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Telegraph
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Within a few years, The Brutalist will be consigned to oblivion, where it belongs
Much has been written about Brady Corbet's epic, Oscar-winning film The Brutalist, whose 215 minutes (including an interval, as in the old days) I experienced recently. Some say high art is for the few, and Corbet clearly intended his film to be high art. I happened to be in Australia and saw the film in Sydney, where, only three weeks after its release, I struggled to find a screening. When I did, it was in a tiny auditorium, in the company of no more than 20 others. These days, perhaps box-office takings matter less than later home-entertainment revenue from Blu-rays and streaming. The Brutalist is released on disc here next month. It already has a review on Amazon (the film, not the Blu-ray package) that calls it 'Possibly the dullest film ever made. Nothing to like anywhere' and gives it one grudging star, perhaps because one can't give it zero. Doubtless, Corbet would feel it confirms the view that high art is not for the masses. His film is self-indulgent and far too long: I found myself wondering what a master editor such as David Lean would have done with it. The story itself, though not bad, is implausible: the idea that a Bauhaus-trained, prize-winning architect would, on surviving the Nazi death camps, arrive in the United States and end up shovelling coal is hard to believe, given the construction boom in post-war America. That also brings me to a nagging doubt about the originality of the conception. Almost from the moment it started, I was reminded of Ayn Rand's vast (and almost unreadable) 1943 novel The Fountainhead, and the preposterous but enjoyable King Vidor film of it made in 1949, starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. The Brutalist is effectively The Fountainhead with an added backstory of the persecution of the Jews and their displacement into an ever-wider diaspora. In both films, the main character is an architect (in Corbet's, László Tóth, played by Adrien Brody; in Vidor's, Howard Roark, played by Cooper) who is not allowed to execute his particular vision, is wronged and ends up doing manual labour (Roark goes to work in a quarry, but both the book and the film suggest an element of psychosexual masochism behind that decision; Tóth does so solely because he'd otherwise starve). Both men acquire a wealthy patron, and their relationship goes awry. Yet in both cases, the architect triumphs in the end – Roark after a court case in which he justifies blowing up a block of flats for which his ultramodern design has been unilaterally altered; Tóth after many years of brutalist constructions. Both films end with a speech of justification: Roark delivers his; a wheelchair-bound Tóth has his delivered by his niece as he prepares to be honoured at the Venice Biennale. Roark's speech is philosophical, about the importance of the integrity of art, and the importance of it conforming to the artist's conception. Tóth's niece discloses that his original radical work in America, the Van Buren Institute, was designed to include spaces reminiscent of Buchenwald, where he had been incarcerated, and Dachau, where his wife and niece had languished. But the stories of the two films are fundamentally the same: architects (whom we are invited in both cases to take as symbols of the artistic firmament) must be allowed to create without interference from others, if their work is to have its most profound meaning: all else is worthless. Unlike The Fountainhead, The Brutalist is not overacted or absurd. Adrien Brody probably deserved his Best Actor Oscar, though his performance is not so profound as it was in 2002's The Pianist, which was a far better film. Felicity Jones as Erzsébet, his wife, is superior, and Guy Pearce deserves high praise for playing the repulsive Van Buren, Tóth's patron. Although ridiculed and slated by critics in 1949, The Fountainhead has become a cult film, perhaps for the wrong reasons – certainly for reasons Rand herself would find offensive, as they revolve around its unintentional humour. Whether in three-quarters of a century The Brutalist will have attained quite such status is, I think, doubtful. As Corbet embarks on his next project, he might profit from being less of the auteur, with all the pretentiousness that goes with that, and a bit more of the good old-fashioned film director.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Behind the scenes with the best actor nominees for the 2025 Oscars
At the 97th annual Academy Awards, presented on March 2, Adrien Brody won the Oscar for best actor for "The Brutalist." Watch scenes from the winning performance and others nominated in the category of best actor, as well as interviews with the nominees below. Adrien Brody, "The Brutalist" In 2003 Adrien Brody became the youngest best actor Oscar-winner in history for his performance in Roman Polanski's "The Pianist," as Wladyslaw Szpilman, a musician struggling to survive in the Jewish ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. It was a role for which he virtually starved himself, losing 30 pounds, all while learning the piano so that he could play Chopin. Twenty-two years later, Brody is back with his second Oscar nomination for "The Brutalist," Brady Corbet's lacerating tale of László Tóth, a Hungarian Jewish architect who emigrates to the United States, and his efforts both to resume his career and to assimilate in a society where antisemitism and classism are rife. Tóth is hired by a wealthy Pennsylvania industrialist to build a massive community center in his "brutalist" style – a form of architecture that's light