Aconfession: My intent for this month’s movie column was to review The Brutalist, the three-and-a-half-hour period piece that’s supposedly a throwback to the days of extended cinematic splendor (punctuated by a welcome intermission). Having put it off until close to deadline — finding three and a half open hours, plus previews, is slightly challenging these days — I discovered that the Oscar-nominated movie had vanished from theaters already. More, I also realized that with the Oscars two weeks away, not a single one of the ten Best Picture nominees was playing in any of the several multiplexes near my home — a modest but useful illustration of how completely the link between the Academy Awards and the cinematic experience they’re supposed to showcase has collapsed.
With that in mind, though, maybe it’s for the best that I couldn’t catch The Brutalist, because it lets me write about a Best Picture nominee that even more starkly illustrates Hollywood’s difficulties right now. That would be Emilia Pérez, a movie that earned an extraordinary 13 Oscar nominations, one shy of the record first set by All About Eve, for a story that I still don’t quite believe was really filmed even after watching it.
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