungarian jew Laslo
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  Speaker 1: Toth played by Adrian Brody survives the horrors of book
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  Speaker 1: involved concentration camp in the Holocaust and begins rebuilding his
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  Speaker 1: life in rural Pennsylvania. He's an architect, but he finds
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  Speaker 1: himself working in his cousin's furniture business until he meets
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  Speaker 1: the ultra charismatic Harrison Lee van Buren played by Guy Pearce,
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  Speaker 1: who commissions him for an ambitious building project. The relationship
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  Speaker 1: between these two men, all wrapped up in trauma and control,
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  Speaker 1: is making a point of its own about the uneven
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  Speaker 1: relationship between artists and the powers that govern their lives.
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  Speaker 3: The movie is brutalist, so it's a big, heavy, outsized object.
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  Speaker 1: That's director Brady Corbet in a recent interview with Jordie
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  Speaker 1: his movie cleaned up at the recent Golden Globes, winning
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  Speaker 1: Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Motion Picture, despite breaking
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  Speaker 1: with every current day hit movie convention.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Here's Jordy, I don't think it is a maybe about architecture.
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  Speaker 1: It's just filled with architecture, specifically brutalist architecture, which rose
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  Speaker 1: to prominence after World War II. You know the style huge,
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  Speaker 1: generally concrete monstrosities or marvels, depending on your perspective. Think
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  Speaker 1: the Uts Building if you're in Sydney, or the High
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  Speaker 1: Court Building or National Gallery if you've ever visited Canberra.
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  Speaker 1: I grew up in Camera where even the bus stops
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  Speaker 1: a brutalist. Brutalism made a virtue of the stark choices.
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  Speaker 1: After World War II, a lot of buildings were needed,
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  Speaker 1: concrete was cheap, and for his movie, Brady Corbey, who
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  Speaker 1: wore sunglasses throughout his interview with Jordi by the Way,
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  Speaker 1: brought his obsession with detail to life.
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  Speaker 3: For us, it was very important to try and find
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  Speaker 3: ways of representing architecture, not just presenting it and the
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  Speaker 3: film's design, with the film's music, even the film's titles,
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  Speaker 3: which are constructivist at the end, like we were always
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  Speaker 3: trying to do our best to represent brutalism.
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  Speaker 1: Movies today are shot on digital cameras that record to
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  Speaker 1: a drive. Corbet shot his movie on film, and not
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  Speaker 1: just that, he used VistaVision, a widescreen film format not
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  Speaker 1: used in Hollywood since the early nineteen sixties.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: Part of just the quality of the image really just
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: come from torturing the negative and you get so much
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  Speaker 3: character from the grain. It's funny because nowadays with QC
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: for streaming and stuff. Every time I make a movie,
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  Speaker 3: it bounces back to me because they think it's a
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  Speaker 3: mistake and we're so accustomed now to everything originating in
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  Speaker 3: four or six K. But for me, movies look like this,
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  Speaker 3: this sort of artifact. It's something really tangible and I
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  Speaker 3: think really transporting to the period.
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  Speaker 1: Did you enjoy this movie?
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  Speaker 2: I loved it, but I wouldn't say it's an enjoyable movie.
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  Speaker 2: It's three and a half hours. There's a baked fifteen
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  Speaker 2: minute intermission, and the first half played, and then I
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: ran to the bathroom to text with my friends, like,
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  Speaker 2: this is a best film I've seen in so long.
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  Speaker 2: I'm so excited. And then the second half is just
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  Speaker 2: like tragedy and trauma. So I loved the experience of
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  Speaker 2: watching the film because I truly did not know what
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  Speaker 2: direction it was going to take at any moment. The
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  Speaker 2: way it looks is so breath taking. Five minutes into it,
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  Speaker 2: there's this shot of a bus and the greens are
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  Speaker 2: so vivid that I started crying because I was like,
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  Speaker 2: oh my gosh, like, movies don't look like this anymore.
