“The Brutalist” director Brady Corbet is gearing up for another ambitious feature as he’s now telegraphing in a new interview that the yet-to-be-titled project will at least have something directly in common with his dark architect “melodrama” as both films will have a runtime of over 3 hours (notably, “The Brutalist” clocks in at 3 hours and 35 minutes).
He recently spoke with Sleek Magazine about not being really interested in this next movie having a more studio-friendly runtime of 2 hours, which would suggest Corbet has a lot to say in this next project to be compelling to an audience and critics, after there had been some minor balking about “The Brutalist” being “too long.”
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To make a film yours, you have to be absolutely uncompromising about certain pillars of the project. You’ll walk away if those pillars aren’t erected and maintained. For example, the length of ‘The Brutalist’ and also for my next project, time is a crucial ingredient. These are melodramas, and if you compress them into two hours to satisfy a studio, the experience becomes implausible,” Corbet said, alluding to making another 3-hour-long film.
What is that new movie going to be about? Earlier in the year, Corbet teased that his 70s-set pic would involve “American mysticism” and the story would span over “150 years,” which is quite the elevator pitch, as he also said in the past it would feature the Chinese-American immigrant experience in California with the tantalizing addition of both horror and Western elements.
“I’ve been working on it for a long time, and I’m excited about doing something very different. It’s a different period of world history…it spans 150 years. I would say a majority of the film takes place in the 70s. It’s sort of about American mysticism and many things I’m fascinated by.”
To be fair to Corbet, the criticism of the length of “The Brutalist” being “too long” is simply a subjective opinion, and given the scope of the Oscar-winning film (star Adrien Brody walking away with his second Best Actor statue), it sort of needed that extra time to give a sense of that scale, alongside setting moods and establishing various characters. Not to mention the picture’s title also doubles as a hint to the tense tone explored throughout, to the point I think many were shocked to learn it wasn’t a biopic, a testament to his filmmaking and storytelling skills to make the picture feel like this was a snapshot of real historical events, even if they weren’t.
Lastly, Corbet shared his thoughts on AI inhabiting the film industry, “AI represents one of the most exciting new opportunities to explore ambiguities. What viewers or critics might describe as ambiguities, I would call the uncanny, things we can’t articulate. This exists in cinema, painting, music. For me, form is content. It’s exploring something you cannot put into words. If you could tell a film, why make a film?”
We’re hopeful that Corbet is going to share more information on the film, including a title, in the near future, and we cannot wait to see what group of actors he ultimately assembles for it as well.
Christopher Marc is lead writer at The Playlist and the primary engine behind our daily news coverage. Chris is based in Canada and tracks everything from Marvel and Star Wars developments to arthouse acquisitions and festival buzz with equal enthusiasm and an instinct for the story readers actually want to read.
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