Witches and Relics in the Time of Plague

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE STONE WITCH OF FLORENCE (2024)

By Anna Rasche

Park Row, 368 pages

★★★★

 

If you’ve ever studied medieval history, there’s much to like about The Stone Witch of Florence. If you’re a serious scholar of the period, there much that might annoy you. As a recovering medievalist it had elements that made me grab it: witchcraft, the Black Death, church corruption, and just enough accuracy to dissuade me from screaming, “Rubbish!” and hurling it across the room.

 

This is a historical novel written by a gemmologist that flirts with fantasy, folklore, and feminist wish fulfilment in blurring the rare with the customary. As modern Wiccans remind us, the word “witch” is often defined by whatever eyes are looking at it. What word would you attribute to a woman who uses gemstones to heal? Is she a folk physician, a heretic, a rock-wielding mesmerist, a threat to public health?

 

In her debut novel Anna Rache juxtaposes her beleaguered heroine Ginevra de Gasparo with church beliefs in the efficacy of relics. It is 1348, the year the Plague begins to ravage the Italian peninsula. (Think medieval; there’s no such thing as a unified Italian nation-state.) Prior to the outbreak of the Plague, Ginevra’s great ambition was to become a member of the physician’s guild of Florence, which got her banned from the city. Some women were allowed to join guilds, but not many. But let’s not romanticize a medieval physician whose practices of using leeches, bleedings, blistering, and unguents in ways that often differed from the “cures” of witches only in the gender of the applicant. 

 

The terms Plague and Black Death are often used interchangeably though they were not the same thing. The Beath Death looked scarier, with the patient’s body growing pus-filed buboes. Yet it was the most-survivable form of plague; the highly contagious airborne pneumonic plague had a death rate of close to 100 percent. Patients went from health to death in less than a day. (Shades of the early days of Covid, anyone?) Depending on where you were, the Plague carried off between 30-60 percent of the entire population between 1348-51. So were “stone witches” such as Ginevra blamed and burned at the stake? No; witch killings gathered steam between the 15^th-17^th centuries.  In the mid-14^th, it was often the case that only heretics believed in witches at all. Ginevra was allowed back to an increasingly-empty Florence with a vague promise from Inquisitor Michele (male) that he might support her application to the guild.

 

There is a catch, of course. Ginevra is also drawn into what is more of a crisis of public faith than of public health. Michele wants Ginevra’s aid in finding out who is stealing relics from local churches. It is a matter of urgency. After all, if what remains of the populace concludes that faith can’t save them, what need is there for the church, priests, or inquisitors? As Rache writes, “Florentines were not exactly known known as the most pious of peoples.” Pre-Plague Florence was as much a city of bankers, merchants, and luxury, despite its fame for holding numerous important relics. One by one they disappear–the left arm of San Filippo Apostolo, the leg of the martyr Miniato, the skull of San Zenobio, and other items deemed sacred and miraculous? What is to be made of vials of colored water left in their place?

 

All of this builds a strange symbiosis between Michele and Ginevra, though her strongest alliance is with the  wealthy Lucia, who supports her and aids in investigating the mystery of missing relics. As happened so often during the Plague, wealthy men fled the cities for the allegedly miasma-free air of the countryside. In an odd way, the rich were right about that. We now know that fleas hosted by black rats and bred in filthy medieval cities were big culprits in spreading the Plague.

 

The Stone Witch of Florence is an unusual novel. Does Rasche intend us to contrast the official veneration of magical relics with the presumed superstition of Ginerva’s Plague immunity with her pure crystal quartz, her energy with garnet, and her ability to drink men under the table with a piece of amethyst under her tongue? Probably. Are we to draw conclusions about power versus the poor? However you read this novel, rest assured it passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

News of the World is Sweet–In a Good Way

 

 

 

NEWS OF THE WORLD (2020)

Directed by Paul Greenglass

Universal Pictures, 118 minutes, PG-13 (cowboy violence, a few swears)

★★★★

 

Say the name “Tom Hanks” and eyes will roll. For those who like movies with grit, snark, and a walk on the wild side, Hanks evokes Mr. Rogers (or, worse, Forrest Gump). But sometimes there is something to be said for wholesomeness. News of the World is one such movie. It is based on a successful novel of the same name by Paulette Giles in which director Paul Greenglass largely parallels Giles’ book, except that the latter was more successful than the money-losing movie.

