Brady Corbet rubbishes criticism of long films

Brady Corbet has dismissed concerns about film runtimes being too long.

The 36-year-old filmmaker's new historical drama 'The Brutalist' premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday (01.09.24) but he has little time for those who are unhappy about the movie's 215-minute length.

Brady said at a press conference for the picture: "This film does everything that we are told we are not allowed to do.

"I think it's quite silly actually to have a conversation about runtime because that's like criticising a book for being 700 pages instead of 100 pages."

Corbet says a film is more about "how much story there is to tell" and scoffed at the idea of directors being constrained "into a box" in terms of how long their work should be.

He said: "Maybe the next thing I make will be 45 minutes and I should be allowed to do it. We should be allowed to do that. The idea we have to fit into a box is quite silly.

"We should be past that, it's 2024. As Harmony Korine once said, cinema is stuck in the birth canal. And I agree with him, so we should help it out."

'The Brutalist' stars Adrien Brody as the Hungarian architect Laszlo Toth – who emigrates to the United States after surviving the Holocaust – and an emotional Corbet explained the heart and soul that went into making the flick.

He said: "This was an incredibly difficult film to make. I'm very emotional today because I've been working on it for seven years, and it felt urgent every day for the better part of a decade."