Train Dreams

Director Clint Bentley

director on the set with Joel Edgerton

novelist Denis Johnson

TRAIN DREAMS      B                                                                                                           USA  (102 mi)  2025  d: Clint Bentley

There were once passageways to the old world; strange trails, hidden paths.  You’d turn a corner and suddenly find yourself face-to-face with the great mystery, the foundation of all things.  And even though that old world is gone now, even though it’s been rolled up like a scroll and put somewhere, you can still feel the echo of it.                                                             —opening narration (Will Patton)

Adapted from a 108-page novella by Denis Johnson, initially appearing in The Paris Review in 2002 before published on its own in 2011, one of three works of fiction nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2012, along with David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King and Karen Russell’s Swamplandia, but in a controversial decision no book was awarded the prize that year, the first time in 35 years.  His 1986 novel was also the source material for the Claire Denis film Stars at Noon (2022), which won the Grand Prix at Cannes, another film about isolation and existentialism.  Set in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the 20th century with the building of the transcontinental railroads, forest loggers met with railroad men to tame the American West, falling trees in abundance, literally carving out sides of mountains to make way for the coming future, opening up pockets of America’s Western frontier to expansion in a bid to interconnect the country, much like the interstate highway system did for cars in the 1950’s.  Using a blurred effect that reads like “a waking dream,” much as he did in his earlier much-celebrated short story collection Jesus’ Son in 1992, using unsettling, dreamlike qualities to express a state of mind preoccupied by deeper, metaphysical accounts of the changing world around them, with the film using lengthy voiceover narration passages, which many compare to the pervasive transcendental style of Terrence Malick, especially 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life, as it moves from realism into the metaphysical and back, navigating a line between truth and the American frontier myth.  Deeply contemplative, this is like an early David Gordon Green movie, George Washington (2000) or All the Real Girls (2003), the kind of thing nobody makes anymore (including Green), like an ancient relic, or a lone tree dwarfed by the massive overgrowth of the surrounding woods, as it places the poetry of mood and atmosphere over any narrative coherence, with the natural beauty of the landscapes becoming a character of its own.  Co-written by Bentley and Greg Kwedar, beautifully shot almost entirely outdoors, by Brazilian cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, where the strength of the film is the natural surroundings in an elegiac portrait of Robert Grainier, Australian actor Joel Edgerton, from David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom (2010), Jeff Nichols’ Loving (2016), and Barry Jenkins’ 2021 #2 Film of the Year The Underground Railroad- made for TV (2021), who is a simple man living in the mountains of northern Idaho near the Canadian border, making his living as a logger before transitioning to working for the railroad.  Immediately we are introduced to unsettling racist and xenophobic elements of the American Dream, namely those who were deprived from participating, as relentless and unending violence eradicated many of the Chinese laborers in a form of a deeply disturbing ethnic cleansing, witnessing the mass deportation of a hundred or more Chinese families, while often violently killing these Asian laborers in plain sight of the others, accused of alleged crimes before subjecting them to mob justice.  Ghostly visions of one murdered man, Fu Sheng (Alfred Hsing), continually flashes in the head of Grainier, who “was baffled by the casualness of the violence,” whose guilt haunts him for the rest of his life, posing the question, “Do you think the bad things we do follow us in life?,” leading him to suspect that he is subject to some obscure curse that follows him through the rest of his days and haunts his dreams, like the recurrence of traumatic damage, a reminder of the perils that come with the forming of a new frontier, which is anything but civilized, as the killings go unpunished.  The film pulls back from the most unforgiving elements of the novella’s critique, where contemporary climate disasters are essentially coupled with the long histories of settler colonialism and racial violence that epitomizes the American frontier.  

