To be read as a direct continuation of Part 2; https://watchitdie.blogspot.com/2025/03/lets-all-go-to-movies-pt2.html
In that part I looked at; "Metropolis" (1927), arguing that it is one of the most influential movies ever made. I'm now going to look at a movie which has been heavily influenced by Metropolis. Raising all of the issues of Metropolis at The Oscars 2025. Although I've not seen it.
The Brutalist (2024): This tells the story of Lázló Tóth, played by Adrien Brody. A Hungarian Jewish survivor of The Nazi Holocaust who arrives in America in 1947 unsure of whether his wife and daughter have survived The Nazi Holocaust. At first he goes to live with his cousin Attila Miller, played by Alessandro Nivola. Lázló Tóth quickly learns that his cousin has converted from Judaism to Catholic Christianity in order to marry Audrey Miller, played by Emma Laird. Rather like how Metropolis director Fritz Lang's own Mother converted from Judaism to Catholic Christianity in order to marry his Father.
Lázló Tóth goes to work at Attila Miller's furniture business where he meets Harry Lee van Buren, played by Joe Alwyn. The Nepo Baby son of the American Industrialist Harrison Lee van Buren, played by Guy Pearce. Learning that Lázló Tóth is a trained architect Harry Lee van Buren hires him to renovate a library at his Father, Harrison Lee van Buren's mansion.
Harrison Lee van Buren hates the library renovation and Harry Lee van Buren refuses to pay Lázló Tóth his fee. At the same time Audrey Miller falsely tells her husband, Attila Miller, that Lázló Tóth has made a pass at her, prompting Atilla Miller to throw Lázló Tóth out of their house. Left homeless Lázló Tóth descends into Heroin addiction. Inventor of Communism Karl Marx famously described religion as; "The Opium of the People." One of the Bourgeois chains that the workers must free themselves from in order to achieve true, Communist, revolution.
Several years later Harrison Lee van Buren tracks Lázló Tóth down and finds him living in charity housing and labouring at a Coal mine. A reference to the Robber Barons of America's Gilded Age, The Victorian Era. Particularly the dispute between the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad and the Molly Maguires in 1876. How the Robber Barons used Land Grants to build the Railroads and used the economic and political power their ownership of the Railroads gave them to own everything else, such as Coal mines. How they used their monopoly on power to abuse their workers. Including by using private armies such as Pinkerton & Co to wage war against them. Leading to the Anti-Pinkerton Act of 1893.
While Harrison Lee van Buren had hated the library Lázló Tóth had designed everyone else, all the great art critics of the day, loved it. Giving him a fantastic status symbol. So Harrison Lee van Buren finally pays Lázló Tóth his fee and hires him to design the Van Buren Institute, a vast community centre Harrison Lee van Buren wants to build as a grand tribute to his Mother.
As the Van Buren Institute is under construction Lázló Tóth is reunited with his wife Erzsébet, played Felicity Jones, and his daughter Zsófia, played by Raffey Cassidy. The malnutrition of The Nazi Holocaust has left Erzsébet confined to a wheelchair with Osteoporosis while its psychological trauma has rendered Zsófia mute. Again referencing America's Robber Barons a Railroad accident during construction prompts Harrison Lee van Buren to halt construction of the Van Buren Institute. Over the costs of having to compensate the workers injured during the industrial accident.
Several years later construction of the Van Buren Institute has resumed. Although in this time Zsófia Tóth has regained the power of speech, married, had a daughter and has decided to make Aliyah, returning to Israel to live in Jerusalem. During a trip to Italy to source marble for the Van Buren Institute Harrison Lee van Buren rapes Lázló Tóth. This further traumatises Lázló Tóth and, ultimately, leads to a huge falling out between the Tóth's and the van Buren's.
The rest of the story is untold. However we learn that the Van Buren Institute was finally built. At a retrospective of Lázló Tóth's career in Italy it is revealed that parts of his design for the Van Buren Institute were intended to resemble the Dachau Nazi Death Camp where Lázló Tóth was held during The Nazi Holocaust and the Buchenwald Nazi Death Camp where Erzsébet and Zsófia were held during The Nazi Holocaust.