 

News of the World is a Western that wears its heart on its tattered sleeve. By 1870, the American Civil War had been over for five years, though the South had a long way to go in terms of economic recovery. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks) eeks out a meagre living by traveling from town to town with a stack of (semi-) recent newspapers. Literacy among white commoners was considerably lower than in the North. Kidd’s job involves reading random newspaper stories to anyone who pays ten cents to hear him. Like a good teacher, Kidd mixes humorous tales with hard news (economics, foreign rebellions, disaster stories) and his dry-wit delivery and public lecturing skills make him popular as long as he keeps moving and doesn’t draw often from the same well.  

 

After leaving Wichita Falls, he encounters a disturbing scene: an overturned wagon and a black man lynched from a tree. He hears rustling nearby and finds a young girl (Helena Zenger) in hiding. She speaks no English and when the U.S, occupying soldiers come by they advise him to take her to an Army fort in Castroville, some 400 miles out of his way. Kidd makes a stop in Dallas hoping that that some old friends will take the girl in, but she’s far too willful. He also stops at an inn run by a former lover, the widow Gannett (Elizabeth Marvel), who tells Kidd that the girl he calls “Johanna” speaks Kiowa and was taken in a raid six years earlier. By all looks and demeanor she is Kiowa, though an occasional German word pops out.

 

The movie is essentially a sojourn across dangerous lands in which Kidd and Johanna learn from each other. It would be hard to exaggerate exactly how dangerous their journey is. They encounter three ex-Confederate roughnecks who offer to “buy” Johanna, presumably for their sexual pleasure. They hightail it out of town pursued by the sleazy horndogs and have a classic shootout in which Kidd and his young charge hide out in a rocky hillside. Johanna’s ingenuous solution to how to compensate for running out of ammunition is a cool scene.

 

There are hostile Native tribes and In Erath County, Kidd sees firsthand how lawless Texas has become. A cattleman named Farley (Thomas Francis Murphy) has set up a rogue state within Texas in which his word, laws, and racist values prevail. In this case, Kidd’s intellect and silver tongue save the day and they leave with an acolyte named Calley (Fred Hechinger) in tow for a few life lessons before setting off on his own.

 

Kidd and Johanna arrive in Castroville only to learn that there won’t be a Bureau of Indian Affairs agent in place for three months, so it’s off to a farming settlement where records indicate her German-speaking aunt and uncle live. To them, though, Johanna is expected to earn her keep on the farm. This sets the table for realizations and a happy ending. In the movie this comes a bit too fast to be completely believable, but it’s in keeping with the novel.

 

News of the World isn’t a classic, but it’s sweet and satisfying. Hanks is very good in the role of a man who saw enough violence to last him a lifetime and is driven to do the right thing, not the most convenient one. Learn the name Helena Zenger, a German-born actress now in her teens. Her translucent paleness serves to accentuate her vulnerability. When being stubborn or throwing a tantrum, her face flushes as if the underside of her skin is afire. Her acting chops are such that she communicates clearly though for much of the movie her words mean nothing to Hanks or the audience–unless you happen to speak Kiowa! Very few people saw this film, but give it a try.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Sandwich: Gynocentric but Funny and Poignant

 

 

 

 

SANDWICH (2024)

By Catherine Newman

Harper, 226 pages.