In the beginning, Grainier grows close to a man named Arn Peeples (William H. Macy), an old logger full of stories and an explosives expert who befriends him, where he stands out by not saying much, as opposed to the other endlessly chatty workers who actually have even less to say.  They form a bond that is larger than a friendship, one built on mutual respect and admiration, but Arn succumbs to a falling tree branch that hits him in the head, a notorious forest widowmaker that immediately reminds them of the inherent dangers of working in the woods.  His death is marked by nailing his boots to the tree, a poetic tribute that only accentuates how easily things can go wrong working under such primitive conditions, yet that’s also one of the reason jobs are so plentiful, as the hazards can outweigh the benefits, so the work really only attracts single men unattached to families.  Grainier drifts from job to job until he meets Gladys (Felicity Jones, so effective in Brady Corbet’s 2025 Top Ten List #3 The Brutalist) one Sunday after church, falling immediately head-over-heels in love, and they marry shortly afterwards, building a small cabin in a remote acre of the wilderness along the banks of the Moyie River.  In a film with intense highs and extreme lows, suddenly all he wanted to do was share the rest of his life living in the woods with her, having a young daughter named Kate, but Grainier is a man of few words, defined by facial expressions and long silences, with loneliness etched into his face, offering sparse, yet precise dialogue, where the much more revealing voiceover narration is exquisitely read by actor Will Patton, who also provided narration for the audiobook, giving the film a literary quality, providing greater insight into what we are seeing, with a quiet, unobtrusive, and barely audible musical score written by The National’s Bryce Dessner.  An ode to a vanishing way of life, the film actually recounts 80-years of his life (living into the 1960’s), orphaned as a child, never knowing who his parents were, dropping out of school, wandering from place to place, seemingly directionless until he meets Gladys, and suddenly he has a purpose.  Yet in order to survive, he has to spend long periods of time away from home in order to earn an income, which comes at a cost, as they both feel the wearying effects of his absence, not to mention a child who barely knows her father.  So they hatch a plan to build a lumber mill, allowing him to work closer to home, but in order to finance the project he’s forced into one more logging excursion, which is cut short by apocalyptic visions of fire and smoke billowing into the sky, a raging forest fire literally seen for miles, where the damage swallows up his family and his home, as well as much of the surrounding landscape, all reduced to ashes, yet their loss gives his life meaning, as he refuses to let them go.  Staying on the charred grounds in the event they might happen to return, he remains lost and alone, literally a hermit in the woods, reminiscent of Robert Redford’s survivalist in Sydney Pollack’s JEREMIAH JOHNSON (1972).  In the tradition of 20th century American frontier fiction, like Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), the novel is darker in tone, told out of order, with a more complicit protagonist who is definitely guilty, with a less than admirable character, refusing explanation at the end, while the film is more linear and ambiguously open-ended, turning the protagonist into an ordinary but exemplary everyman who is our silent witness to the transformation of America in the 20th century, softening the harsh tone to literally questioning the meaning of our existence rather than continually reeling from the devastation erupting all around us.

After such an impactful tragedy, the film leans even more heavily on its visual language, Visuals - Train Dreams (4K) YouTube (4:43), becoming a profound meditation on existence, on grief and loss, and on the great mystery of all things, with lengthy philosophical ruminations expressed through the existential narration.  Finding work transporting goods to and from the railroad, he develops a spiritual friendship with a local Indigenous merchant, Ignatius Jack (Nathaniel Arcand), seemingly his only friend left in the world when he’s down in the dumps, while also meeting another fiercely independent woman who is quite comfortable living alone, Claire (Kerry Condon, from Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, 2022), the first woman to work for the U.S. Forest Service, brought in to survey the aftermath of the devastating fire, living in an elevated fire lookout tower to have a better view of developing forest fires.  Her unique, otherworldly residence takes him by surprise, as does her openly friendly nature, where she seems to understand him better than others, perhaps because she’s had her own experience with death, having lost a husband to a long, protracted illness, Train Dreams | Joel Edgerton and Kerry Condon "Threaded ... YouTube (49 seconds).  Grainier has visions of his wife and daughter, continually walking through the woods where he thinks he can feel their spirits, being very quiet and careful, hoping not to drive them away.  One night he believes he has discovered an injured Kate, now grown up and covered in soot, with a broken leg, cleaning her up while tending to her wounds, but by morning she has disappeared without a trace.  A film about getting swept into the current of incomprehensible change, nature is not just a place of beauty and danger, but watching humans tap into its calm indifference represents a spirit of freedom, offering a poetic space of memory and dreams.  Somber and unromanticized, the language of dreams and reality are interwoven, all blending together, where it’s hard to separate one from the other, which adds a poetic feel to every frame of the film, with Edgerton underplaying every fiber of Grainier’s character, creating a minimalist effect, even though this is an expansive, historical film that weaves its way into the present.  The railroad becomes a symbol of man’s intrusion into nature, a transformation no one can stop, marking progress into modernity, but it too becomes outdated, as wooden bridges across deep river gorges, which were viewed at the time as marvels of engineering, are soon replaced by those made of concrete-and-steel, which is like watching an old world disappear, encapsulating a deep sense of melancholy, becoming not only an elegy for the American West, but a reminder that all our work will eventually become obsolete.  Near the end we see Grainier take a ride on a fixed-wing biplane, which encircles the surrounding forest, allowing him to inspect it from above, providing a unique vantage point, like a God’s-eye view, as events from his life flash through his mind as the plane loops through the air, a reminder that the world keeps changing around him.  In a rare visit to Spokane in 1962, he pauses by a TV screen in a storefront window and witnesses images of astronaut John Glenn in space, allowing him to contemplate his own mortality, while the narrator recounts that Robert died in his sleep in his cabin in November 1968, leaving no heirs, but that on that spring day in the plane, “as he misplaced all sense of up and down, he felt, at last, connected to it all,” Watch the Final Scene of 'Train Dreams' | Anatomy of a Scene YouTube (2:33). 

