The Brutalist is a three-and-a-half-hour epic biopic about an imaginary Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor presented on 70mm film across 26 reels weighing 300 pounds.
The film is so long that it has a 15-minute intermission but has so far received favorable reviews from critics. Directed by Brady Corbet, Adrien Brody stars as the movie’s protagonist László Tóth who comes to the postwar U.S. in poverty but revives his distinguished career with the help of patronage by a man called Van Buren (Guy Pearce).
The film is shot on VistaVision; a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film. It was then finished on 70mm which, according to Variety, amounted to just 1 percent of the film’s budget.
One person on X (formerly Twitter) took a short video from the Venice International Film Festival showing some of the large film reels for The Brutalist being delivered into the theater.
Delivering the film reels for Brady Corbet’s shot-on-70mm THE BRUTALIST. #venezia81 pic.twitter.com/sgPFYjJBgn
— Mo Moshaty (@MoMoshaty) August 31, 2024
VistaVision was created in 1954 by Paramount Pictures engineers, unlike the traditional vertical 35mm format it runs film horizontally through the camera. This allows for a larger frame size, capturing an image that is eight perforations wide (the space between sprocket holes), compared to the standard four perforations in the vertical format.
“It feels grander and more accurate to the color that a director and colorist and all the engineers are working to achieve,” director Brady Corbet tells Variety. “It’s the most accurate representation of the film as a final product. You have better definition and color separation between the foreground and the background — it almost creates the impression of an image that is leaping out of the frame.”
Corbet says that he thinks large format is the “future of theatrical exhibition” because creating a special event will motivate folks to hand over $20 for a movie ticket.
Talking about 70mm was once the preserve of movie wonks but it has entered the mainstream thanks to large format screenings of movies like Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Dune: Part Two.
“For a long time, a lot of producers were able to make the case that audiences couldn’t see the difference,” Corbet tells Variety. “Well, audiences are a lot smarter than people give them credit for. They’re so much more aware of the process than they were 50 years ago.”
