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Film - NYFF Preview
This image released by A24 shows Alessandro Nivola, left, and Adrien Brody in a scene from "The Brutalist." (A24 via AP)

At the New York Film Festival, an art form at play

The movie year tends to come into focus at the New York Film Festival, which prizes itself on being a curated gathering of the best cinema from around the world

By JAKE COYLE
Published - Sep 26, 2024, 07:24 PM ET
Last Updated - Dec 16, 2024, 06:51 PM EST

NEW YORK (AP) — When you think of blockbusters, the first thing that comes to mind might not be a 215-minute postwar epic screening for the first time at Lincoln Center.

But that was the scene last week when the New York Film Festival hosted a 70mm print of Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist.” The festival hadn’t then officially begun — its 62nd edition opens Friday — but the advance press screening drew long lines — as some attendees noted, not unlike those at Ellis Island in the film — and a packed Walter Reade Theatre.

Word had gotten around: “The Brutalist” is something to see. Corbet’s epic, starring Adrian Brody as a Jewish architect remaking his life in Pennsylvania, is the kind of colossal cinematic construction that doesn’t come around every day. Shot in VistaVision and structured like movements in a symphony (with a 15-minute intermission to boot), “The Brutalist” is indeed something to behold. It’s arthouse and blockbuster in one, and, maybe, a reminder of the movies’ capacity for uncompromising grandeur — and the awe that can inspire.

It’s been fashionable in recent years to wonder about the fate of the movies, but it can be hard to placate those concerns at the New York Film Festival. The festival prizes itself on gathering the best cinema from around the world. And this year, the movies are filled with bold forays of form and perspective that you can feel pushing film forward.

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