2025 Top Ten List #3 The Brutalist

 

Director Brady Corbet

Corbet with Silver Lion at Venice

Corbet (right) in Haneke's Funny Games, 2007

Corbet with Mona Fastvold

The director on the set

THE BRUTALIST                 A-                                                                                             USA  Great Britain  Canada  (215 mi)  2024  d: Brady Corbet

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.                       —Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), quoting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1809, in a voiceover letter read to her husband

The Holocaust is a frequent topic in cinema, with films as diverse as Alain Resnais making one of the first to confront the brutal devastation of the extermination camps in his 30-minute short film NIGHT AND FOG (1955), Marcel Ophuls’ intellectually inquisitive THE SORROW AND THE PITY (1969), Claude Lanzmann’s definitive yet dizzyingly expansive testimonial documentary SHOAH (1985), Louis Malle’s lyrically compassionate AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS (1987), Roman Polanski’s tragic first-person account in THE PIANIST (2002), or László Nemes’ frustratingly claustrophobic vantage point of Son of Saul (Saul Fia) (2015), where this is another entry, tying immigration and the postwar flight of Jews from the Nazis to Weimar-era Bauhaus and postwar Brutalist architecture, creating a monumental structure that matches the formulist design with this three-and-a-half-hour film that includes a fifteen minute intermission.  While that alone can seem overwhelming, that’s also part of the intent, as this is meant to be taken seriously, where we can’t forget that Auschwitz was designed by a Bauhaus architect, Fritz Ertl - Auschwitz.  The epic scope and sheer audacity of this film is tremendously appealing, filled with giant ideas, where the boldness of the vision is hard to miss, moving with frenetic energy and pace, brimming with optimism, where the overly bombastic style is unique, creating a larger-then-life canvas that is utterly captivating, using the eloquence of highly structured, Kubrick-infused, old-school filmmaking that is intense, but the film bogs down after the intermission, shifting the focus of the film, becoming more pessimistic, taking a slow turn into a downward spiral, where the initial allure turns exhaustive and emotionally draining, even disappointing, considering the ambitious wealth of artistry in the opening half.  Not sure this film needed an intermission, though after the explosive cinematic bombast, the quietly abstract, intermission piano music was one of the pleasures of the experience, Intermission (feat. John Tilbury) - The Brutalist Original Motion Picture Soundtrack YouTube (11:22), accompanied by a still image of a historic wedding photo surrounded by family (ghosts of the past) that counts down the seconds, as it may have played out differently without a break, but the anticipation created from such an extensively detailed set-up is one of the pleasures for viewers, but it ran out of imagination, feeling overly conventional by the end, speedily wrapping things up in a tidy bow, becoming more in line with what other movies do.  Instead of being inspired by the force of ideas, this limps to an anticlimactic finale that simply runs out of steam.  Surely there was a better way to end this film, as it frustratingly fails to pack an emotional punch, yet it’s fascinating how the title of the film can refer to different things as the film evolves over time, as it’s an art movement but it’s also a way of behavior.  The grandiosity of the film may remind viewers of Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling epic There Will Be Blood (2007), while also exposing the darkness that lies within the heart of the American Dream.  Matching the ferocious spirit of Marco Bellocchio’s bombastic historical drama VINCERE (2009), which delves behind the scenes in the rise of Benito Mussolini, or the sweeping landscape of Visconti’s 19th century THE LEOPARD (1963), this fictionalized version of Jewish-Hungarian architect László Toth has a similar historical arc, escaping postwar Europe, leaving his wife and orphaned niece behind as he arrives in America to begin a new life.  The film accentuates a decisive difference in what America expects from arriving immigrants, and what an artist expects from himself.  It’s a cautionary tale, one fraught with wonders and grandeur dreams, and the price that is ultimately paid to fulfill one’s personal destiny, where narrow-minded moneyed interests have a way of interjecting their own soul shattering, narcissistic self-interests in reshaping or even undoing that artistic legacy.  In an interesting aside, Laszlo Toth is the same name of the mentally unstable Hungarian-born Australian geologist who vandalized Michelangelo’s La Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in 1972, attacking the sculpture multiple times with a hammer (The day Michelangelo's Pietà was vandalised in a ...), perhaps a metaphor for how an artist is both a builder and a destroyer.

Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, taking seven years to conceive, yet only 34 days to shoot in both Hungary and Italy, made for less than $10 million dollars, loosely inspired by the experiences of Jewish-Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer and Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead, written by Corbet, who was one of the psychopathic home intruders in the American remake of Michael Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES (2007), along with his partner and regular collaborator, Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold, the film is told in two chapter headings that move from 1947 to 1960 before leaping ahead to an epilogue in 1980.  Beginning with an extended overture playing over the highly stylized opening credits, Daniel Blumberg - Overture (Ship) | The Brutalist (Original ... YouTube (4:50), we hear a confusion of chaotic voices and a high-pitched siren as László (Adrien Brody) makes his way through the underdeck of a crowded ship arriving in America, while we hear his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, who doesn’t even appear until the second half, revealing a completely different side of herself) reading a letter in voiceover, indicating she must stay behind in Budapest, “There is nothing left for us here,” before we are plunged into darkness.  Emerging out of the depths, he is bombarded by light and the first signs of the Statue of Liberty, inverted initially, suggesting things are askew in pursuing the American Dream, as it keeps changing positions before finally standing upright.  Welcome to America.  Fast-forward to the present, the metaphorical tilt of Lady Liberty reminds us of the self-righteous political trend of demonizing immigrants, which is an attempt to whitewash history, as America is a nation of immigrants, founded on the premise of freedom of religion.  What stands out in this mesmerizing opening sequence is the unbridled power of cinema, in all its awe and splendor, where the technical level is astonishing, as the grand and imposing music by Daniel Blumberg (the original choice was Scott Walker, who died in 2019, where the opening credits end with “In Memory of Scott Walker”) and equally impressive sound design that includes a healthy use of industrial noises are in perfect sync with the 70mm VistaVision imagery from Lol Crawley, giving it an aesthetic of movies from the same time period, the first American film to use that format since Marlon Brando’s sole directorial credit with ONE EYED JACKS (1961), where right from the outset we can tell this is virtuoso filmmaking.  The subject, however, happens to be an intricate examination of the people who inhabit the film, a character study of adults doing adult things, living real lives, where disappointment is built into the fabric of the human experience.  There are a gazillion producers listed, with an equal number of different opinions, no doubt, on how to make this film, where the relationship between the financiers and the filmmaker couldn’t be more personal, but it’s Corbet’s singular artistic vision that stands out, unfettered by their input, as opposed to what happens in the film itself, where the benefactor interferes with every minute aspect of artistic creation.  Adrien Brody won a Best Actor Academy Award, still the youngest actor at the age of 29 to win the award, infamously kissing unsuspecting presenter Halle Berry on the lips, playing a celebrated Jewish-Polish classical pianist and Holocaust survivor in THE PIANIST (2002), also appearing in a cameo role as Salvador Dalí in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011), so he’s not afraid to take on roles with extreme range and emotional depth.  Here he is the central focus of this entire film, inflicted by personal demons, having survived Buchenwald, one of the biggest Nazi concentration camps, but the weight of the past refuses to let go, remaining an oppressive burden that is in every fiber of his being, fortunate to even be alive and breathing, as so many others were not so fortunate.  As he passes through Ellis Island and makes his way to Philadelphia, he finds his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who owns a custom furniture store that’s not exactly bustling with business, euphorically informing him that his family is alive.  Taking a spare closet in the back of the storeroom, where he has to go outside and back inside to use a bathroom, he’s a helpful hand with few complaints, but saddened at the slow developments in reuniting with his family, as Erzsébet was not born Jewish, but converted for the marriage, with all the required records and documents lost in transit, leaving them in limbo.  While standing in line at a soup kitchen, he runs into Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé) a black father with his young son, immediately striking up a friendship that will last decades, as they find themselves in similar circumstances, immigrants alone struggling to survive in America, sharing that same sense of rootlessness and outsiderism.

