I agree with you. I think this movie is over hyped. It may be because there are so few good movies nowadays. The main character was a well known and respected architect in Budapest before the Holocaust. He designed the Budapest library, so he clearly was talented and well regarded. In the movie there are examples of his other work that was well regarded. The Holocaust destroyed him and his family. After the concentration camps he tries to get his life back together. But the movie does not give you the deeper understanding of this movement back to full life for the main character. For a movie of this length, I would have hoped for more character development. Also, one needs to understand the Brutalist architecture movement, its relation to Bauhaus, and its origins and why it was prominent after WW2. The name Brutalist has nothing to do with something fierce or negative, as an English translation would imply. Rather, it is short for the French words for unimproved concrete. Concrete was the least expensive building material of great strength and functionality after WW2. His minimalist design of the library is not related to his being a renowned Brutalist architect. There was so much left out, and this is indicative of the whole movie. Frankly, it is over hyped and lacking in many respects. My wife and I could hardly sit through the whole thing. When the wife uses a walker to go to the large house and protest the male rape, that was really a pariah moment that illustrated the lack of context and development found elsewhere in the movie.
I agree with you. I think this movie is over hyped. It may be because there are so few good movies nowadays. The main character was a well known and respected architect in Budapest before the Holocaust. He designed the Budapest library, so he clearly was talented and well regarded. In the movie there are examples of his other work that was well regarded. The Holocaust destroyed him and his family. After the concentration camps he tries to get his life back together. But the movie does not give you the deeper understanding of this movement back to full life for the main character. For a movie of this length, I would have hoped for more character development. Also, one needs to understand the Brutalist architecture movement, its relation to Bauhaus, and its origins and why it was prominent after WW2. The name Brutalist has nothing to do with something fierce or negative, as an English translation would imply. Rather, it is short for the French words for unimproved concrete. Concrete was the least expensive building material of great strength and functionality after WW2. His minimalist design of the library is not related to his being a renowned Brutalist architect. There was so much left out, and this is indicative of the whole movie. Frankly, it is over hyped and lacking in many respects. My wife and I could hardly sit through the whole thing. When the wife uses a walker to go to the large house and protest the male rape, that was really a pariah moment that illustrated the lack of context and development found elsewhere in the movie.