In the movie it is revealed that Lázló Tóth trained as an architect at the prestigious Staatliches Bauhaus (building house) in the Germany of The Weimar Republic. As with art and music I've never found it particularly helpful to rigidly stick to genres or styles of design and architecture. They are things which evolve organically from a mixture of inspirations. No-one has ever said; "I'm going to create a brand new genre of art. It'll be launched next Thursday at 4pm." However the Bauhaus was established on the principle of; "Gesamtkunstwerk" (comprehensive artwork), establishing a melting pot or crucible bringing together various inspirations from various disciplines of crafts, design and fine arts to help this organic evolution of new styles.
In the second half of the 19th Century, America's Gilded Age, the Victorian Era architecture and design was dominated by The Modernist Style. This was driven by the technological advancements of The Industrial Revolution creating new types of building materials from which new types of buildings could be created. Things like Iron and then Steel frames. These were much stronger than wooden frames so could be used to build taller and heavier buildings.
The Modernist Style was particularly driven by advances in Concrete technology. Made of rock, sand, limestone cement and water Concrete has been used as a building material for thousands of years. While it is a very hard material, great for walking on, it is actually very brittle in terms of tension (stretching) and ductility (twisting). Meaning that it is not good for building upwards with, like a wall, or bearing lateral loads, such as a beam joining two walls. In the 1890's French builder Françios Coigent discovered that you could massively increase Concrete's tensile and ductile strength by adding metal bars to it as it was being mixed and poured. Reinforced Concrete.
The Industrial Revolution also brought about huge advances in Pre-Cast Concrete. In which Concrete is mixed, poured and cured in a mould in a factory. Meaning that you can produce large, complex pieces of Concrete on a mass scale, rather like how traditional bricks are mass produced. Combined with Reinforced Concrete this meant you could mass produce identical Concrete beams and Concrete wall panels etc which could then be quickly assembled into bigger, taller and heavier buildings than ever before.
In order to reach its full strength Concrete has to be properly Cured, the different polymers in the different substances need to cross-set through heating. This is a process which can very much resemble witchcraft. Rock, sand and limestone cement all contain water. With this water being in non-uniform, unknown amounts it is a real skill being able to tell how much water you need to add to any Concrete mix. How long that wet mixture takes to heat up and harden is very dependent on the weather. You can be looking at anywhere between five days and several months for Concrete to fully Cure.
The industrialisation of Pre-Cast Concrete brings that Curing process much more into laboratory conditions. Where you can test exactly how water is in the rock, sand and limestone cement and work out exactly how much water you need to add to the Concrete mix. You can also control the temperature in an Autoclave or kiln, speeding up the Curing process. As a result you can do even more inventive things with Concrete. Britain recently had a bit of a scandal with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerate Concrete (RAAC). During the Autoclaved Curing process bubbles of air are introduced resulting in very light, strong Concrete panels ideal for things like roofing. Although, as Britain was recently surprised to discover, no building material lasts forever. Meaning that 70 year old RAAC panels will need to be replaced.
A famous example of The Modernist Style is actually close to where I grew up. Joseph Paxton's Great Exhibition Building. Originally built in London's Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851 this is a 990,000ft² (92,000m²) palace constructed of a revolutionary Iron frame holding 293,000 glass panels. Quickly dubbed; "The Crystal Palace" in 1854 it was moved to Penge in South London and the entire district of the city officially became Crystal Palace. Not that I ever got to see The Crystal Palace, it burned down in 1936. Quite an achievement for a building made entirely of Iron and glass.
Possibly the most famous example of The Modernist Style is the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. A 1,083ft (330m) tall Iron frame tower built for the World's Fair in 1889 it serves absolutely no purpose other than looking good. Unlike The Crystal Palace it doesn't even keep the rain off things.
In 1925 Paris hosted the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts). It was at this exhibition that The Art Deco Style came of age.