on decoration and heavy on concrete. In this scene, Tóth – who is working a construction site in Pennsylvania – is discovered by Harrison Lee Van Buren (best supporting actor nominee Guy Pearce), who sees in Tóth a talent for which he wants to be the patron. Tóth accepts a commission. But once his wife Erzsébet (best supporting actress nominee Felicity Jones) arrives from Europe, Tóth feels caught between his artistic impulses and the realities of working in an America that, in many cases, is closed to the foreign born: Brody, whose mother and grandparents fled Hungary during the 1956 revolution, said their sacrifices informed his performance. "There was so much unknown, and a lot of loss," he told "Sunday Morning." "And all of those sacrifices have kind of laid the foundation for my own existence and what has been accessible to me." He also heard the voice of his Hungarian grandfather in Tóth. "I remember my grandfather's accent was very, very heavy," he said. "I conjure it up. I also knew every bad word in Hungarian as a kid. So, I infused some of that in it that's not in the script!" In this extended interview with "Sunday Morning," Brody believes that empathy helped shape his own choices as an actor, "trying to find films that have social relevance, or to represent people who don't have a voice and to give them that through me in some respect." Brody won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, the Golden Globe for best motion picture actor (drama), and the BAFTA for "The Brutalist." The film received 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture and best director (Brady Corbet). "The Brutalist," released by A24, is playing in select theaters in 70mm, and is available via VOD. UPDATED: Brody received his second Academy Award, winning for his performance as László Tóth in "The Brutalist." [The film also won Academy Awards for its cinematography and original score.] In an emotional speech, Brody addressed the film community: "Acting is a very fragile profession. It looks very glamorous, and in certain moments it is, but the one thing that I've gained having the privilege to come back here is to have some perspective. And no matter where you are in your career, no matter what you've accomplished, it can all go away, and I think what makes this night most special is the awareness of that, and the gratitude that I have to still do the work that I love. "Winning an award like this is, it signifies a destination. And It's something my character references in the film, but to me it also, beyond the pinnacle of a career, it is a chance to begin again, and the opportunity to hopefully be fortunate enough so that the next 20 years of my life that I can prove that I am worthy of such meaningful and important and relevant roles." Brody alluded to both the characters he played in "The Pianist" and "The Brutalist," saying, "I'm here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war, and systematic oppression, and of anti-semitism and racism, and of othering. ... I pray for a healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world, and I believe if the past can teach us anything, it's a reminder to not let hate go unchecked." Timothée Chalamet, "A Complete Unknown" Timothée Chalamet earned his first best actor Oscar nomination at age 22 for "Call Me By Your Name," as a teenage boy who becomes the target of an older man. In "A Complete Unknown," Chalamet plays the iconic singer-songwriter Bob Dylan during the years when he made a name for himself as a folk artist and as a rock star who, to a segment of his fans, left the roots of folk music behind. In this scene Dylan is introduced by Pete Seeger (best supporting actor nominee Edward Norton) for his first appearance at New York's Folk City, where he performs "I Was Young When I Left Home": Prior to shooting, Chalamet travelled to Minnesota to research Dylan's roots and his formative days. He returned to the state for a screening of the finished film in Minneapolis. In December Chalamet told CBS Minnesota station WCCO, "I think he's very proud of his Minnesota heritage, and I think, in some ways, the way I relate to him is, I think the iron ore in his songs and the iron ore in his voice — as a New Yorker, as a 28-year-old New Yorker, I don't think my path would have really brought me out here, ever. "So, the first time I got here I thought, 'Wow, what a gift, Bob Dylan, being in this guy's worldview.'" The actor was first attached to the project in 2019, but shooting was repeatedly delayed due to COVID and then the actors' strike. In the intervening years, Chalamet learned how to play the guitar. "I don't know if I'll ever get this much time to work on something in advance," he told The Hollywood Reporter. He also gained 20 pounds prior to shooting, to better match the folk singer's physique. He said the role marked the furthest that he'd stretched himself. "And it became so biblical to me in terms of this man's life and his work that I felt if I let my focus err for a second, that I'd be self-loathing about it for years to come. I had three months to play Bob Dylan, and the rest of my life I don't get to be about that, so why not give it my all?" To connect with what the reclusive Dylan represented, the actor told "60 Minutes" he disconnected from his own life for the two-and-a-half months of filming. He did not use his cellphone, or have visitors on set. "I've never approached a character so intensely as Bob, 'cause I have such respect for the material," Chalamet said. "And I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I remembered that I was lazy on a day when something went wrong." In addition to learning how to play the guitar and the harmonica, the actor told "60 Minutes" he learned