American cinema at its best
The extraordinary success of The Brutalist is not something that Hollywood, or anyone else, anticipated. When it was announced for last year’s Venice Film Festival, it was regarded with a degree of interest but not much else. After all, Brady Corbet’s previous two films — The Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux — had attracted a degree of critical attention but neither had been an awards player, let alone making any money at the box office. Auteurs can auteur, but the wider Hollywood establishment will only take them seriously if their films make some decent bank. When Chloé Zhao won Best Picture and Best Director for Nomadland, her reward was to be given hackwork on Marvel’s first major flop, Eternals: fingers crossed that her next picture, Hamnet, restores her to critical favor.