Displaying very much the same attitude that created the Eiffel Tower The Art Deco Style prioritises art and beauty over function. Everything is decorated with the finest craftsmanship. If there is a signature look of The Art Deco Style then it is a piece of furniture, clothing, building or, really, any object decorated in the style of a Japanese folding fan. With the fan blades being marked out with light and dark contrasting colours. Such as Gilded (Gold plated) wood in contrast with black lacquered wood. Or even just intricately carved and joined light and dark woods. Something which very much reflected the pan-European obsession with all things Asian, Eastern, Oriental at the time.
One of the World's most famous examples of the combination between The Modernist Style and The Art Deco Style is the Empire State Building in New York City, America. A 1,454ft (443.2m) cast limestone building adorned with a complex, geometric, decorative facade. It was the tallest building in New York City until the World Trade Centre was completed in 1970. It then, very suddenly, became the tallest building in New York City again. On September 11th 2001 (11/9/01).
The Bauhaus was really established as a counter-point to The Art Deco Style of France. Its founder Walter Gropius was said to be influenced by The Constructivism Style. This rejected the complex, fine human craftsmanship of The Art Deco Style in favour of the very simplistic, austere, industrial techniques. So more of mass produced posters and collages of glued together printed shapes rather than intricate oil paintings done by hand.
The Bauhaus gave rise to what is known as The International Style. While it doesn't reject beauty entirely it is much more focused on incorporating that beauty in functional objects which can be mass produced. The Swedish furniture store IKEA really incorporates The International Style. While its furniture is pleasant to look at it is very minimal in its design with the beauty coming from the object's function. It is also mass produced and very cheap. IKEA was founded in 1943, very much with the help of Slave Labour provided by The Nazi Holocaust.
Not least due to its inspiration from and connections with Russian Constructivists the Nazis saw the Bauhaus as a hotbed of Communist activity. So when The Weimar Republic came to an end when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933 the Bauhaus was closed down and many of its staff and students fled.
I found it interesting that in The Brutalist Zsófia Tóth goes to live in Jerusalem in Israel, later followed by Lázló and Erzsébet. When the Nazis came to power in Germany a great many Jewish staff and students of the Bauhaus did flee to Israel. However they mostly settled in Tel Aviv, rather than Jerusalem. Establishing the White City district of Tel Aviv, some 4,000 buildings which make up the largest example of The International Style which the Bauhaus is famous for.
Obviously that fact completely destroys the propaganda of pro-Hamas fanboys such a Black Lives Matter. That rather than being the indigenous population tracing their history back thousands of years Jews are some sort of White European Colonisers who arrived to steal the Palestinian's homeland in 1947.
Israel's capital Tel Aviv was established back in 1909. Before the First, let alone Second World War. Admittedly at that time what is now Israel was a European Colony. However it was A Colony of the Turkish Ottoman Islamic Caliphate which didn't recognise the Palestinians as the indigenous population or Palestine as a nation state. The movie's almost confusion between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem also raises the issue of moving Israel's capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem following Israel's capture of all of Jerusalem in response to the Arab Aggression of The Six Day War (1967). Aggression the Arabs are still demanding be forgotten with calls for a return to The pre-1967 Borders and The Two State Solution.
The exploration of how technology, art and design go hand-in-hand also address the criticism which is often levelled against the Entertainment Industry, particularly the movies. That it's not serious. It's just people dressing up and pretending to be other people. Rather like children.
However The Oscars are awards handed out by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS). It is often overlooked how much science, technology and engineering goes into movie making. A movie set electrician is exactly the same as a construction site electrician. A movie set carpenter is exactly the same as a construction site carpenter.
A movie set Lighting Director needs to be familiar with a scientific understanding of the physical properties of light, such as wavelength, frequency, intensity and polarisation. Small, little equations like the one governing light refraction - n₁Sinϴ₁=n₂Sinϴ₂. Along with a scientific understanding of how artificial light can be created. Such as through the Electron Doping of Semiconductors.
