This whole Brutalism thing has gotten a bit of out of hand now.... they are scraping the barrel bottom, I think.
Mind, you, these photographs are cool in a J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World, London-gone-tropical kind of way..
Via Hoxton Mini Press which fairly places it as a product (cute little logo though)
Talking about Brutalism... what did people make of The Brutalist? I watched it on the airplane, which is ridiculous - seat-back screen versus the widescreen, Dolby-sound grandeur of imagery and music that it is all about. Despite these reductions, I was really into it until about two-thirds of the way through when a plot twist occurs that seemed ludicrous and after that the whole thing seemed to cop out, or crap out....
6 comments:
I loved The Brutalist. It had more ideas than every other film I’ve seen in the past decade put together. I agree that the plot twist was jarring, but it didn’t take me out of the film. You could say it’s a grotesquely obvious metaphor, but the film is about so much more than that, I think it survives. I saw it in the cinema with the full widescreen / Dolby experience, which definitely helped.
Also possibly relevant to your interests, in a loose kind of way: have you seen Sinners?
Not yet - I've heard it is great
I won’t spoil it at all, but if you have any interest in music on film I think it’s well worth seeing.
I’m actually really on for this book.
Plants taking over brutalist architecture is always startling and pleasantly surprising.
I lived on the Alexandra Estate in NW8 from 1996-2002, and revisiting it in January this year it was great to see so much greenery thriving.
Also loved The Brutalist - ery much against the odds, as I have not enjoyed the directors other films at all.
I was a bit puzzled as to why there seems to be a bit of a competition going on here in the UK to pick holes in it. It’s great on so many levels.
Am I missing something, or are these buildings that have been left derelict, and so the plants have taken over? That's a common fate for the few brutalist buildings that haven't already been torn down. Here's a video of an extreme case of brutalist abandonment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtkmDmMzZO8
Not sure - the description at the publishers doesn’t make clear. Some of the vegetation does look cultivated and purposefully integrated with the structure - presumably to soften its starkness, which seems a bit contra the Brutalist spirit (nature being innately anti-modernist and pro ornament, baroque in fact). But other photos look a bit too wild and overgrown to be on purpose and seem more like the Ballardian scenario.
LA is full of conjunctions of the man-made and wilderness - great slabs of concrete whose purpose is sometimes obscure juxtaposed with cacti and scrub and undergrowth. The famous man made LA river has a silted up archipelago running through it on which trees have grown and herons and birds live - and then after flash floods you get mattresses and tarpaulin stuck in the trees, washed down from homeless encampments. Strange mix of idyllic and desolate
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