★★★

 

 

Sandwich is the most gynocentric novel I’ve read in years. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this work from Catherine Newman, but sometimes it’s hard book for males to grasp. The novel’s central character, Rachel (aka/ Rocky) dwells on subjects such as childbirth, menopause, oral sex, her vagina, sagging breasts, and how much she misses pregnancy. Lest you think me insensitive, Sandwich is also very funny, touching, and poignant. Plus, Rocky is seriously neurotic, has few filters, and is blissfully unaware of how others within hearing range might squirm over her topics of conversation. Besides, ladies, how would you feel about a novel that dwelt upon urinary tract infections, distended testicles, varicose veins, sexual dysfunction, “war” stories, and passing gas?  Thought so!

 

For those who don’t live in New England, Sandwich is also a town on Cape Cod. If you think of Cape Cod as the flexing arm extending into the ocean, Sandwich is located atop the muscle after you cross the Sagamore Bridge onto the Cape. It’s where Rocky and her husband Nick have vacationed every summer for twenty years–always in the same cottage. Nick is the one who should bear the nickname Rocky, as he’s loyal, steady, handy, and as patient as Rachel is manic. He always listens, though he suspects he only understands about 65% of what Rocky says. We readers think he might be overestimating! They have two wonderful children, twenty-year-old Willa and her older brother Jamie. Both have flown the proverbial coop and Jamie arrives with his serious girlfriend Maya, though he and Willa often speak like a bonded pair despite the fact that Willa identifies as a lesbian and a vegetarian, though she eats seafood. Because. The Cape!  

 

Rocky and Nick are in their fifties, though you can be excused for thinking of them as older and refugees from Woodstock. They are incredibly laidback, not because their kids are grown, but because that’s just the way there were and are. One example of this is Rocky’s relief that her daughter is gay so she doesn’t have to worry about her getting pregnant. Or, at least he was relieved until Nick reminded her that lesbians can have children by choice! But Rocky always finds things to fret over, including worrying that her daughter might be menstruating in an ocean where sharks are sometimes present!

 

Rocky is a classic born-to-be-a-mom type and Nick has come to accept that he’ll always be number three to Jamie and Willa. We get a no-topics-barred look at family dynamics during a week at the beach. Even Grandma and Grandpa get into the act for a few days. Newman has a true gift for turning annoying moments into comedy. The first thing that happens when they enter their modest (and in need of upgrades) vacation house is that the toilet overflows. When Willa complains of the smell, Nick yells out that he’s “knee-deep in sewage.” Rocky insists that’s not true, but because Willa is a “Daddy’s girl” she’s more inclined to believe him! The fact that Maya adores Jamie and his entire family doesn’t leave much room for an outbreak of elegance. And who has visited the Cape that can’t relate to this visit to the local bakery? “Forty minutes later, we are walking back to the cottage with two lattes, four chocolate croissants, one scone, three baguettes, and a receipt for sixty-five dollars.”

 

More serious issues are discussed–abortion, feminism, anxiety, therapy, politics, still birth, grandpa’s dementia–but mostly we get Rocky’s memories of past trips to the Cape, Rocky’s worried thoughts, and the joy of people reveling in one another’s company. If laughter is the best therapy, Rocky’s neuroses don’t have a chance! When Jamie discovers toasted almond bars in the freezer left behind by the previous resident. Rocky has a “bad feeling” about eating any, but Jamie wins the day by a four-to-one vote: “… you feel like maybe the people who stayed here last week… [are] playing the long game of booking this place last October so that they could plant a poisoned ice-cream novelty and kill us.” Leave to Nick to remember a time when they were younger and Rocky baked a cake in a cat litter pan! As they prepare to leave and muse over their favorite things, Rocky thinks: “…the fact of us together and alive. The kids… are so grown! So young. Mine and not mine, as ever they have been. Maybe my grief is love imploding. Or maybe it’s love expanding.”