It also touches on how in the wide world of movie making only a very narrow type of movie normally gets considered at The Oscars. Movies which are very safe, very tame and very mainstream. Yet they still seem to be quite challenging for people who don't work in the movie industry.
At their core The Oscars are awards handed out by the members of an industry body. Celebrating what has been done to advance that industry in the past year. So the nominees for best Cinematography will have advanced the technical processes of Cinematography. While the Acting categories will have displayed technical excellence in the field of Acting. So unless you are a professional working in the field it can be quite hard to endure, let alone fully appreciate Oscar nominees. Even Actors don't vote in the Cinematography category and vice versa.
Going outside of the mainstream or taking things to their technical extremes is often how advances are made. I think even the most passionate Parisian would agree that the Eiffel Tower serves absolutely no practical purpose. It simply looks good. However all the Iron bridges built using the technological processes perfected during the building of the Eiffel Tower. They're incredibly useful. Amid the ruins of The Crystal Palace now stands the Crystal Palace Transmitting Station. A 719ft (219m) Steel tower, very much in the style of the Eiffel Tower. Only with TV and Radio transmitting antenna attached to the top of it.
The movie's title is the name of a specific style of design; The Brutalist Style or Brutalism. This really continued from The International Style of the Bauhaus and is very heavily inspired by Metropolis. Although I've long struggled to understand how anyone could consider Metropolis to be aspirational. It's a warning about a city where everyone is so unhappy that anger and rage are reaching boiling point. It ends with a city in ruins, having been torn apart by the anger, rage and decadence of its citizens.
One possible explanation is that the Brutalists who consider Metropolis aspirational are Progressive Democratic Socialists. They are firm believers in Karl Marx's Two-Stage Theory of Communism. That a society must first become industrialised then, through, industrialisation become so utterly miserable that Communist revolution becomes inevitable. Therefore the purpose of The Brutalist Style is to make things so ugly that it makes everyone so angry and so miserable that is triggers a Communist revolution.
Another possibility is that they've completely missed the point of the movie. Not seeing Freder Fredersen as a figure of fun, the hopeless gay-boy Nepo Baby who is taken in by Mother Mary's anointment of the balm of the mediator, the saviour of society. Instead seeing Freder an heroic illusion of themselves. The heart of society who, through their designs must act as the mediators between the Capitalists and the Workers.
At around 17:35 on 31/3/25 (UK date) I'm no quite sure when I'll be able to pick this up next.
Edited at around 17:00 on 2/4/25 (UK date) to tidy & add above the line and copy & paste;
One thing which would suggest Brutalists have missed the point of Metropolis is that it is a movie done in The Expressionist Style. This is where reality is not portrayed as it is but is altered to show the Subjective Emotion of the reality. An important piece in The Expressionist Style is "The Scream" by Edvard Munch, who actually produced five versions, only two of which are paintings. It depicts a man standing on a bridge screaming. However no-one is ever going to mistake it for a photograph of a man standing on a bridge screaming. The image has been distorted to show the internal terror and dread which is causing the man to scream.
In direct opposition to The Expressionist Style Brutalism is obsessed with Objective Reality. Things must be shown only as they are. The Art Deco movement embraces Expressionism so an Art Deco dressing/make-up table might include a mirror mount made of dark, lacquered Rosewood and light, Ivory finished Oak in the shape of a Japanese folding fan. In order invoke and allow you to experience the emotion of the exotic heat and rare animals of the land of the rising sun. Whereas a Brutalist dressing/make-up table would feature a mirror mount made of a single piece of unfinished Oak. Allowing you to only experience the wood and only as the wood objectively is.
Of course the artistic decorations of The Art Deco Style require more, and often rare, materials along with highly skilled craftsmanship. Which means it's more expensive to make. Typically the craftspeople would make these things to sell. Rather like how Lázló Tóth is employed to make Harrison Lee van Buren's library and then the Van Buren Institute. Meaning that it is the Bourgeoisie Capitalists who get to enjoy the fruits of the Proletariat's labours, using them as status symbols. A clear example of Capital exploiting Labour. So Brutalists reject that sort of decoration as a rejection of Capital's exploitation of Labour.