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  Speaker 2: It looks so good. I just admire the goal and
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  Speaker 2: the guts of it all. Like Brady Corbey said himself
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  Speaker 2: in his Gone Glades acceptance speech that no one was
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  Speaker 2: asking for a three and a half hour maybe on brutalism,
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  Speaker 2: and the fact that he got it off the ground
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  Speaker 2: filmed this decade spanning thing for under ten million dollars
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  Speaker 2: should be celebrated. I like what he stands for, and
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  Speaker 2: I think that his sentiment will resonate with people that
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  Speaker 2: care about movies.
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  Speaker 1: Brutalism is not an easy form of architecture to love.
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  Speaker 1: It's not a kind of a lovable word. It's not
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  Speaker 1: really doesn't really sound like there's going to be a
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  Speaker 1: date movie.
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  Speaker 2: Oh depends on what kind of relationship you have. I
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  Speaker 2: think no, it is. It's achingly romantic. It's basically Brady
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  Speaker 2: Callby making a movie about how hard it is to
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  Speaker 2: make movies. And I think the Van Buren character is
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  Speaker 2: like the film industry. To him.
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  Speaker 3: This was the only way that I could really make
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  Speaker 3: a movie about making a movie. Unfortunately, the documentary of
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: the making of our movies would not look like Burden
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  Speaker 3: of Dreams or a Heart of Darkness, because it'd be
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  Speaker 3: much more administrative than that. I think that writing this
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  Speaker 3: with my wife was something like an exorcism and a
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  Speaker 3: way for us to sort of channel a lot of
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  Speaker 3: our frustration and rage about this process. Most companies that
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: are financing movies nowadays are especially risk averse, so it's
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  Speaker 3: very tricky and it requires a hugelep of faith, not
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: just from financiers but from absolutely everyone involved, because to
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  Speaker 3: make movies like this it's a huge investment of time
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  Speaker 3: for very little financial return.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Coming up, how Guy Peas menaced his way to a
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  Speaker 1: Best Supporting Actor nomination. When it came to casting the
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  Speaker 1: role of mid century American industrialist Harrison le van Buren.
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  Speaker 1: The Brutalists director Brady Corbey set his sights on one
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  Speaker 1: particular Australian guy, Piers.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's amazing.
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  Speaker 1: I really love guy Luks played their role.
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  Speaker 3: I wanted somebody that was still really attractive in the role.
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  Speaker 3: There was, of course a version of the American industrialist
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  Speaker 3: that was geriatric, but I wanted there to be this virility.
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  Speaker 3: I wanted to feel that these two men were in
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  Speaker 3: some ways at least physically evenly matched.
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  Speaker 1: But it was Piece's approach to accidents that really attracted
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  Speaker 1: Corbe to him. And Pierce has been nominated for best
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  Speaker 1: supporting actor.
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  Speaker 3: It is no coincidence that fate brought us together on
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  Speaker 3: the aid of my mother's dad.
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  Speaker 1: I'm good at reading the signs.
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  Speaker 3: I saw his performance years ago and Todd Haynes Mildred Pierce.
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  Speaker 3: It really stuck with me. It's just such a fantastic performance.
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  Speaker 3: He was doing a sort of variation of the mid
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: century dialect on that project, and that is really difficult
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  Speaker 3: to pull off, and he just fucking nailed it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's so sensational in this From the moment he
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  Speaker 2: walks into the screen like he is in that character,
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  Speaker 2: you don't have to adjust to anything. He plays that
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  Speaker 2: role so well that he threatens to still the movie
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: from Adrian Brady. He's so watchable.
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  Speaker 3: The reception obviously has been fantastic. But if the film
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  Speaker 3: also functions even just a little bit commercially, because we
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: obviously we don't need to make a billion dollars on
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  Speaker 3: a movie that was made for so little, I would
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  Speaker 3: hope that that would help the cultural shift along a
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: little bit and you know, hopefully create a little bit
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  Speaker 3: more space for really challenging works about adults for adults,
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  Speaker 3: because it's increasingly rare.
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  Speaker 1: Jordy Gray's story about the Brutalist is live now at
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  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot a you Slash Review. Thanks
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: for joining us on the front this week. Our team
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: is Jasper Leek, Kristin Amyot, Leah Tamaglue, Tiffany Dimak, Joshua Burton,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Stephanie Coombs and Nate Claire Hoppy.