 

Rob Weir

 

 

On Display at the BMAC

Brattleboro Museum and Art Center

Brattleboro, Vermont

Through July 5, 2026

 

  

By now you’ve heard my many praises for the BMAC (Brattleboro Museum and Art Center), the little Vermont museum that could. Here are a few of the exhibitions in progress. 

 

 

 

The biggest show is Elegy for the Consumed by Jude Griebel. He is a Canadian who now lives in Brooklyn. Griebel works in materials ranging from wood, clay, textiles, and ceramics to paper, acrylics, and resins. He begins with the observation that humans often anthropomorphize animals. You need but spend ten minutes with Facebook videos to see how we impose human characteristics on dogs, cats, bears, rabbits, birds, fish, and even a hamburger. The last of these is part of his point. 

 

 

 

How is it that we simultaneously buy into so many of Disney’s talking animals and then eat them? Why do we put designs of Nemo on the dinner plates upon which we serve fish and chips? Or call our dachshunds “wiener dogs?” I wasn’t able to determine if Griebel is a vegetarian–his PR material mentions only that he understands farm culture from having grown up in Alberta–but there is an implied critique of the human consumption of animals in his work. Numerous works are hyperrealist animals in table-ready poses. As satire, they provoke us emotionally. Does a broiled chicken in a human pose make us laugh or imply a form of cannibalism? As curator Sarah Freeman asserts, Griebel’s work “is not intended as a manifesto against meat eating, yet it calls us to question our unthinking acceptance of a world order that puts humans at the top of the pyramid, perhaps at our own peril.” What do you think or feel about this small sample of the exhibit? Pure whimsy, or something else?

 

 

 

Perhaps you, like I, grew up amazed by the variety of birdlife as seen in the plates of books from John James Audubon, the field guides of Roger Tory Peterson, Elizabth Gould, or Alexander Wilson. As a kid, I used to stare at them and wonder why I never saw such showy and exotic birds, blissfully unaware of the fact that maybe different parts of North America or countries across the oceans might have different birds. As you can infer from that last sentence, my fascination with ornithology developed before I knew what it meant and long before I ever heard of Charles Darwin! I still love birds, though I never became a devoted bird watcher who spent $5,000 on a lens longer than a Cadillac Esplanade ESV.

 

Illustrator Robin Crofut-Brittingham has done a series she calls Migrations that situates birds of a feather, as it were. She places birds in vaulted watercolor frames of vegetation. Each arch groups numerous birds from the same part of the world. These are tranquil and informative. They are also representative of a terrarium of the sort that old-style museums display (or used to display) taxidermal birds.  

 

But Crofut-Brittingham, who lives in Montreal, also has the imagination of a fabulist. She too anthropomorphizes. In her larger works, she imbues her fantastic birds with human characteristics, sometimes in jeopardy but also as naked, painted women with bird masks (or heads?) riding ruminants through lush vegetation, some holding hunting birds and others with the demeanor of forest Amazons.  

 

 

 

Deirdre Hyde grew up in London, but relocated to Costa Rica. Her Fragments of a Tropical Life is a reflection of her world in collage, painting, and fabric. I wish this exhibit had been a bit larger, but from what I saw I infer that Hyde prefers the rain forest to the wet streets of London!

 

 

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Time and Again a Journey Through the Past

 

TIME AND AGAIN (1970)

By Jack Finney

Simon and Schuster, 398 pages.

★★★

 

I’ve long been a fan of time travel books. Back in 1970, I read Time and Again by Jack Finney. I had forgotten about it until it reappeared from the deep recesses of a closet. It’s not science fiction per se. In a little-discussed aspect of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, the present, the future, and the past exist in the same time block. Don’t push me any further as my physics and mathematics are not up to the task, but it’s connected to space-time theory. Apparently, Einstein also believed that traveling into the future would be easier than going back in time, which could violate causality principles. From what I gather, he didn’t think a machine could be built that could travel fast (or slowly) enough to allow time travel. 

