When I went to summer camp, aged about 14, I spent some time snogging. Its what you do when you’re 14. Hours of it. Sometimes with other people. And one gel who was rather cute had what could be called ‘a slight overbite’. Not the full Bugs Bunny, just a bit toothy, in a good way. And at some point we snogged. And you could feel those teeth and…

Anyway, that experience has made me overly sensitive to the slightly Claudia Schiffery, mildly toothy look in women. Of course, once I married, I became monsnogamous, so my days of going weak at the knees at the sight of someone’s incisors are long gone.

And all because, none do that toothy thing finer than Felicity Jones. Who stars in the Brutalist, alongside Adrian Brody. Who is overendowed in other facial regions. In a good way. And who is, quite frankly, brilliant in the incredible and wonderfully drawn out, 3-and-a-half hour epic, which is that movie.

The filming is beautiful. And although the action is fast-paced, the film goes in a sort of ‘reverse bullet time’ in which what should take 3 minutes takes 9, but you never feel its dragging. Brody, as the fictional Laszlo Toth, ponders every question before answering. A visual, silent, deliberation prior to reply. So you just relax to the pace of it all and as a consequence, its doesn’t really feel like a long film at all. More like ‘a short day’.

And although its not a ‘holocaust film’ in the usual sense, it is very much so in the way it portrays how lives were massively affected by it. The agony of refugees, the searching for cultural identity and acceptance, the physical after-effects, most notably on Mrs Toth, (Felicity with the teeth), and subtly, on Laszlo’s fragile mental state.

Its also about an architect fighting for ‘the integrity of his design’. Which is what all films about architects are about. Mainly because if you made a movie about an architect sitting in front of his drawing board for 19 hours, that would seem overly long.

And its quite dark. And at times… brutal.

Quite simply, if you like movies, you just HAVE to see the Brutalist. And you won’t be disappointed. I’m always wary of movies which seem to be ‘running away with the awards’ because I’m very cynical about Hollywood motives and the manipulation of critics, who, after all, are only one opinion. Bit like me, really. One opinion.

Happy Monday

A xxxx