WEBVTT - Guy Pearce’s brilliant baddie in The Brutalist

0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.040
<v Speaker 1>There's a brutalist kind of shopping mall in Camber called

0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:12.399
<v Speaker 1>belconn and Mall Belcon Blcnan. I love the staircase is

0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:15.120
<v Speaker 1>like the Museum of modernat Isn't that that they've got?

0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:16.720
<v Speaker 1>Except it's in Canberra.

0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:20.599
<v Speaker 2>And there's a Peter Alexander here.

0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:31.240
<v Speaker 1>Who needs MoMA From The Australian. This is the weekend

0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:34.600
<v Speaker 1>edition of The Front. I'm Claire Harvey. Today. I'm joined

0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:38.240
<v Speaker 1>by our entertainment reporter Jordie Gray, one of the Australian's

0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.920
<v Speaker 1>youngest and brightest. She covers cinema in the Marvel era

0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:46.760
<v Speaker 1>of Rippling ABS and CGI, when films are enormously expensive

0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:50.960
<v Speaker 1>but creatively boring. But for Jordy, the film that is

0:00:51.000 --> 0:00:54.720
<v Speaker 1>Shaping is the year's best. Her contender for the Best Picture, Oscar,

0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:58.920
<v Speaker 1>cost just ten million dollars to make. It's a period

0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:02.640
<v Speaker 1>drama named after a type of architecture that's particularly hard

0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:06.400
<v Speaker 1>to love, starring a couple of actors who aren't Pemsworth's.

0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:10.119
<v Speaker 1>It's so long. There's a fifteen minute interval baked in.

0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:25.880
<v Speaker 1>It's the Brutalist. Here's the plot. A Hungarian jew Laslo

0:01:25.880 --> 0:01:29.920
<v Speaker 1>Toth played by Adrian Brody survives the horrors of book

0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:34.240
<v Speaker 1>involved concentration camp in the Holocaust and begins rebuilding his

0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:38.160
<v Speaker 1>life in rural Pennsylvania. He's an architect, but he finds

0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:42.119
<v Speaker 1>himself working in his cousin's furniture business until he meets

0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:47.240
<v Speaker 1>the ultra charismatic Harrison Lee van Buren played by Guy Pearce,

0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:56.880
<v Speaker 1>who commissions him for an ambitious building project. The relationship

0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:01.120
<v Speaker 1>between these two men, all wrapped up in trauma and control,

0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.800
<v Speaker 1>is making a point of its own about the uneven

0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:08.840
<v Speaker 1>relationship between artists and the powers that govern their lives.

0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:17.839
<v Speaker 3>The movie is brutalist, so it's a big, heavy, outsized object.

0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:23.280
<v Speaker 1>That's director Brady Corbet in a recent interview with Jordie

0:02:23.760 --> 0:02:26.840
<v Speaker 1>his movie cleaned up at the recent Golden Globes, winning

0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:31.200
<v Speaker 1>Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Motion Picture, despite breaking

0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:34.000
<v Speaker 1>with every current day hit movie convention.

0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:38.279
<v Speaker 2>Here's Jordy, I don't think it is a maybe about architecture.

0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:44.000
<v Speaker 1>It's just filled with architecture, specifically brutalist architecture, which rose

0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:47.720
<v Speaker 1>to prominence after World War II. You know the style huge,

0:02:48.000 --> 0:02:52.800
<v Speaker 1>generally concrete monstrosities or marvels, depending on your perspective. Think

0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:55.959
<v Speaker 1>the Uts Building if you're in Sydney, or the High

0:02:56.040 --> 0:02:59.560
<v Speaker 1>Court Building or National Gallery if you've ever visited Canberra.

0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:02.800
<v Speaker 1>I grew up in Camera where even the bus stops

0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:07.800
<v Speaker 1>a brutalist. Brutalism made a virtue of the stark choices.

0:03:07.840 --> 0:03:10.639
<v Speaker 1>After World War II, a lot of buildings were needed,

0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:15.160
<v Speaker 1>concrete was cheap, and for his movie, Brady Corbey, who

0:03:15.320 --> 0:03:18.000
<v Speaker 1>wore sunglasses throughout his interview with Jordi by the Way,

0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.359
<v Speaker 1>brought his obsession with detail to life.