 

Einstein’s name carries more gravitas than that of the average science fiction writer, which explains why Einstein is so often invoked in time travel novels. Finney’s Time and Again is one of them. Its 1970 publication date coincided with American trips to the moon, the Cold War, the first Earth Day, and bookstands selling non-fiction books such as Future Shock, The Population Bomb, and The Year of the Quiet Sun. Logician/mathematician Kurt Gödel’s 1949 “rotating universes” theorem allowed for travel to the past, as would later quantum physics (though not for people).

 

Is it possible? That’s way above my pay grade, but novelists have found it irresistible. Finney’s fictional character Si(las) Morely is the central figure of a government-funded program in Time After Time. His handler Dr. Danzinger believed that a properly trained candidate could literally walk from the present into the past after a regimen of familiarization, self-hypnosis, and pre-preparation, a novel (ahem!) way of changing the position of the observer. New Yorker Si Morely is housed in the Dakota Hotel, grows a beard, wears 19^th century clothing, and reads period newspapers as a prelude for a stroll into the New York City of 1882. His task is to watch a man who is enigmatically linked to Kate, Si’s 1970 girlfriend, mail a letter at the post office. Si is a professional illustrator also asked to keep notes and make sketches of things he observes. Si has his doubts until the day he gazes across 72^nd Street at snowy Central Park and indeed walks into the past. He is naturally astonished.

 

Thinking back to 1970, New York was not then a nice place. Like many U.S. cities of 1970s, the air and water were polluted and the streets were crowded, noisy, filthy, and crime-riven. Racial tension, garbage strikes, abandoned buildings, and homelessness were prevalent. Hippies commandeered Washington Square, the Bowery was a repository of alcoholics, and the city was close to insolvency. Imagine Morely’s astonishment of watching families joyously riding sleighs, farmsteads within sight of the Dakota, boarding horse-drawn trolleys or steam-driven trains on the Ninth Avenue El, being able to see the Museum of Natural History sitting alone, viewing the arm and torch of the future Statue of Liberty in Madison Square Park, or climbing the stairs of the Trinity Church steeple, then the city’s tallest structure!

 

Si makes several trips back and forth to 1970 and 1882–once with Kate–and each time immerses himself deeper in the world of 1882. In good Victorian style, a melodramatic side story develops. Si was supposed to be careful not to alter history, though he finds himself falling in love with Julia, a woman at his boarding house. She is betrothed to Jake Pickering, whom Si suspects is a rogue. To say more would be a spoiler. Finney does a good job of ratcheting the tension of a wild chase, a discovery, and a fire. If that’s not melodrama, I don’t know what is.

 

A final way in which Time and Again is very much tied to 1970 is that today we would label parts of the book sexist, not in a physically abusive way but certainly in its gender assumptions. Finney’s book is called “An Illustrated Novel” for its use of period photos and sketches, some of which are invented and others pulled from archival sources. Its greatest virtue is taking us inside the worldview of 1882. Sit down, take a chaw of tobacco, and try to hit the spittoon! If you could journey to the past, where would you go and would you stay?

 

 Rob Weir

 

 

Oddly Enough, Mickey 17 is Charming

  

 

 

 

Mickey 17 (2025)

Directed by Bong Joon Ho

Warner Bros. Pictures, 137 minutes, R (language, violence, sexual content, substance abuse)

★★★★

 

After the award-winning Parasite, South Korean director Bong Joon Ho made Mickey 17, which made nearly $132 million. Yet, it lost tons of money because Warner’s budget was more than $250 million. Many fans of Parasite called the film an artistic failure, though I liked it.

 

Mickey 17 is a science-fiction/slapstick/black comedy that borrows elements from numerous other films, though its script is based on the eponymous Edward Ashton novel. It is filled with in-jokes and satire. Joon is an English football fan and modeled several characters on players. Others are parodies of politicians, religious figures, scientists, and businessmen.  

