My last viewing of 2024 was indeed The Brutalist, but it was also the brutalest of all my viewings in the calendar year.
That is not a comment on the film's quality in any way, shape or form. You will have to wait a couple weeks before you find out my thoughts on that.
No, it was merely a comment on its length.
In case you were not aware, The Brutalist is 3 hours and 35 minutes long. I don't know whether that includes the 15-minute intermission or not, and I'll explain in a minute why there was some intermission-related confusion related to the total running time. All I can tell you is that I entered the movie theater at just before 9 a.m. and left just after 1 p.m. That's a long amount of time to be in a single movie.
It was also brutal in terms of the impact I thought it wouldn't have, but totally did have, on the rest of my family. But I probably need to back up a few steps at this point.
We are in Los Angeles now, and any time we are in Los Angeles late in the year -- which has happened twice previously since we moved away from here in 2013 -- there is the opportunity for me to see something that not only isn't open in Australia, usually not by a long shot, but also isn't open anywhere else in the U.S. Brady Corbet's follow-up to Vox Lux is one such film, probably the best "get" out of the remaining contenders I'd like to see before closing my rankings, but thought I probably couldn't.
Only a few days ago, though, I first visited its IMDB page, where the sticker shock of the 215-minute running time first hit me. I might have actually swooned like a Georgia debutante on a hot summer day.
So The Brutalist was out as something to watch in LA. Or was it?
I noticed that the AMC in Burbank, which I had never thought of as one of those theaters that shows year-end movies released in New York and Los Angeles in order to qualify for the Oscars, had a daily 9 a.m. screening of the movie. If there was any way to see this movie without severely screwing up the trajectory of one whole day in Los Angeles for the rest of my family, one of only five short days we are here, this was it.
But then my wife and I drank a bit too much on our first night in town during a gathering of a half-dozen close friends, which was an absolute blast, so my plan to do this on the morning of New Year's Eve seemed out the window. Even if I didn't think it would impact her and I didn't think she'd feel offended by the request, I was hesitant to spoil the good vibes of our drunkenness. Then there was the fact that I might feel too wrecked in the morning to make the attempt, even if it was approved.
Then I just decided to sucker up my courage and ask, and it turns out that decision was justified. She agreed immediately, without hesitation or even a small quantity of seeming miffed by the request. Perhaps I'd chosen the perfect moment after all.
I couldn't sleep past 7 a.m. this morning -- it's rare that I do, no matter what the previous night holds -- so I was up in plenty of time and it was all coming to plan. Since we've been very busy most days on our trip and everyone (but crazy old me) needed a bit of a rest today, I knew that no one else in my family would be put out by my not being there, even though I'd have the car in a city that requires them.
The only small bit of concern was that my closest friend here had messaged me before going to bed, after he himself got home from the bar, about possibly doing lunch today. I told him about the Brutalist viewing but that I would likely be done by about 1, so a late lunch would work. (I tend to unrealistically estimate the endings of things that I think could go longer, when it's other people's time I'm infringing on. I think it makes me feel less guilty, though the opposite reaction would also be valid. I guess I feel like if I'm trying to squeeze in an absurd thing that no one else would try to squeeze in, the least I can do is give off the impression it will inconvenience them less than it actually might.)
So I left a note for my wife (who was still asleep) upon leaving that she should touch base with him and his wife mid-morning, knowing that I might actually be capable of doing that myself if the movie had the intermission I thought it might have. However, I'm also playing this game where I see how much I can do without actually connecting my phone to international roaming, which means I'm trying to hop from one free WiFi to another whenever possible. That factors into this story. So it was better for her to start to arrange things.
Because I was already a little bit concerned about the way my movie would be delaying the "start" to the day, I reacted with special annoyance at the number of trailers before the movie. Although I didn't see any actual ads for other products, which dominate the time before an Australian movie starts, there were at least seven and possibly as many as eight movie trailers. Each one felt like a specific delay of two minutes to my getting done with the movie.
During the intermission, I did successfully connect to the AMC WiFi -- even though it had asked for my AMC Stubs membership details the first time I tried to connect -- so I got to see the status of their planning. And that started to worry me about how much I'd delay them getting lunch, especially when I've got a 14-year-old who doesn't take well to having his food delayed. And especially when plans were taking shape for them to walk more than a mile to his house because they had no car.
Then there was the problem with the intermission that I alluded to earlier.
I used the intermission to go get myself a popcorn and soda mid-movie, since I hadn't gotten one before the movie started. Yes, this viewing was just novelty upon novelty for me. Not only was this almost certainly the earliest ever showtime for me in a movie theater, but it was also the only time I'd gotten snacks mid-movie without missing any of the movie. (And the times I've done that I might be able to count on one finger.)
I was worried about how quickly the intermission would elapse, though, so I hurried back to my seat in case they restarted the movie early. Only to find the screen completely blank, making me wonder if I were even in the right theater. There had been a picture of Adrien Brody and some of the other cast on the screen before I'd left.
I asked my neighbor why there was nothing on the screen. "Because it's intermission," he replied, his voice dripping with the word "Duh!"
"Oh yeah I know but I thought ..." There didn't seem any point to finish the thought.
Less than a minute later, as if in response to my question, the slide with Adrien Brody came back up again ... and had a 15-minute clock that started to count down the remainder of the intermission. But was counting it down from the beginning again, as if ten minutes of that intermission had not already elapsed.
I hoped someone might realize this error and fast-forward it, but you can't really do that -- as soon as anyone might have used this countdown to determine how much time they had to run to the bathroom, you are committed to that being an accurate countdown. Better to go too long and make sure nobody misses anything than the alternative.
So in the end we had a 25-minute intermission rather than a 15-minute intermission, further delaying my arrival at the burger place -- and it was now unclear whether I was meeting them there or at my friend's house. Giving them an update on my situation, I told them I would leave as soon as the credits started.
Which I did, and just to make sure I did not lose the connection to the AMC WiFi, I put the phone on Do Not Disturb rather than turning the phone off. So I did ask for clarification on where I should go once I was able to use it again, but got no response before I needed to leave WiFi range.
Which meant that by the time I had meandered back to their house, taking a less than optimal route to get there, I hadn't seen that they wanted me to meet them at the restaurant.
This officially signaled the end to my "How many days can you go without connecting to the cellular network?" game. They brought me back a burger, at least having had the good sense to go ahead and eat without me. And I got to catch up with their 20-year-old son, who I've known since he was a baby, so the mishap did have some fringe benefits.
Anyway.
So a bit brutal on the trajectory of the day, but at least my wife and kids were in good spirts and I don't think I've lost any points with them.
Although this time stamp will say January 1st, there are still about eight hours to go in 2024 here on the west coast of the U.S. And though it's conceivable I could watch another movie in that time, I think it's best to use the excuse of having written this post not to do that. Two hundred eighty-seven new-to-me movies in 2024 seems like a good number -- perhaps even too high a number, since I haven't seen this many in a single year since 2016. Definitely no need for a 288th.
Happy New Year to one and all.
No comments:
Post a Comment