0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.320
<v Speaker 3>For us, it was very important to try and find

0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:28.079
<v Speaker 3>ways of representing architecture, not just presenting it and the

0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:32.560
<v Speaker 3>film's design, with the film's music, even the film's titles,

0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:35.520
<v Speaker 3>which are constructivist at the end, like we were always

0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:39.520
<v Speaker 3>trying to do our best to represent brutalism.

0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.680
<v Speaker 1>Movies today are shot on digital cameras that record to

0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:47.840
<v Speaker 1>a drive. Corbet shot his movie on film, and not

0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:52.240
<v Speaker 1>just that, he used VistaVision, a widescreen film format not

0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:55.240
<v Speaker 1>used in Hollywood since the early nineteen sixties.

0:03:56.480 --> 0:03:59.680
<v Speaker 3>Part of just the quality of the image really just

0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:03.680
<v Speaker 3>come from torturing the negative and you get so much

0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:07.960
<v Speaker 3>character from the grain. It's funny because nowadays with QC

0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:11.360
<v Speaker 3>for streaming and stuff. Every time I make a movie,

0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:13.480
<v Speaker 3>it bounces back to me because they think it's a

0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:19.719
<v Speaker 3>mistake and we're so accustomed now to everything originating in

0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:24.040
<v Speaker 3>four or six K. But for me, movies look like this,

0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.440
<v Speaker 3>this sort of artifact. It's something really tangible and I

0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:29.040
<v Speaker 3>think really transporting to the period.

0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:32.799
<v Speaker 1>Did you enjoy this movie?

0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.240
<v Speaker 2>I loved it, but I wouldn't say it's an enjoyable movie.

0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:41.520
<v Speaker 2>It's three and a half hours. There's a baked fifteen

0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:46.200
<v Speaker 2>minute intermission, and the first half played, and then I

0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:47.880
<v Speaker 2>ran to the bathroom to text with my friends, like,

0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:50.960
<v Speaker 2>this is a best film I've seen in so long.

0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.440
<v Speaker 2>I'm so excited. And then the second half is just

0:04:53.520 --> 0:05:00.680
<v Speaker 2>like tragedy and trauma. So I loved the experience of

0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:03.960
<v Speaker 2>watching the film because I truly did not know what

0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.120
<v Speaker 2>direction it was going to take at any moment. The

0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:11.520
<v Speaker 2>way it looks is so breath taking. Five minutes into it,

0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:15.560
<v Speaker 2>there's this shot of a bus and the greens are

0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:18.440
<v Speaker 2>so vivid that I started crying because I was like,

0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:21.240
<v Speaker 2>oh my gosh, like, movies don't look like this anymore.

0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.680
<v Speaker 2>It looks so good. I just admire the goal and

0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.160
<v Speaker 2>the guts of it all. Like Brady Corbey said himself

0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:30.680
<v Speaker 2>in his Gone Glades acceptance speech that no one was

0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:33.919
<v Speaker 2>asking for a three and a half hour maybe on brutalism,

0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:38.640
<v Speaker 2>and the fact that he got it off the ground

0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:43.679
<v Speaker 2>filmed this decade spanning thing for under ten million dollars

0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:47.160
<v Speaker 2>should be celebrated. I like what he stands for, and

0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:49.760
<v Speaker 2>I think that his sentiment will resonate with people that

0:05:50.160 --> 0:05:51.840
<v Speaker 2>care about movies.

0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.320
<v Speaker 1>Brutalism is not an easy form of architecture to love.

0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:58.120
<v Speaker 1>It's not a kind of a lovable word. It's not

0:05:58.240 --> 0:05:59.760
<v Speaker 1>really doesn't really sound like there's going to be a

0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:00.520
<v Speaker 1>date movie.

0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.360
<v Speaker 2>Oh depends on what kind of relationship you have. I

0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:08.840
<v Speaker 2>think no, it is. It's achingly romantic. It's basically Brady

0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:11.880
<v Speaker 2>Callby making a movie about how hard it is to

0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:15.039
<v Speaker 2>make movies. And I think the Van Buren character is

0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:22.000
<v Speaker 2>like the film industry. To him.