It's possible that Brutalism also rejects Expressionism on Philosophical, almost Psychological grounds. By pouring their negative emotions into their art Expressionists are using that art as a Displacement Activity. A way for them to live with what is causing those negative emotions rather than forcing themselves to address and change what is causing those negative emotions. The illusionary happiness that prevents people seeking the true happiness of Communist revolution. As Karl Marx put it in his criticism of religion. An illusionary happiness that the Bourgeoisie can buy by using Capital to exploit Labour. Although we might just be stepping into the middle of a personal falling out between two people at this point. A rather highbrow Rap Battle.
Without picking on anyone in particular I've heard numerous filmmakers and musicians liken their work to a form of therapy. An illusionary exploration of their emotions and life experience. The inclusion of The Brutalist during this Awards Season raises discussion of the need for those, typically, Democrat voting, Black Lives Matter supporting Hamas fanboys to be given a swift, harsh, brutal reality check. Objective Facts such as that George Floyd's Blood Oxygen Saturation was an above average 98%. He most certainly could breathe. He died of Cardio-Pulmonary Arrest brought about by a self-administered Fentanyl overdose. The only person who killed George Floyd was George Floyd.
It is also entirely possible that Brutalists reject Expressionism because they just aren't any good at understanding Human emotion. Their minds work like a traditional computer. They can only work in mathematical algorithms. The numerical, objective reality of how things are. The notion that a number could become elongated or curved by the way it is experienced doesn't compute and causes them to glitch. Resulting in them completely missing the point of Expressionist movies.
At around 17:25 on 2/4/25 (UK date) I should be able to get a better run at this tomorrow.
Edited at around 16:25 on 3/4/25 (UK date) to tidy & add above the line and copy & paste;
Taking the Bauhaus' Gesamtknutswerk (comprehensive artwork) to extremes Brutalism sees itself more as a comprehensive philosophy rather than a mere style of architecture or design. Brutalism sees itself more a method of Social Engineering, giving form and shape to society and in doing so giving form and shape to the people who make up society. It doesn't just want to design buildings but the cities that surround them and even the countries which surround the cities. It is through this Social Engineering that the Brutalist Central-Planners get to fulfil their Freder-like destiny of being the mediators between the Capitalists and the Workers.
Metropolis is a tale of two cities, the Worker's City and the Surface City. However those two cities can really be further subdivided into four modules; the Catacombs Module where Mother Maria has her Megachurch. The Dormitory Module where the Workers and their families live and sleep. The Machine Module where the Workers got to work. The Surface City as the refuge for the Top 10,000. Where the Central-Planners, in their superior wisdom, keep all of Metropolis safe.
The Brutalist Style very much embraces this idea of Modulation. Seeing their designs as separate parts with separate functions which all work together. Rather like the different parts or modules of an industrial machine. Some Brutalist buildings have been dubbed; "TV Buildings" due to their use of modular windows which resemble old CRT TV's. The windows are surrounded by a protruding Concrete frame, not just the sill and lintel but also the sides. Making it clear that this is the Light In/Out part of the machine.
Obviously Metropolis is a vertical city. A fictional metaphor for the type of hierarchical, class-based society that Marxists so despise. No-one is going to give Brutalists permission or funding to dig vast underground cities. However they are able to apply Modulation laterally, building outwards. No doubt appealing to their desire for an egalitarian rather than hierarchical society.
Probably one of the largest, most famous examples of Brutalist Modulation is Brazil's capital city, Brasília. Strictly speaking it is built in The Modernist Style, Oscar Niemeyer's sleek, curved pre-Cast Concrete. However it is also a planned city, designed by Urban Planner Lúcio Costa. The blending of two design styles itself contradicting Brutalism's obsession with Modulation.