In the year 2050, the Earth is beset with great environmental damage. The scientific and political establishments seek to transplant human beings to an allegedly idyllic planet called Niflheim. The long journey is headed by failed lawmaker Kenneth Marshall (Mark Ruffolo), a composite of bombastic politicians like Donald Trump, Mussolini, and Robert F. Kennedy Junior. The crew consists largely of individuals who haven’t done well on earth. Timo (Steven Yeu) owes a loan shark a lot of money and is unaware that the Elon Musk-like Darius Blank (Ian Hanmore) is aboard the ship to collect the debt at any cost, including cutting Timo into five pieces. Nothing has gone right for Micky Barnes (Robert Pattison) whose sole friend is the obnoxious and unreliable Timo. In a satire of agreement statements, Mickey’s volunteers to be an expendable without reading the contract conditions. He just wants a new start and a better look at the recruiter’s legs.

 

Expendable is true to its title. Mickey is a lab rat to test dangerous vaccines, foods, and poisons. His 17 designation means he has died 16 previous times, plopped into a copier holding his memories and DNA patterns, and “reprinted” Mickey is surprisingly popular among the crew, partly because everyone wants to know, “What’s it like to die?” They–each Mickey has personality differences– do, however, have a serious girlfriend Nasha (Naomi Ackie) who doesn’t like the way Mickeys are treated. Once they “die” they are tossed like so much garbage into an incinerator to be melted for the next Mickey.  

 

Predictably, Marshall and his insufferable wife Ylfa (Toni Collette) are greedy little monsters who live and eat high on the hog, suck up to politicians, look like TV evangelists, pray on their knees, and justify their grubby existences by playing the God card. As you might also anticipate, Niflheim is no Garden of Eden. It is largely a wind-and-snow swept desert. Nor is it uninhabited. Creatures Mickey 17 calls Creepers occupy caves and allegedly have a fondness for human flesh. They look like a cross between eyebrow lice and boxing gloves. Mickey 17’s problem magnifies when he reports that he is being swarmed by the Creepers. The lab crew assumes Mickey has been eaten and print Mickey 18 (also Pattison), a more arrogant and confident version of 17. In fact, Big Mama Creeper saves Mickey 17. He and 18 wrestle around over the incinerator pits, but just when it looks as if one will vanquish the other, they must break off their battles lest they be discovered and both thrown into the soup (and no more Mickeys will be printed). It doesn’t help that 18 has the best sex with Nasha she’s ever had or that a widowed harpy name Kai (Anamarie Vartolomei) tries to bed 17, who sees her for what she is. But when Kai finds out there are two Mickeys, she tries to manipulate both.

 

Star Trek aficionados will recognize that the Creepers are a variant of the rock-eating “horta” and that one doesn’t mess with the little ones. When the megalomaniacal Marshalls kill a small Creeper, Mama is on the warpath and thousands of Creepers surround the spaceship as the geeky Dorothy (Patricia Ferran) frantically seeks to perfect a communications translator. There is a happy ending in that the Marshalls are deposed, the problem of multiple Mickeys is resolved, Timo is not cut into five pieces, and crew mates (especially Dorothy) cuddle baby Creepers.

 

Sounds awful, right? It’s strangely and inexplicably charming. Pattison is wonderful as both 17 and 18, Ruffalo chews the scenery, and Ackie is adorable and fierce. Yes, it’s a dumb script but … in a good way!

 

Rob Weir

 

 

[RW1] 

 

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 [RW1]

 

The Brutalist: One-Half Epic, One-Half Trainwreck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BRUTALIST (2024)

Directed by Brady Corbet

A24, 215 minutes, R (language, brief graphic sex, adult situations)

★★ ½

 

The Brutalist was a polarizing film. Most critics loved it and it won three Oscars; yet it did poorly in North America. It made some money though. Despite its epic pretensions, the budget was quite low. I found it half of a brilliant film and half of a trainwreck. In part, audiences stayed away because of its length. Like its central character, architect Lásló Tóth (Adrien Brody), director Brady Corbet allowed his vision (and perhaps a touch of megalomania) to get the better of him. Those who loved the film will disagree, but it’s seldom a financial boon to get too far ahead of what movie-goers expect. At 3 hours and 45 minutes, The Brutalist is told in chapters and had an intermission so patrons could stretch and go to the loo.

