About halfway through the 3½-hour drama “The Brutalist,” the narrative stops for a 15-minute intermission, complete with a countdown clock.
It’s reminiscent of the sweeping Hollywood films of the past. “Gone With the Wind,” “The Ten Commandments” and “Lawrence of Arabia” all had intermissions to break up their nearly four-hour run times. And that feeling of old Hollywood is what caught the eye of producers Trevor Matthews and Nick Gordon.
“This just felt like classical American cinema,” said Gordon, president of Brookstreet Pictures, which is headquartered in Los Angeles.
“It felt like a script and a movie from a bygone era,” added Matthews, chief executive of Brookstreet. “It really just felt like they don’t make movies like this anymore.”
In many ways, “The Brutalist” flies in the face of the conventional wisdom of today’s industry. The independent film’s script was more than 160 pages long, split into an overture, two parts and an epilogue that chronicles the journey of a Hungarian Jewish architect, played by Adrien Brody, who immigrates to the U.S. after World War II in search of a new beginning for himself and his family.
The expansive, character-driven tale has become a bet that there’s a place for long adult dramas about challenging subjects. The film is in limited release starting Friday and will expand to theaters nationwide, including Imax, in January.
“There’s nothing inherently commercial about this,” Gordon said. “Whereas most other producers in the indie space are looking for stuff that’s very squarely genre, or kind of like the elevator pitch makes a ton of sense from a commercial standpoint … this just felt like ‘Citizen Kane.’ It was just sort of this sweeping American epic with really fleshed-out, three-dimensional characters and proper story arcs. And we were just really drawn to that and wanted to figure out how that could be brought to the screen.”
“It felt like a script and a movie from a bygone era. It really just felt like they don’t make movies like this anymore.”
— Producer Trevor Matthews
Part of doing that was keeping “The Brutalist” on a tight budget of about $10 million. To start, all international distribution rights were presold to Focus Features during 2020’s virtual Toronto International Film Festival, giving the production an important financial footing, though not enough to ensure a big budget, Gordon said.
The producers also figured out a combination of rebates and incentive programs to help mitigate risk for equity investors. They shot the film in Hungary, which has experienced crews and a valuable rebate program, followed by a postproduction deal in the U.K., which allowed them to take advantage of a second tax credit.
“It’s really, really challenging to get people to want to take that kind of risk, especially on projects where they can’t see that inherent commercial value,” Gordon said. “So you’re really trying to throw the kitchen sink at this when you find a project that good, but you still have to find the people that are going to take the actual equity risk.”
For self-proclaimed cinephiles Gordon and Matthews, “The Brutalist” represents a type of allegory about the American Dream versus American reality that has relevance today. The two said that in their 15 years of working together, the script of “The Brutalist” was the best to come into their company.
In September, A24 said it purchased U.S. rights to “The Brutalist.” A source close to A24 said the film’s scope, commitment to its subject and its novel-esque storytelling convinced the studio to pursue the deal. A24 also felt that the intermission allowed the film to breathe and was a commitment to a theatrical experience that felt exciting, the person said.
Trevor Matthews, Nick Gordon at “The Brutalist” Los Angeles Premiere at Vista Theatre on December 5, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Alberto Rodriguez/Variety via Getty Images)
But the broader market for this kind of film is far from clear at a time when moviegoers have become increasingly selective about what they will trek to see in cinemas. Despite big gains this summer, the theatrical box office is still struggling to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Although Christopher Nolan’s three-hour “Oppenheimer” married mainstream box-office success with prestige filmmaking, the Leonardo DiCaprio-led, 3½-hour-long “Killers of the Flower Moon” didn’t reach the same level of commercial appeal, though it was critically acclaimed.
“On top of being a long film, and on top of being a heavy film, there’s also a clear trend in moviegoing right now that tends to favor more escapist fare, more fantastical fare,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at movie ticket-seller Fandango and founder of tracking site Box Office Theory.
Perhaps an apt comparison would be 2019’s “Parasite,” which was seen as a prestige play before release but also found an audience in theaters, Robbins said.
“Not everything has to be a big blockbuster to be successful,” he added.
Despite the tough financing landscape for independent production companies, Matthews of Brookstreet said he feels hopeful about the coming year — and the audience demand for such movies.
“For me, it does feel like a resurgence is on its way,” he said. “At the moment, it feels like there’s a market that’s still very hungry for original and independent movies.”