Lúcio Costa's design for Brasília is known as; "Plano Piloto" (Pilot Plan). Brazil had decided to build its new capital city towards the centre of the country, to reflect Brazil's central place within South America. This was previously undeveloped Rainforest so Lúcio Costa planned Brasília in the shape of a Christian Cross combined with the curve of the hunting bows used to Brazil's Indigenous population. In order to reflect the further Portuguese Christian conquest of Brazil in harmony with the local population.
However Lúcio Costa's main inspiration for his Pilot Plan was a, very modern for 1957, Jet Aeroplane. The East-West axis of Brasília represents the plane's fuselage. Known as the Monumental Axis this is the module or zone reserved for the government buildings which would be the main industry of the capital city. At the front of the Monumental Axis, representing the plane's cockpit, you have the Square of the Three Powers home to the three most important government buildings; the Legislative, Executive and Judicial, alongside Brasília's Catholic Christian Cathedral. Clearly marking out the elite who work in those buildings as the pilots, drivers or leaders of Brazilian society, working to keep all of Brazil safe.
The North-South axis of Brasília represents the plane's wings. Known as the Residential Axis this is the dormitory module(s). The zone in which all the worker's and their families would sleep and live. These dormitory modules were intended to be self-contained with their own shops and schools etc to prevent the workers from entering the Monumental Axis for reasons other than work. Initially there were plans for a recreation module, where the wings met the fuselage, but it was never put into practice.
Brasília was built primarily to serve the motor car. The Monumental Axis is, essentially, a 14 lane Highway/Freeway (7 in each direction) with buildings on either side. Similarly the Residential Axis is an 8 lane Highway/Freeway with two 3 lane Highways/Freeways running alongside the main Highway/Freeway. Many of the streets or; "Superblocks" which make up the dormitory modules are dead-ends. Signifying where the car journey starts and ends.
Although Brutalism sees itself as a comprehensive Social Engineering philosophy it's probably easier to understand its obsession with Modulation by considering it on the scale of a single building. Trellick Tower in London, UK provides a clear example. It's actually two separate towers connected by a series of walkways or Skyways. The, larger, main tower is the dormitory module where the living apartments are. The secondary, smaller, tower is the industrial module containing the buildings machinery; the elevators, water and heating supply etc. While they Skyways are the transit module(s), allowing people to travel between the dormitory and industrial modules.
Trellick Tower was designed by Ernő Goldfinger who, like Adrian Brody's character in The Brutalist, was a Hungarian Jewish architect. However unlike Lázló Tóth Ernő Goldfinger was not caught up in The Nazi Holocaust, moving to Paris, France in 1921 and then to London in 1934.
Whilst living in Paris Ernő Goldfinger studied at the École nationale supérieure des beux-arts (Paris School of Fine Arts) which, at the time, was closely linked to The Art Deco Style. One thing which may have prompted Ernő Goldfinger's migration first to The Modernist Style and then The Brutalist Style inspired by the Bauhaus is that he was a famously miserable, joyless a man. Often firing assistants who he found to be too cheerful.
Of course if Adrian Brody's character in The Brutalist had just been named Ernő Goldfinger then its director, Brady Corbet, would have fallen into the trap of Objective Realism. He would have to tell the facts of Ernő Goldfinger's life as they objectively are, rather than altering them to tell a more expansive story. Everything about America and The Nazi Holocaust would have to go. If Brady Corbet were to get any of the objective facts of Ernő Goldfinger's life wrong then he would also have exposed himself to the wrath of Ernő Goldfinger's estate. Ernő Goldfinger himself certainly had a considerable capacity for wrath.
You may think that "Ernő Goldfinger" sounds a lot like "Auric Goldfinger." The character from Ian Fleming's James Bond story played by Gert Fröbe in the movie; "Goldfinger" (1964). It turns out there's a reason for that.
Ian Fleming used to play golf with Ernő Goldfinger's cousin and they used to spend a lot of time complaining about the miserable man. Ernő Goldfinger built his house next to Ian Fleming's in Hampstead, demolishing a number of Victorian terraces in the process. Something Ian Fleming particularly objected to. The gang Auric Goldfinger hires to help him rob Fort Knox in the story are the; "Cement Mixers." Ernő Goldfinger threatened to sue over the Auric Goldfinger character but changed his mind when Ian Fleming offered to rename the character for the movie as; "Auric Goldprick."