to perform about 40 Bob Dylan songs — far more than were originally called for in the script. But while Chalamet pre-recorded all the Dylan songs he'd sing in the movie (to be played back on set during filming), he said they sounded "too clean," and so he tried performing live on set, doing so the first time in a scene in which Dylan visits his terminally ill hero, folk artist Woody Guthrie, in a New Jersey hospital. Director James Mangold said he knew Chalamet nailed "Song to Woody" on his first take: "There's a moment in that scene right at the last stanza where he holds a note – that would never have happened if we'd used the playback track," Mangold said. Chalamet also examined video of the singer, including footage taken of a Dylan performing a duet of "It Ain't Me Babe" with Joan Baez, which he played at a reduced speed. "That was when I really slowed down, 'cause it's fascinating the way Bob observes her," he said. "And how he refuses eye contact in that video." In "A Complete Unknown," Chalamet and Barbaro perform "It Ain't Me Babe": Speaking of the finished film, Chalamet said, "I was honored and counting my lucky stars that we got to bring this to life. Because nothing's a given. No opportunity is a given. No career is a given. I talked a lot about this with Edward Norton: the gift to work on something where every day — whether listening to the musicians we were playing, or the musicians that inspired them, or reading the authors that inspired them — you learn more about yourself." Chalamet told "60 Minutes" he's not sure what he'd say to Dylan if he ever did meet him – but maybe not even mention the movie, and only talk about the weather: "What his favorite sandwich is, or something like that ... I would play it super cool, you know? 'Cause I feel like he's probably used to so much hyperbole and praise." Chalamet won the Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance. Nominated for 8 Academy Awards, "A Complete Unknown," released by Searchlight Pictures, is playing in theaters. and is available via VOD. See also: Bob Dylan's enduring love affair with the movies ("Sunday Morning")Colman Domingo, "Sing Sing" At New York's Sing Sing prison, the organization Rehabilitation Through the Arts, or RTA, was formed to produce plays featuring incarcerated men performing classics by Shakespeare, as well as original plays that spoke to the lived experiences of men. The value of theater as a tool of reform was made palpable by RTA's success; compared to the prison's typical recidivism rate of 60%, only 3% of former inmates who had taken part in RTA were back in prison three years or less after their release. Directed by Greg Kwedar, the film "Sing Sing" was built on the experiences of real-life former inmates (two of whom, Clarence Maclin and John Divine G Whitfield, share an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay). Colman Domingo was nominated for playing Divine G, a founding member of Sing Sing's theater program and an award-winning author. In this scene, Divine G attends a clemency hearing and describes to the commissioners how the prison program grew into something he calls "wonderful": Domingo was a journeyman actor whose work in recent years has exploded, from "Fear the Walking Dead" and "Euphoria," to "The Color Purple" and "The Madness." He received two Tony Award nominations (for acting in the musical "The Scottsboro Boys" and producing the play "Fat Ham"). He earned his first Oscar nomination last year for playing civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in "Rustin." He talked about his recent success on "CBS Mornings" last November: "I feel that it's been a long time in my journey, where suddenly the roles are sort of meeting my skill set and what I'm curious about and what I can do. So, it just feels like I'm a journeyman actor. I've been working for 34 years, and it just feels like, I never knew what this time would be like." Last March, on the day of the Oscars, Domingo posted a picture of himself on Instagram as a child, writing, "His dream came true. Not easily. With dedication, hard work, hardships, triumphs, pitfalls, detours, reroutes and love and faith. Today is a good day for this kid. He already won. And as you can tell he always loved a pop of color. Got it from his parents." That "pop of color" led to Domingo being asked by Anna Wintour to co-chair the 2025 Met Gala. "She actually said, 'I'm not sure if you'd be interested in something like this or if you have time,'" Domingo laughed. "I said, 'I think I have time!'" "Sing Sing," released by A24, is available on VOD. See also: Rehabilitation Through the Arts: Breaking the cycle of incarceration ("Sunday Morning")Ralph Fiennes, "Conclave" In the thriller "Conclave," based on Robert Harris' novel, Ralph Fiennes plays a Vatican insider tasked with running the gathering of the College of Cardinals in Rome to select a new pope. As Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, Fiennes navigates the intrigue of papal politics, a reluctant player consumed with doubt. In this scene, Lawrence gives a sermon about the power of uncertainty in faith. "I like characters that have contradictions inside them," Fiennes told "Sunday Morning." His reaction to reading the part of Lawrence was, "Oh, I love this. This is a human. He's not a saint. He's a good man trying to find his way. "I was brought up a Catholic and then rebelled when I was 13," Fiennes said. "My mother was a committed Catholic. So, 'God questions' have been in my family since I was a child." And did he come away with any answers to his own questions? "No, I came away with more questions," he said. Fiennes was nominated for an Oscar twice before, for "Schindler's List" and "The English Patient." His performance