A film about grief and loss that examines the motives of religious and racial discrimination, the misery of addictions, and economic exploitation, while offering a scathing critique of America as a bastion of freedom and the land of plenty, as there is a brutal underside to capitalism and the obscene wealth of a precious few, creating an overcontrolling, ego-driven billionaire mindset that has run amok (especially today) and derailed the hopes and dreams of ordinary people, or especially anyone that’s different, by creating unending chaos for the most vulnerable living amongst us, while also having a neutralizing impact on art, toning down the rough edges, obscuring originality, belittling anything that’s provocative, regurgitating the same formula over and over, making everything more homogenized for the mainstream.  One of the frequently recurring motifs is a head-on POV shot of a car speeding down an open road, or a train barreling down a track, typically accompanied by industrial sounds, where that percussive thump emphatically accentuates the power of progress, which is given a literary sweep, with a visualized mix of roads and rails and architecture, as time waits for no one moving forward.  There is a newsreel-like insert of the history of Pennsylvania in the making of America, as it is the center of the steel industry, with smokestacks puffing billows of smoke into the skies.  It isn’t pretty, but it illustrates how necessary the hard, dirty work is in building a nation, where there is a grim look to the postwar rebuilding years in America that this film brilliantly captures.  A break comes when a wealthy family wants to commission the services of the cousins in renovating a personal study on the grounds of a massive estate in nearby Doylestown, where Harry (Joe Alwyn) wants to surprise his millionaire father Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) by transforming his prized, yet darkly cluttered reading room into a state-of-the-art library, with László tearing down the velvet curtains covering the massive windows while cleverly shielding the books from the sunlight with moving bookshelves, transforming it into an ultramodern, minimalist mecca of open space and light, creating a quiet place of reflection that is completely different, while bringing Gordon along for the construction.  Even if you know next to nothing about architecture, this film makes you intrinsically understand that it means something personally, yet it so offends Harrison upon his return that he screams for the trespassers to leave, refusing to pay for this abomination, leaving the cousins fending for themselves afterwards, even threated with an expensive lawsuit, basically driving them in different directions, with Attila angrily kicking him out, fueled by false accusations from his Catholic wife of sexual advances.  It’s a sad state of affairs, driven to desperation and anguish, living in a shelter while turning to drugs and dangerous construction work, where it’s Harrison’s turn to surprise László, having done some research into his background, discovering he’s a visionary European architect, having studied in the Bauhaus, considered way ahead of his time, with many important buildings on his resumé, but in America he’s a misunderstood nobody.  Apologizing profusely for his unforgivable behavior, Harrison, based in part on chemist and art collector Albert C. Barnes, has become a big fan of that futuristic library transformation, becoming the envy of his peers, given a photospread in Look magazine, yet this is also the first time viewers get a chance to see to full extent of László’s creations, where he’s not some ordinary man, but a tormented artist with aspirations to leave behind a monumental legacy that’s designed to last.  Harrison, a self-made industry titan who is the epitome of the American Dream, is a wealthy patron who wants to avail himself of that daunting possibility by building an enormous shrine to his late mother on a nearby hillside high above the stately grounds of his estate, offering László the complete freedom to design a mammoth project that would include a community center comprised of an auditorium, a library, a gymnasium, a meditative house of worship, and possibly even a swimming pool, all sharing the same space, his own City upon a Hill.  Living on the grounds while it’s under construction, the family attorney Michael (Peter Polycarpou) helps him expedite the process of reuniting with his family, helping them procure the necessary documents, where the obstacles are formidable, as both women endured Dachau and are now stuck in a displaced-persons camp in Hungary under Soviet control, The Brutalist (2025) Movie Clip 'Announcement' Adrien Brody ... YouTube (1:13).  It’s the chance of a lifetime, where László’s dream mirrors America’s postwar transformation, and in each case it’s full speed ahead, where the future is suddenly limitless, as the frenetic energy on display is emblematic of László’s unconstrained joy and optimism, having dug himself out of the depths, bringing the first half to a resounding close.    

