The Brutalist narrates the dark heart of cinema and being. A tale at once bleak and hauntingly visceral, you are left to contend with the evil of exploitation in both mind and practice. You wonder how such comes to exist, even as you see it and must sit with it.
Contains mature themes and explicit depictions, including sexual content, that may be unsuitable for some viewers. Engage with discernment.
This post is about the movie The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce.
This Place is Rotten
The Corroding Creep of Exploitation
What are the casualties of that which wages beyond the long-hoped prospectus of refuge? Cynical in its discovery, ’til death it does one part. What is for the luck, if from tricycles and dances you are made the addict, shoveling coal upon your dreams?
To what certainty can we read such signs, if one is to degrade to the vice of their wonders? The pain is too much — more alone than you’ve ever been. No more content than the day you had been given the chance to live.
Tell me how you are. How you really are.
They don’t want us here.
I’m afraid it’s not that simple.
Dance With Her
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves to be free.”
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I implore myself to make no mistake of where I exist in what’s free. Ostensibly entranced are we, rejoicing at the sight of liberty. Thoughts of the provocative subset to happening, reckonings of the beloved, of no mind I know that soon it is to follow.
How greatly now do I see: beginnings embark with more than enough. To witness that, in time, it is we who change. Basic are needs, though in this life we creep; I question why so much of it drags us.
New to the eyes, it comes with a price — the quiet stare of malice and exploitation. I wish, if only I knew; I am not what I expected.
I look for somewhere else to stay.
Though to go on and do as I know. The horizon of the mind can be something of forward thinking, met by the rage of the bewildered.
Peace and respite — our search as we arrive at our ends.
A stature I am untrifled by.
Nothing Is Of Its Own Explanation
“Is there a better description of a cube than its construction?”
~ László
What do I say to the waking of disillusion?
To cast upon me as done unto you — what is it I do with the pain?
A beggar I am not. To boast or to grieve — neither is a giving for me. Designs, they speak for themselves; so much so, they speak for me too.
To see all that I have, to fancy that in which you have not. In relieving the pain, it absolves me.
I welcome, to no mind, possibility. Dining, and glasses, conversion and riches to troth. A seeing of being, a remark of thinking. Nothing is of its own explanation.
Was it fate that brought us together, to no coincidence of what there is to read? The parameters of which I know little, but visions make real ideations.
To what good fortunes may fall upon me here — what poor fortunes may not? Intriguing in opportunity, a great surprise to keep going, and so to make wonder of design.
And so this is alive, to think that so am I. Am I missing something?
I wake the day to my additions. I bring forth modern depictions.
Presentations of worship — I, the foreign person.
Does this mean we might see each other again soon?
The Hard Core of Beauty
“Inside, you must look upward.”
~ László
What happened?
My significant other is here, though I petition solely myself—the thinker. I longed for so long that, in my idle experience and thinking, discontent is now all I see.
So much rivalry, rendered trivial for the sake of morale. Yet there is nothing friendly in it, as morality lies on the hillside of manipulative tolerance and preyed capital.
Is it sane to converse and be jolly?
So much has happened, and my mind may not know its loss, but the heart does.
The discordance of hymn—my faith wanes to the beat of my heart; in time, it will all explode.
The thing about messes: it cares not for who it has. For all in its way bear its cost.
Nothing Is Of Its Own Explanation
“Promise you won’t let it drive you mad.”
~ László
So we are less of ourselves now that we are here? The wonder of what is new is becoming. Prospect is hope, reality is where it all gives way.
Natures of being are of crude impulse, innately more driven by the accretive creep of spite and gall than the hearted fortune of giving.
Fixed so much so, we berate the very nature of humanity. Why do we then make ourselves alone in this fright, and deprive each other of decency?
Perhaps we place upon each other a loneliness greater than it has ever been — as if a door has closed with us inside, and the lock’s code we cannot decipher.
What is wrong with me? Is it wrong with you? With us?
Worshipping at the altar of only himself.
They Do Not Want Us Here
“The people here. They don’t want us here.”
~ László
Pain festers, anger corrodes, and all this evil is sickening. To feel and think of no other choice—what has been robbed of you?
The pain is too much, and your substance is not to cope. It kills reprieve, leaves no room to breathe—see that it will take your life from you.
She’s dying. My wife is dying. My hand has brought forth her death.
To my confessions, she sees the weariness of my soul. What other response is there but faith?
For this place is rotten. In belief, we can be what we could otherwise never encounter.
Standing at the doorway, what may be difficult to hear—to speak—it is a must. For the senile are ill in their thinking; their portrayals and practices are not to be excused.
Plainly, it is evil.
In the end, our lives here will be seen in pictures, designs, memoirs, and what is recalled.
With the harms done to us, only done to our physical bodies.
To The Believer
If only I may live to direct the perception of the inhabitants of this life to the world as it is. I find then, if only for a moment, a single reprieve.
To make heard the void that lives in us all. To see the world as it has been, and truly as it has been made to be.
May free thought persist, to find freedom in true identity.
No matter what the authors sell you, it is the destination, and not the journey.
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared…”
~ 1 Timothy 4:1-2
Further Reflections
Jay Kelly
Unfold a contemplative tale, one that lingers with those who know the sobriety of experience and the quiet questioning of what feels real.
Wicked and A Manifestorium Of An Inward Nature
To see that truth does not always conquer evil, and that in your own way, you must contend with what you cannot control.
Frankenstein: Tale of Man & Creation
A fascinatingly sublime allegory exploring the hearted tones of death, incorrigibility, and awakening.
Credit: Script and select images used in this post are from The Brutalist (© A24). Included for reflective commentary and thematic analysis.
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