in "Conclave" also earned him Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA nominations. "Conclave" is playing in theaters and is available via VOD. Sebastian Stan, "The Apprentice" In "The Apprentice," set in 1970s and '80s New York City, a young Donald Trump, trying to take charge of his father's real estate business, comes under the tutelage of Roy Cohn, a notorious attorney-fixer, who instructs Trump on how to promote himself in the media. Cohn's dictum: Attack, attack, attack. Deny, deny, deny. Never admit defeat … lessons that Trump would carry through in his business career, social media projections and, later, political branding. In this scene, Trump (best actor nominee Sebastian Stan) tries to sell himself to a newspaper reporter, using the motivation of Cohn (best supporting actor nominee Jeremy Strong) to not-quite-successful effect. It's clear he has a ways to go… The film, written by journalist Gabriel Sherman and directed by Ali Abbasi, premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival. While it received critical praise, potential film distributors shied away after the Trump campaign threatened to sue. The movie was ultimately picked up by Briarcliff Entertainment and released shortly before the 2024 presidential election. In an appearance last October on "CBS Mornings," Stan (whose credits include "Gossip Girl," "I, Tonya," "Pam & Tommy," and playing Bucky Barnes in Marvel's Captain America franchise), admitted that he'd been warned by some to stay away from the project, specifically because it could be seen as a political third rail. "Yeah, it's usually when I hear 'Don't do it,' I end up doing it!" he laughed. "But generally speaking, I think fear should motivate us to go into the storm, not run away from it. "People are going to come into the film with a lot of baggage, a lot of projections [about Trump]," he said. "But I think trying to strip away all the noise and getting down to the basics — what is the emotional need? What is the drive? What was the potential of the man, and where did it end up? How did it all get to this today? And I think there's still value in understanding that. "I think the film's about trust," said Stan. "I think we have an opportunity to look at these people and genuinely ask ourselves, do we trust them? Can we use our human instinct rather than what we're being told to think, feel, and understand? Can we use our instinct to trust these people as we're going forward into the future?" This is Stan's first Academy Award nomination. He received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for his "Apprentice" performance as well. This year he also received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in "A Different Man." "The Apprentice," nominated for two Oscars, is available via VOD. See also: Has Hollywood abandoned the political movie? ("Sunday Morning") More on the 2025 Oscars: Behind the scenes with the best actress Oscar nomineesSee the full list of Oscar nominationsThe biggest Oscar nomination snubs of 2025 War in Ukraine takes perilous turn after Zelenskyy, Trump Oval Office argument Trump approval rating at 51%, new CBS News poll shows The hidden side of Johnny Carson
The Guardian
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Why The Brutalist should win the best picture Oscar
OK, let's get this out of the way: yes, The Brutalist is long. Very long. Backside-numbingly long. Which is as you might expect of a decades-spanning tale of a Holocaust survivor architect's bruising encounter with the American dream. Still, that three-and-a-half hour run time seems to have been presented as Exhibit A in the case against Brady Corbet's film; that it's too grand, too ambitious, too full of itself. It's got a bloody interval, for Christ's sake! Who does this Corbet fella think he is? Which seems strange, because a lot of what the film has been criticised for is usually seen as an asset. For good or ill, American cinema's high-water marks, from Citizen Kane to The Godfather and beyond, tend to be big, muscular movies that believe they have something profound to say about the country of their making. And The Brutalist certainly has things to say, however you feel about how it goes about saying them: about art and patronage, the US's relationship with Europe, and the relentless churn of capitalism. With so many weighty ideas to pack in, that run time starts to look, if anything, a little stingy. That such a swing for the fences film could be made at all is all the more impressive. We're in an era of retreat for indie cinema, when many films fail to ever find their way on to the big screen, instead heading straight to streaming and getting lost in the wash of 'content', at a time when horizons have shrunk, along with budgets. The Brutalist's own budget is small too by modern standards, at less than $10m. But within those strictures, Corbet and his team have managed to construct an uncompromising American epic – and somehow turned a profit. It took a fair bit of sacrifice – Corbet and his partner, the film's screenwriter Mona Fastvold, have had to cut their cloth accordingly ('swapping champagne for sparkling wine,' is how he puts it), and the director claims not to have made a penny from his latest film. But that is the cost of making something entirely on your own terms, of sheer creative bloody-mindedness. It's a characteristic that, as plenty have spotted, is shared by the character at the centre of the film, the fictional Hungarian architect László Tóth, played brilliantly by Adrien Brody. Bauhaus trained, Tóth has built a name for himself in Europe with his austere, clean-lined constructions, but his livelihood – and far more besides – has been disturbed by Hitler's rise. Separated from