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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 2d

I‘ve wanted to see The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) for a while now, so it was probably a good time for me to finally watch Frankenstein (1931) properly.

The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 3d

It’s backwards because I saw Meek’s Cutoff before Beau Travail, but when I watched Denis’ film I thought of Reichardt’s.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 3d

I enjoyed what she did in Meek’s Cutoff. Welcome addition to the western genre. Plus, it has one of the most memorable slow dissolves I’ve seen. The settlers & wagons coming at you, left-side of the screen, through a river valley, dissolving like time into Meek appearing on the right, riding the sky

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 3d

She’s distinctive for sure. All three I’ve seen of hers have something special.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 3d

Thanks!

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 3d

I’m interested in seeing his earlier work. Have you seen them?

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 3d

I agree.
Instead of Zsofia's words, I returned to Lazslo's own from earlier in the film. It is his answer to Harrison' question of, "Why architecture?" I highlighted the part of the response that very well may point to why Zsofia, and her daughter, were the focus & the center of the epilogue.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 3d

You're right. she did. Which she attributed to being a woman. I had learned a lot about her a few years back when I was looking into the career of Barbara Loden.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 3d

An interesting tidbit that ties into our talk around art, the artist and capitalism from The Brutalist is that Reichardt had to take a gig on America's Next Top Model (possibly the most un-Reichardt gig you could come up with) to help earn the funds needed to film Old Joy.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

There has to be, right? And that it is Zsofia that we are wrestling with? Not Laszlo or Erszebet, but Zsofia, the character of the 3, which we interact with the least. So, why her? (And knowing that her name is the Hungarian variant of the Greek, Sophia, meaning wisdom.)

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

For myself, intended or not, Van's Buren's march up the hillside with his dinner guests in The Brutalist evoked Bergman's The Seventh Seal, foreshadowing Lazslo's "dance of death" with the building he constructs upon the hilltop.

The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

After 3 days, & 3 and 1/2 hours, I'm still processing the end of The Brutalist — from its repudiation of "what others try to sell" to the inversion of the adage, "it's the journey, not the destination," from the defiant, breaking the 4th wall, tone of adult Zsofia to the fade back to the start.

The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

Is this when and where her vow of silence began? And am I meant to re-interpret this scene differently now that I know where she ended up?

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

Almost like the filmmakers themselves were speaking. Yet, I felt the cut to her younger self, as a teenager in the Soviet interrogation room, undermined this potency. And I couldn't quite square this final image with my initial takeaways.
So, now, I'm looking at Zsofia in that room differently.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

Like the upside down Statue of Liberty near the film's beginning, the final line is an inversion. It flips the popular adage, "life is a journey, not a destination" on its head. That Zsofia says it defiantly, repudiating "what others try to sell," and to the camera, adds potency to the line.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

PS
That the adult Zsofia delivered that final line while staring straight into the camera, breaking the 4th wall, was a tremendous factor in how I felt at the end of the film. Cementing the impression that the film was aware of itself as film, which automatically added another layer.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

for me another room or space to recontextualize the film's themes and structure. Which is, by the looks of these questions and posts, ongoing.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

of Zsofia's speech. Inspired, defiant, sure. And I felt like I had a grasp on it. I saw it as the three of them, from their own places of suffering, had willed their way, transcendentally, to meaning in their lives.
But the speech's ending quote, and the fade into the final image, created

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

From the shrouded sex scene on I felt like I was navigating a different movie. I entered the epilogue a bit disoriented from Erzsebet's walking in the Van Buren confrontation, but hooked on Laszlo's "I will follow you until I die." And I was carried away, in the moment, by the words & intensity
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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

Do you think that Lazslo and Erzsebet lived fulfilling lives after moving to Israel to be with Zsofia?

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

Just for clarification, my raising of the current debates & views on Israel‘s status in the international community was a comment about the narrative structure of the film & how, through its emphasis on the next generation, it stressed that control of the narrative around the Holocaust was ongoing.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 4d

Capitalism as the Brutalist, even Laszlo, himself, as the self-tortured, self-destructed artist.

I said to James that the film has a strange sense of being both conspicuous and confounding.

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 5d

has taken on the conditions of his wife and niece — that of being in a wheelchair and silent — both fascinates and frustrates me.
May I ask you how you saw that scene at the end of Part 2, where Erszebet confronts the Van Buren family? As literal? As symbolic? In a real space? A liminal space?
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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 5d

answers that, “she is looking at him.” Though the design is unusual, even for him. Yet, she likes them. She mentions the small rooms & the high ceilings. Laszlo notes the need to look upward. These details are all mentioned in Zsofia’s speech at the Venice exhibit. That, in the epilogue, Laszlo

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The Civilian @tajiisawol.bsky.social · 5d

As for Laszlo, he’s in obvious tension with a life-instinct and death-instinct, but I was always unsure of what he was conscious of and what his motivations were. There’s a scene in which he watches Erszebet look over his designs for the Van Buren building. He asks her what she is doing. She….

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