When Erzsébet and his young niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) finally arrive, it’s clear they’ve been through Hell, as the trauma of the war is everpresent, with his vulnerable wife in a wheelchair, her legs crippled from famine, while his teenage niece is mute, her parents killed in the death camps.  Despite the immensity of the tragedy and the horrible impact on their damaged lives, they are not exactly welcomed to the grounds, remaining strangers even to one another at first, thankful for the relief of finally being reunited, though the cultural disconnect with the surrounding community is everpresent.  Harry, the arrogant and entitled son, is oblivious to what they’ve been through, finding them odd and peculiar, and not one of them, suggesting they are not liked, but merely “tolerated,” while smugly insinuating sexual abuse of Zsófia, accentuating a racist perspective of hostility toward Jewish outsiders in their midst, suggesting they will never be equals, where local demands have been made to change a universal space of reflection to a Christian chapel, in accordance with the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) values of Doylestown.  While the size of the project is massive, accentuating industrial materials like concrete, steel, and glass, with starkly minimalist, modernist, and even futuristic designs, abstract shapes are used sparingly for décor, with a wealth of exposed space, using simple color schemes, creating a holistic design that is conceptually awe-inspiring while also functional.  Harrison keeps finding ways to undermine László’s vision by tightening the strings on the budget, callously insisting on changing the dimensions to something smaller, hiring cronies who are only concerned with minimizing costs, which leads to cheaper products, producing catastrophic results, as we see a freight train with building materials from an aerial view disappearing in a cloud of smoke before bursting into flames, incurring the wrath of Harrison, shutting the project down with plenty of finger-pointing and ensuing legal woes, creating an artistic divide that sends László spiraling into an alcohol and drug-dependent depression, which changes how he navigates the world.  The whirlwind nature of the first act slows down considerably as we see the deepening psychological ramifications, with Zsófia believing it is their duty to live in Israel, a newly formed Zionist nation, free from the prejudicial assaults they are continually faced with, needing a safe haven where they can live without fear.  Erzsébet is inclined to agree, though László holds out hope of fulfilling his dreams in America.  Years later, Harrison reconnects with László, going on a strange and mysterious odyssey to the mountainous village of Carrara in Italy in search of the most beautiful marble on the planet, which becomes a mind-altering experience, where a visit deep into the mines is like plunging into the depths of the underworld, but in the alcohol-fueled celebration afterwards, something deeply bullying and dominant happens, changing the entire trajectory of the film, as Harrison once again imposes his will in the most heinous manner imaginable.  The film internalizes the damage done in ways that are shocking, exposing the self-centered, insular nature of the rich and powerful, whose sole objective is making a profit by crushing those who are weaker, immune to any consequences, pretending to be pillars of the community and devoted patrons of the arts, but they prove to be heartless and soulless scoundrels caught up in narcissistic megalomania, who only want to cement their own legacy by enlarging their already considerable egos, incapable of comprehending what it takes to conceive great art.  Corbet has an ability to create carefully choreographed, elongated sequences that are dramatically impressive, allowing the actors to expand upon their roles, as there is an inevitable confrontation of this deepening divide that plunges us into the psychological depths of moral depravity, where art may be the saving grace, but it is absent in the brutality of unspeakable acts, leading to a strikingly powerful moral abyss of epic proportions, with a few shocking surprises, as Erzsébet stunningly conveys what an amazing woman she is, brazenly confronting the despicable behavior of the more privileged Van Buren family, who treacherously prey on the weak.  Their angry yet entitled response is to have her forcibly dragged out of there, yet what follows is an ecstatic labyrinthian journey of pure cinema.  The film suggests we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes we do not recognize in ourselves, revealing the cyclical nature of history, cleverly and transparently bringing the film into the present.  The brief epilogue inverts what we’ve seen before, jumping ahead two decades, where the earlier, perpetually unfinished projects have been completed, and now it’s László in a wheelchair, with Erzsébet wheeling him into a retrospective of his work that is being commemorated in Venice, where an adult Zsófia (Ariane Labed, the wife of director Yorgos Lanthimos), the proud guardian of her uncle’s legacy, gives a speech highlighting how their experience with the Holocaust inspired her uncle’s works, suggesting the past is always present, while the transcendent immortality of art literally has no price.  The improbable closing music over the credits is a rousing disco song by Italian pop duo La Bionda, La Bionda - One For Me, One For You (1978) YouTube (5:33), ironically sending viewers on their merry way.