his wife and niece, he has survived the Holocaust, but arrives in the US without reputation or money, though still feeling the same sting of antisemitism he experienced in Europe. Tóth soon falls into the orbit of Guy Pearce's stiff-jawed industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren, whose crass son Harry (Joe Alwyn) has recruited him to renovate his father's library as a surprise while he is away on business. At first Van Buren hates Tóth's dramatic update, with its focus on light and space, but attention from the architectural community eventually convinces him of its brilliance. This cycle of adulation and rejection between patron and client will recur throughout the film, sometimes violently. Soon Van Buren has commissioned Tóth for a grander project: a vast community centre in honour of his late mother. Its construction will span decades, hampered by the changing financial fortunes of its patron as well as Tóth's own flinty perfectionism (only the finest Tuscan marble will do, after all). Complicating things further is the arrival in the film's second half of his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), fiercely protective of her husband, and clear-eyed about the person he has gotten into bed with. It's that back half – and one particularly shocking scene that completely unravels the relationship between Tóth and Van Buren– that has most divided critics. Certainly, The Brutalist's big animating moment isn't subtle – but then subtle gestures wouldn't really suit the film. Everything about it, like the movement it takes its name from, is designed to be imposing, from Lol Crawley's stark, wide-angled cinematography to Daniel Blumberg's relentless, abrasive score. But this is also a film intent on holding your attention once it grabs it, directly plotted and propulsively paced. Assisted by the film's much maligned but ultimately palate-cleansing interval, that three-and a half-hours-plus run time sails by. It helps that the performances are as good as they are. This is an impressive return to leading man prominence for Brody, whose career seemed to have been reduced to that of starry bit-parter – popping up entertainingly in Succession or Wes Anderson's films, but rarely provided with anything to really chew on. That is certainly not the case here: Tóth is both a figure of immense sympathy, but also at times really dislikable – stubborn, resentful, bad-tempered – and Brody is able to bring out his sharp edges. Just as impressive, is Pearce's performance as Van Buren, a character who could so easily slip into booming-voiced, blue-blooded caricature. But his Van Buren also nurses one hell of an inferiority complex, towards the European aesthete who has drifted into his life, one that he tries to overpower with money and American force of character. That tension, feels timely as both the US and Europe re-evaluate their relationship with each another. It's one of the many reasons why, despite its period setting, The Brutalist feels of the moment. This a film that seeks to awe you into submission with its giant images and ideas. When it comes to this year's best picture, the Academy should think big.
CBS News
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Behind the scenes with the best actor Oscar nominees at the 2025 Academy Awards
Watch scenes from the performances nominated in the category of best actor at the 97th annual Academy Awards, as well as interviews with the nominees below. The 2025 Oscars will be presented on Sunday, March 2. Adrien Brody, "The Brutalist" In 2003 Adrien Brody became the youngest best actor Oscar-winner in history for his performance in Roman Polanski's "The Pianist," as Wladyslaw Szpilman, a musician struggling to survive in the Jewish ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. It was a role for which he virtually starved himself, losing 30 pounds, all while learning the piano so that he could play Chopin. Twenty-two years later, Brody is back with his second Oscar nomination for "The Brutalist," Brady Corbet's lacerating tale of László Tóth, a Hungarian Jewish architect who emigrates to the United States, and his efforts both to resume his career and to assimilate in a society where antisemitism and classism are rife. Tóth is hired by a wealthy Pennsylvania industrialist to build a massive community center in his "brutalist" style – a form of architecture that's light on decoration and heavy on concrete. In this scene, Tóth – who is working a construction site in Pennsylvania – is discovered by Harrison Lee Van Buren (best supporting actor nominee Guy Pearce), who sees in Tóth a talent for which he wants to be the patron. Tóth accepts a commission. But once his wife Erzsébet (best supporting actress nominee Felicity Jones) arrives from Europe, Tóth feels caught between his artistic impulses and the realities of working in an America that, in many cases, is closed to the foreign born: Brody, whose mother and grandparents fled Hungary during the 1956 revolution, said their sacrifices informed his performance. "There was so much unknown, and a lot of loss," he told "Sunday Morning.""And all of those sacrifices have kind of laid the foundation for my own existence and what has been accessible to me." He also heard the voice of his Hungarian grandfather in Tóth. "I remember my grandfather's accent was very, very heavy," he said. "I conjure it up. I also knew every bad word in Hungarian as a kid. So, I infused some of that in it that's not in the script!" In this extended interview with "Sunday Morning," Brody believes that empathy helped shape his own choices as an actor, "trying to find films that have social relevance, or to represent people who don't have a voice and to give them that through me in