 

The Brutalist is not a biopic. Corbet and Mona Fastvold based Tóth on several post-World War II Jewish modernist architects (among them, Marcel Breuer, Erno Goldfinger, and Louis Kahn). They often took on largescale projects made more affordable by using poured concrete. “Brutalist” has a double meaning in Corbet’s film; brut is French for raw and unrefined, as in using unfinished, unornamented concrete. It’s a controversial style who advocates praise its spare look that emphasizes shapes and utilitarianism; others find it ugly, heavy, and evocative of a prison. (Which is why numerous post-Holocaust Jews embraced it!) As we discover, Tóth has brutal aspects of a different sort.

 

Tóth and his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) are of Czech ancestry. Both survived the Nazi death camps, but Lásló first got permission to emigrate from Europe; Erzsébet and their daughter Zsófia were stuck for years in Europe. Lásló’s adjustment to America is not smooth. After a harsh (and smutty) journey, Lásló goes to Philadelphia where his cousin Attila runs a small furniture and design shop. He has also changed his surname to Miller and is married a Catholic woman who lies to get her way. Nor were Lásló’s designs greeted well. He does, though, help Attila get commissions through his business acumen. Lásló’s biggest coup is redoing a library in Doylestown for rich industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) as a surprise birthday present from his snooty son Harry (Joe Alwyn). When Harrison returns from a trip, he absolutely hates the design, fires Lásló, and refuses to pay. That is, until he finds out that Tóth was famous in Europe and starts getting praise for his bold, modern library.

 

The story of an artist and an abusive patron is one of the oldest in art history. Harrison is at turns sycophantic toward Lásló, jealous of his talent, his protector, and his tormentor. Lásló is commissioned to build the Van Buren Institute, a massive concrete community center, gym, and Protestant chapel complex. Not only is it a clash of egos and religious beliefs, it’s one of Lásló’s heroin addiction and Harrison’s alcoholism. When Erzsébet and Zsófia arrive, things get more complicated. Zsófia is mute from death camp trauma and Erzsébet, though sexually active, is wheelchair bound from osteoporosis (the subtitle said osteomyelitis). Harry has become a conniving SOB who undermines everyone, and Harrison’s volatile cashflow leads to demands for cost cuts, which Lásló refuses to do to the point of offering to pay for overruns himself. Another major crisis occurs when Lásló and Harrison go to Carrara to pick out marble for the altar. Will the concrete white elephant ever get built? The Brutalist borrows themes of megalomania from Citizen Kane, but is also about prejudice toward outsiders (racial, religious, national, socially inferior).

 

The film spirals out of control after the intermission when the focus shifts from an immigration story to a construction project sullied by rancor from numerous directions. Corbet attempt at a sweepingly epic like The Godfather saga begins to leak like raw concrete. In the confusing second half, un- or barely-introduced characters drop in and out, along with unresolved mysteries, and dropped storylines. The film’s epilogue is an unexplained out-of-nowhere tribute to Tóth.

 

I was sad that the promising first part of the movie disintegrated before my eyes. The Brutalist could have taken its place among epics such as Schindler’s List, The Last Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Citizen Kane. Alas, it crumbled like the Van Buren Center.

 

Rob Weir

 

Note 1: Corbet admired the music of the late Scott Walker and dedicated the film to him. Walker’s music was also quite controversial, innovative to some and strident for others.

 

Note 2: Here are two examples of brutalist architecture: Boston City Hall and the UMass Amherst Fine Arts Center.

 

UMass 

Boston