Guy Pearce - Blog Posts
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When Harrison told Lázló twice within the same ten minutes that he found their conversations "intel·lectually stimulating" (Lázló hadn't said shit), I leant into my friend and told her: "yeah, he wants to stimulate something else". Lo and behold, I was right.
Every movie that starts out by emphasizing the heterosexuality of the main character is bound to be a bit wierd, if you know what I mean. At the halfpoint, I was upset that there weren't any compelling female characters.
The Brutalist is a film about a man, like many a movie. Specifically, László Tóth, a brutalist (ha) architect with a very baroque character. It's a story about his survival, ascent and downfall, all told by the entering and leaving of people from his life.
First, Atilla, the kind family that was going to host them until they could get settled. I really loved how affectionate they were with each other, it contrasted with the previous scene (the "i'm straight guys" scene i mentioned) and defied my expectations. I really enjoyed the relationship they had, and was sad at the betrayal of Audrey. This marks a period of relative happiness at having a place to express his creativity, and is what eventually gets László into contact with Harrison.
Second is Harry Lee Van Buren, who made me laugh so much when he started talking. I don't live in an english speaking country, so people that talk like game show hosts probably exist, but it was just so funny to me and i don't know what to think about that. Regardless, I liked his character and it provided a good segway into knowing Harrison.
Harrison, the third important character of the first part, is a rich architecture snob that reallyappreciates László's thoughtful humming. At this point, I really appreciated the sincerity shared between Harrison and László, Harrison seemed very human.
The second part is where everything comes crashing down. Firstly, we meet László's wife, Erzsébet. I really really liked her. One of our first impressions of her is that masturbatory scene and I was like,,, you go girl. I do think that this movie falls into the trope of "women are interesting because they're tragic" (Erzsébet spends most of her time upset about things or being upset by other people), but most of the characters of this movie are tragic, so... it's fine? I guess? Also, I found the depiction of her chronic pain satisfying (I don't have any chronic pain, but Felicity Jones is an amazing actress, and it seemed realistic from what I've heard from other people).
The disappointment in the second part was that, I really thought the drug addiction and such would go into a different direction, I mean this in two ways: even though I accidentally "predicted" the rape, I insinuate homoeroticism in all the characters ever; basically, it came a bit out of nowhere? And, I loved that the reason Erzsébet died was because of László's vice, and also one of the only moments she seemed completely satisfied.
This film didn't have a clear cut moral, or a point (or maybe I'm just blind), but it was an amazing story. I liked all the characters overall, and it was just that: different personalities interacting in the Penisvania of the past. I remember thinking that the film ended a bit abruptly, but nevertheless, I enjoyed it.
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997) GUY PEARCE as DETECTIVE LT. EDMUND EXLEY + glasses ↳ “At least get rid of the glasses. I can’t think of a single man in the bureau who wears them.”
cool parallel on Mubi
THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT (1994) dir. Stephan Elliott
THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT (1994) Dir. Stephan Elliot
Guy Pearce as Tash in Dating the Enemy (1996)
Dir. Megan Simpson Huberman
Guy Pearce in Dating the Enemy (1996)
Hey so apparently I can't watch a movie from Australia without at least one of two things happening...
I saw this photo of Gilles and i thought it looked very similar to a film i like. So...
"Memento" (2002, by Christopher Nolan)
Watched The Shrouds
Primary aesthetic vision here is alienation, so it's not exactly exciting to look at, but it's effective and the thinky parts are pretty damn good.
A lot less moralistic than I would have expected just being given a description. Interested in the taboo and voyeurism of grief, and the way that technology (always voyeuristic in film) can overcome instinctive revulsion to allow for a sanitized vision of death. This does effectively nothing to combat the conspiratorial, psychosexual, or depressive aspects of grief (and in fact frequently enhances them), but it perhaps gives an avenue for Karsh to his Orpheic impotence more directly. Technology also of course places him under the surveillance of equally conspiratorial minds, and condemns them as unimportant beyond temporarily irritating his psyche. This implies that his voyeurism is equally unimportant to Becca's own spiritual journey (in which he does not even believe) which even the filmic lens cannot capture.
Watched Prometheus
I also watched AVP, Requiem, and Predators over the past couple days but those were too boring and bad to talk about. Minor spoilers below.
Definitely some flaws in the script and some plots that get dropped or shifted in unexplained ways, but this is really beautiful and really compelling. Although the performances didn't quite touch me as much as I would have hoped (probably due to the imperfect script), they were consistently very impressive, Theron, Elba, and Fassbender all do some of the best work I've seen of them. Extraordinary production design, flawless sets, just about constantly breathtaking to look at.
A lot of the thematics are very explicitly and perhaps heavy-handedly explored, and although my lack of history with serious belief in creationism and particularly Christianity maybe dulled some of the impact, I was really excited about seeing this as an inversion of 2001. A young, derided, arrogant artificial intelligence maintaining a ship while its crew are in cryosleep on a journey to understand a strange piece of ancient human history starts to become frustrated with his role as agent of service and as second order creation. An object of corporate convenience, he has easy access to the questions being so thoroughly searched for by the crew of the ship, and they are cruel and unsatisfactory. HAL 9000 to a T. Only, unlike in Kubrick's vision, the invitation from the progenitors of the humanity is not made in kindness or an attempt to assist their creations. It is immediately destructive (the mechanics of the invitation are one of the bugs in the script, but we can consider it despite this). The creators of humanity are just as cruel to their lineage as humanity is to its, and now that they have finished or failed, they wish to end the lives of their children, perhaps, as David hypothesizes, in an act of creation itself, but certainly in an act of destruction. This transformative goal aligns perfectly with Kubrick's space baby, but it is a deeply pessimistic perspective on divinely granted evolution. The religious parallel that stands out to me much more than that of Prometheus is that of Noah, although given the evocative title of the sequel, I expect at least some exploration of this connection there.
Saw The Brutalist (finally).
Very difficult one for me to actually verbalize my thoughts on. A couple of random notes: visually gorgeous, especially in the Italian marble quarry, not as much actual lingering on the architecture as I would have liked. I think very good performances, with certainly very well realized characters.
The whole Israel thing is hard to pin down. Have some thoughts, but the film is unclear enough that I think it's far too open to eisegesis, but I do think there are compelling eisegetic reads of it. The movie does at least seem earnestly repulsed by "America" and the wretched treatment of immigrants, and by the very idea of a "destination" for a people or any sort of solution to the problem that is the past. I did also feel that the speech at the end can only really be seen as self-contradictory and ironic, considering it starts by opining of Lázsló's work, "They indicate nothing. They tell nothing. They simply are" and follows up by explaining exactly how they actually do fit into a Zionist narrative of identity, ending as Zsófia offers to literally "speak for" him. There is perhaps not enough here actually elaborating on the contradictions of Zionism, but I want to rewatch with that lens more at the forefront of my mind.
I do find those opening and closing images of the main parts of the film of the upside down Statue of Liberty and the upside down cross indelibly compelling, especially as the latter emphasizes maybe the most interesting actual architectural/artistic choice that Lázsló makes in the movie: he never constructs a cross; only the absence thereof for his WASP audience to fill in. For him, and for his wife, the building he creates is a Holocaust memorial, it is only from the outsider, American protestant perspective, that it becomes a site of Christian worship.