some respect." Brody won the New York Film Critics Circle Award, the Golden Globe for best motion picture actor (drama), and the BAFTA for "The Brutalist." The film received 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture and best director (Brady Corbet). "The Brutalist," released by A24, is playing in select theaters in 70mm, and is available via VOD. Timothée Chalamet, "A Complete Unknown" Timothée Chalamet earned his first best actor Oscar nomination at age 22 for "Call Me By Your Name," as a teenage boy who becomes the target of an older man. In "A Complete Unknown," Chalamet plays the iconic singer-songwriter Bob Dylan during the years when he made a name for himself as a folk artist and as a rock star who, to a segment of his fans, left the roots of folk music behind. In this scene Dylan is introduced by Pete Seeger (best supporting actor nominee Edward Norton) for his first appearance at New York's Folk City, where he performs "I Was Young When I Left Home": Prior to shooting, Chalamet travelled to Minnesota to research Dylan's roots and his formative days. He returned to the state for a screening of the finished film in Minneapolis. In December Chalamet told CBS Minnesota station WCCO, "I think he's very proud of his Minnesota heritage, and I think, in some ways, the way I relate to him is, I think the iron ore in his songs and the iron ore in his voice — as a New Yorker, as a 28-year-old New Yorker, I don't think my path would have really brought me out here, ever. "So, the first time I got here I thought, 'Wow, what a gift, Bob Dylan, being in this guy's worldview.'" The actor was first attached to the project in 2019, but shooting was repeatedly delayed due to COVID and then the actors' strike. In the intervening years, Chalamet learned how to play the guitar. "I don't know if I'll ever get this much time to work on something in advance," he told The Hollywood Reporter. He also gained 20 pounds prior to shooting, to better match the folk singer's physique. He said the role marked the furthest that he'd stretched himself. "And it became so biblical to me in terms of this man's life and his work that I felt if I let my focus err for a second, that I'd be self-loathing about it for years to come. I had three months to play Bob Dylan, and the rest of my life I don't get to be about that, so why not give it my all?" To connect with what the reclusive Dylan represented, the actor told "60 Minutes" he disconnected from his own life for the two-and-a-half months of filming. He did not use his cellphone, or have visitors on set. "I've never approached a character so intensely as Bob, 'cause I have such respect for the material," Chalamet said. "And I knew I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I remembered that I was lazy on a day when something went wrong." In addition to learning how to play the guitar and the harmonica, the actor told "60 Minutes" he learned to perform about 40 Bob Dylan songs — far more than were originally called for in the script. But while Chalamet pre-recorded all the Dylan songs he'd sing in the movie (to be played back on set during filming), he said they sounded "too clean," and so he tried performing live on set, doing so the first time in a scene in which Dylan visits his terminally ill hero, folk artist Woody Guthrie, in a New Jersey hospital. Director James Mangold said he knew Chalamet nailed "Song to Woody" on his first take: "There's a moment in that scene right at the last stanza where he holds a note – that would never have happened if we'd used the playback track," Mangold said. Chalamet also examined video of the singer, including footage taken of a Dylan performing a duet of "It Ain't Me Babe" with Joan Baez, which he played at a reduced speed. "That was when I really slowed down, 'cause it's fascinating the way Bob observes her," he said. "And how he refuses eye contact in that video." In "A Complete Unknown," Chalamet and Barbaro perform "It Ain't Me Babe": Speaking of the finished film, Chalamet said, "I was honored and counting my lucky stars that we got to bring this to life. Because nothing's a given. No opportunity is a given. No career is a given. I talked a lot about this with Edward Norton: the gift to work on something where every day — whether listening to the musicians we were playing, or the musicians that inspired them, or reading the authors that inspired them — you learn more about yourself." Chalamet told "60 Minutes" he's not sure what he'd say to Dylan if he ever did meet him – but maybe not even mention the movie, and only talk about the weather: "What his favorite sandwich is, or something like that ... I would play it super cool, you know? 'Cause I feel like he's probably used to so much hyperbole and praise." Chalamet won the Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance. Nominated for 8 Academy Awards, "A Complete Unknown," released by Searchlight Pictures, is playing in theaters. and is available via VOD. Colman Domingo, "Sing Sing" At New York's Sing Sing prison, the organization Rehabilitation Through the Arts, or RTA, was formed to produce plays featuring incarcerated men performing classics by Shakespeare, as well as original plays that spoke to the lived experiences of men. The value of theater as a tool of reform was made palpable by RTA's success; compared to the prison's typical recidivism rate of 60%, only 3% of former inmates who had taken part in RTA were back in prison three years or less after their release. Directed by Greg Kwedar, the film "Sing Sing" was built on the experiences of real-life former inmates (two of whom, Clarence Maclin and John Divine G Whitfield, share an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay). Colman Domingo was nominated