0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:26.320
<v Speaker 3>This was the only way that I could really make

0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:31.159
<v Speaker 3>a movie about making a movie. Unfortunately, the documentary of

0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:34.240
<v Speaker 3>the making of our movies would not look like Burden

0:06:34.279 --> 0:06:38.000
<v Speaker 3>of Dreams or a Heart of Darkness, because it'd be

0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:42.159
<v Speaker 3>much more administrative than that. I think that writing this

0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:45.760
<v Speaker 3>with my wife was something like an exorcism and a

0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:49.000
<v Speaker 3>way for us to sort of channel a lot of

0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:54.599
<v Speaker 3>our frustration and rage about this process. Most companies that

0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:59.360
<v Speaker 3>are financing movies nowadays are especially risk averse, so it's

0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:03.440
<v Speaker 3>very tricky and it requires a hugelep of faith, not

0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:08.200
<v Speaker 3>just from financiers but from absolutely everyone involved, because to

0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.280
<v Speaker 3>make movies like this it's a huge investment of time

0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:13.800
<v Speaker 3>for very little financial return.

0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.320
<v Speaker 1>Coming up, how Guy Peas menaced his way to a

0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:30.040
<v Speaker 1>Best Supporting Actor nomination. When it came to casting the

0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:33.840
<v Speaker 1>role of mid century American industrialist Harrison le van Buren.

0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:38.040
<v Speaker 1>The Brutalists director Brady Corbey set his sights on one

0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:40.640
<v Speaker 1>particular Australian guy, Piers.

0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:42.280
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, he's amazing.

0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:45.640
<v Speaker 1>I really love guy Luks played their role.

0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:50.760
<v Speaker 3>I wanted somebody that was still really attractive in the role.

0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:55.480
<v Speaker 3>There was, of course a version of the American industrialist

0:07:55.680 --> 0:08:00.120
<v Speaker 3>that was geriatric, but I wanted there to be this virility.

0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:04.680
<v Speaker 3>I wanted to feel that these two men were in

0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.160
<v Speaker 3>some ways at least physically evenly matched.

0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:11.440
<v Speaker 1>But it was Piece's approach to accidents that really attracted

0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:14.760
<v Speaker 1>Corbe to him. And Pierce has been nominated for best

0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:15.600
<v Speaker 1>supporting actor.

0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:22.040
<v Speaker 3>It is no coincidence that fate brought us together on

0:08:22.160 --> 0:08:23.400
<v Speaker 3>the aid of my mother's dad.

0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:27.360
<v Speaker 1>I'm good at reading the signs.

0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:34.160
<v Speaker 3>I saw his performance years ago and Todd Haynes Mildred Pierce.

0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.240
<v Speaker 3>It really stuck with me. It's just such a fantastic performance.

0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:41.400
<v Speaker 3>He was doing a sort of variation of the mid

0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:46.640
<v Speaker 3>century dialect on that project, and that is really difficult

0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:49.360
<v Speaker 3>to pull off, and he just fucking nailed it.

0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he's so sensational in this From the moment he

0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:55.560
<v Speaker 2>walks into the screen like he is in that character,

0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.320
<v Speaker 2>you don't have to adjust to anything. He plays that

0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:01.199
<v Speaker 2>role so well that he threatens to still the movie

0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:03.400
<v Speaker 2>from Adrian Brady. He's so watchable.

0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:09.720
<v Speaker 3>The reception obviously has been fantastic. But if the film

0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.640
<v Speaker 3>also functions even just a little bit commercially, because we

0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:15.640
<v Speaker 3>obviously we don't need to make a billion dollars on

0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.160
<v Speaker 3>a movie that was made for so little, I would

0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:21.160
<v Speaker 3>hope that that would help the cultural shift along a

0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:25.640
<v Speaker 3>little bit and you know, hopefully create a little bit

0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:31.040
<v Speaker 3>more space for really challenging works about adults for adults,

0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:33.600
<v Speaker 3>because it's increasingly rare.

0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:47.520
<v Speaker 1>Jordy Gray's story about the Brutalist is live now at

0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.280
<v Speaker 1>the Australian dot com dot a you Slash Review. Thanks

0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:53.640
<v Speaker 1>for joining us on the front this week. Our team

0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:58.040
<v Speaker 1>is Jasper Leek, Kristin Amyot, Leah Tamaglue, Tiffany Dimak, Joshua Burton,

0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:00.319
<v Speaker 1>Stephanie Coombs and Nate Claire Hoppy.