for playing Divine G, a founding member of Sing Sing's theater program and an award-winning author. In this scene, Divine G attends a clemency hearing and describes to the commissioners how the prison program grew into something he calls "wonderful": Domingo was a journeyman actor whose work in recent years has exploded, from "Fear the Walking Dead" and "Euphoria," to "The Color Purple" and "The Madness." He received two Tony Award nominations (for acting in the musical "The Scottsboro Boys" and producing the play "Fat Ham"). He earned his first Oscar nomination last year for playing civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in "Rustin." He talked about his recent success on "CBS Mornings" last November: "I feel that it's been a long time in my journey, where suddenly the roles are sort of meeting my skill set and what I'm curious about and what I can do. So, it just feels like I'm a journeyman actor. I've been working for 34 years, and it just feels like, I never knew what this time would be like." Last March, on the day of the Oscars, Domingo posted a picture of himself on Instagram as a child, writing, "His dream came true. Not easily. With dedication, hard work, hardships, triumphs, pitfalls, detours, reroutes and love and faith. Today is a good day for this kid. He already won. And as you can tell he always loved a pop of color. Got it from his parents." That "pop of color" led to Domingo being asked by Anna Wintour to co-chair the 2025 Met Gala. "She actually said, 'I'm not sure if you'd be interested in something like this or if you have time,'" Domingo laughed. "I said, 'I think I have time!'" "Sing Sing," released by A24, is available on VOD. Ralph Fiennes, "Conclave" In the thriller "Conclave," based on Robert Harris' novel, Ralph Fiennes plays a Vatican insider tasked with running the gathering of the College of Cardinals in Rome to select a new pope. As Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, Fiennes navigates the intrigue of papal politics, a reluctant player consumed with doubt. In this scene, Lawrence gives a sermon about the power of uncertainty in faith. "I like characters that have contradictions inside them," Fiennes told "Sunday Morning." His reaction to reading the part of Lawrence was, "Oh, I love this. This is a human. He's not a saint. He's a good man trying to find his way. "I was brought up a Catholic and then rebelled when I was 13," Fiennes said. "My mother was a committed Catholic. So, 'God questions' have been in my family since I was a child." And did he come away with any answers to his own questions? "No, I came away with more questions," he said. Fiennes was nominated for an Oscar twice before, for "Schindler's List" and "The English Patient." His performance in "Conclave" also earned him Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA nominations. "Conclave" is playing in theaters and is available via VOD. Sebastian Stan, "The Apprentice" In "The Apprentice," set in 1970s and '80s New York City, a young Donald Trump, trying to take charge of his father's real estate business, comes under the tutelage of Roy Cohn, a notorious attorney-fixer, who instructs Trump on how to promote himself in the media. Cohn's dictum: Attack, attack, attack. Deny, deny, deny. Never admit defeat … lessons that Trump would carry through in his business career, social media projections and, later, political branding. In this scene, Trump (best actor nominee Sebastian Stan) tries to sell himself to a newspaper reporter, using the motivation of Cohn (best supporting actor nominee Jeremy Strong) to not-quite-successful effect. It's clear he has a ways to go… The film, written by journalist Gabriel Sherman and directed by Ali Abbasi, premiered at last year's Cannes Film Festival. While it received critical praise, potential film distributors shied away after the Trump campaign threatened to sue. The movie was ultimately picked up by Briarcliff Entertainment and released shortly before the 2024 presidential election. In an appearance last October on "CBS Mornings," Stan (whose credits include "Gossip Girl," "I, Tonya," "Pam & Tommy," and playing Bucky Barnes in Marvel's Captain America franchise), admitted that he'd been warned by some to stay away from the project, specifically because it could be seen as a political third rail. "Yeah, it's usually when I hear 'Don't do it,' I end up doing it!" he laughed. "But generally speaking, I think fear should motivate us to go into the storm, not run away from it. "People are going to come into the film with a lot of baggage, a lot of projections [about Trump]," he said. "But I think trying to strip away all the noise and getting down to the basics — what is the emotional need? What is the drive? What was the potential of the man, and where did it end up? How did it all get to this today? And I think there's still value in understanding that. "I think the film's about trust," said Stan. "I think we have an opportunity to look at these people and genuinely ask ourselves, do we trust them? Can we use our human instinct rather than what we're being told to think, feel, and understand? Can we use our instinct to trust these people as we're going forward into the future?" This is Stan's first Academy Award nomination. He received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for his "Apprentice" performance as well. This year he also received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in "A Different Man." "The Apprentice," nominated for two Oscars, is available via VOD. More on the 2024 Oscars: In: Academy Awards
The Independent
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
How The Brutalist made its disorienting, dazzling score: ‘It was hammers and screws making music!'
T he Brutalist begins with a squalling maelstrom of sound. In the mesmerising opening sequence of Brady Corbet's epic Best Picture frontrunner, we see Adrien Brody's László Tóth fleeing the Holocaust in the dark hold of a ocean liner before he eventually stumbles out into the light, elated but unbalanced, as the Statue of Liberty veers into view upside down. Staggering piano arpeggios and siren-like tubas fill the score, landing us disorientated and dazzled in Tóth's shoes. For composer Daniel Blumberg, who's up for a Best Original Score Oscar this weekend, that's the point. 'That's my approach to filmmaking,' he explains over a video call from his London flat. 'I want people to be in the world of the film, so it's about trying to find a sonic language that's specific to the piece.' There's an oft-quoted adage that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but Blumberg – once best known as the frontman of indie bands Yuck and Cajun Dance Party – found himself in the novel position of actually having to write music about architecture. Brody's Tóth is an acclaimed Hungarian-Jewish architect who finds himself struggling in the new world, first making furniture for his cousin and later working as a coal labourer. That is until an unlikely benefactor gives him the chance to once again design a building on a fantastic scale. Blumberg's music evokes the beauty and ambition of Tóth's work in its corresponding grandeur. The 34-year-old also took conceptual inspiration from the building sites that Tóth oversees in the film. 'The crude example is the prepared piano,' he says. 'You're wedging screws into the strings of the piano, and the hammers hit those strings, so it's like a cartoon of construction. Hammers and screws making music!' Blumberg has been friends with Corbet for a decade, since a night out in London when they bonded over shared taste in music, film and literature and the director ended up crashed out on Blumberg's sofa. Since then, Corbet has made his name with 2015's The Childhood of a Leader and the 2018 Natalie Portman-starring musical drama Vox Lux. This is the first time the pair have collaborated on a film, and for Blumberg it was an immersive and exhaustive experience. We tend to think of score composers plying their trade long after filming is completed – picture John Williams conducting his orchestra to the sight of Indiana Jones already leaping Nazi tanks on the screens behind him. That wasn't the case for Blumberg, who was on the set of The Brutalist outside of Budapest, Hungary,from day one. Blumberg started working on the score soon after Corbet first handed him the script, and a version of that opening we hear in the film – titled 'Overture (Ship)' – was already ready to blast over the set so that Brody and the cinematographers could match their movements to the sound rather than the other way round. For an exuberant scene set in a jazz club, Blumberg arranged for hand-picked musicians from Paris, Marseille and Berlin to fly to Hungary so that score and scene could be recorded live simultaneously. Blumberg brought in an extraordinary cast of veteran musicians to play on the soundtrack, many of whom were familiar to him from his days and nights at Dalston's Cafe OTO. John Tilbury played that prepared piano, while trumpeter Axel Dörner and percussionist Steve Noble were also given the freedom to express themselves. Sometimes, though, it wasn't possible for Blumberg to record the musicians he wanted where he wanted them. He and Corbet agreed that revered free improviser Evan Parker should play soprano saxophone inside the marble quarries of Carrara, where a key sequence takes place. When Parker was unable to travel to Italy, Blumberg turned to cutting-edge technology. He had experience of using a programme to record the ambience of a room and turning it into an algorithm that could recreate the unique echoes and atmosphere of the space on a recording. For the marble quarry, a very loud sound was needed. 'I was collaborating with this artist, Lydia Ourahmane, and she shot a gun in the quarry,' Blumberg explains. 'I recorded the gunshot, recorded the response to the gunshot, then removed the shot and put Evan's saxophone in.' The result was a way to manipulate the sound of Parker's saxophone so that it sounds like it's reverberating off the stark slabs of marble we see on film. All that effort and experimentation paid off. At last weekend's Baftas, Blumberg went home with the award for Best Original Score. He's hoping to repeat the trick at the Oscars, although he never dreamt about writing speeches when he first started out on this idiosyncratic project. Although the film feels like a true epic, it was shot for a relatively modest budget of $10m (£7.9m) as a truly independent production. Corbet has since said he's made 'zero dollars' from the endeavour, so the attention from the Academy has come as something of a surprise. 'I definitely didn't think about it at any point in the process,' he says of his Oscar nomination. 'Not until the film was bought for distribution and Brady started talking about release dates and stuff. Brady is an artist like me, we just have this urgency to make something.' He's pleased, though, that the Academy's spotlight will make it easier for Corbet to get his next project off the ground, and that it brings a much wider audience to the first-rate musicians he recruited. 'Steve Noble is one of the best artists I'll ever see in my life,' he says. 'He's of an older generation, and I'm lucky enough to be able to go to Cafe OTO and see him play solo for three days to an audience of 50 people. For this film, I recorded him playing drums in his kitchen. When I was in Los Angeles, doing a Q&A about the film in a big cinema, I was thinking of his kitchen. It's all quite surreal.'