So instead Adrian Brody's character is named Lázló Tóth which is really the most common Hungarian male name, sort of like John Smith. Creating a subjective everyman who, at the same time, is also no-one. The destruction of the illusion of self. An allusion to the 1949 George Orwell novel; "1984," a warning about Marxism or Totalitarian-Socialism.
The Super Bowl 2025 looked at the Urban Geography of Los Angeles. Particularly in The Half-Time Show which featured downtrodden dancers/performers on a seemingly endless march along a stage-set in the style of a Highway/Freeway. Scenes which were heavily inspired by Metropolis. It particularly looked at how Los Angeles' structure of a patchwork of neighbourhoods connected by Highways/Freeways damaged Social Cohesion by increasing Social Isolation and Ghettoisation.
Although Los Angeles was the first city in the US to introduce Municipal Zoning, in 1908, its problems are not the result of some master plan. They're mistakes. They exist because no-one was thinking about them. During The Great Depression (1929-1945) people wanted to move to one of the few cities that was still booming. People wanted to make money building houses for them to live in, establishing new neighbourhoods. With the Federal government handing out free money to build Highways/Freeways through the Federal-Aid Highway Act (1944) it made sense to connect those new neighbourhoods with Highways/Freeways.
Within Brutalism increasing Social Isolation and Ghettoisation is the plan, the point. By dividing people into restrictive modules the idea is to brutally destroy their sense of self, their individualism. Allowing them to be moulded into the form that the anointed Central-Planners have decided is best for the collective. By engineering what the Worker's wants and needs are it makes it easier for the Central-Planners to mediate with the Capitalists to ensure those wants and needs are met.
At around 17:10 on 3/4/25 (UK date) it seems like it's time for an enforced three day break again.
Edited at around 16:20 on 7/4/25 (UK date) to tidy all of the above and copy & paste;
Despite their hatred for hierarchical, class-based societies Brutalists do love big, imposing tower blocks. Like the ones in the worker's Dormitory Module in Metropolis.
The Empire State Building is in The Modernist and Art Deco Styles. It is much smaller at the top than it is at the base. It actually reduces in size in a series step-like symmetrical setbacks. In the style of the Cubism which so influenced The Art Deco Style. Incidentally one of the most famous Cubist artists was Pablo Picasso. Prior to his involvement with Cubism he was an incredibly technically gifted Representative painter. Pablo Picasso could most certainly paint people and things as they objectively are.
The Empire State Building's receding form is not for engineering reasons such as reducing its weight and lowering its centre of gravity. They were perfectly capable of building it the size of its base all the way to its top. It's something which was mandated by the building regulations in order to allow light to flow around the building all the way down to street level.
Brutalists want their tower blocks to block out the Sun. Giving the people at ground level the impression that they are almost trapped underground. Reminding them of how small and insignificant they are in the face of the collective and its Central-Planners.
Brutalists also really love their Concrete. The word; "Concrete" is Latin, meaning; "Compact" or; "Condensed." It is the passive participle of; "Concresescere" meaning; "To grow together." Very much reflecting The Brutalist Style's desire to crush the individual in order to create a much stronger collective.
Concrete can be an incredibly sleek and stylish building material. You can easily paint over it and dye it. So if you want pink Concrete you can have pink Concrete, such as is used in The Zebun Nessa Mosque in Bangladesh. Concrete is really the building material you see most often. Except you never really see it. It's so sleek and easy to disguise it sort of fades into the background, disappearing from view.
The type of Concrete The Brutalist Style favours though tends to use a very coarse grade of crushed rock (ballast), often with a very high flint content. This gives the Concrete a very rough and brown appearance. Forcing you to see the Concrete and experience the Concrete in its Objective Reality. Although I would argue that you're not seeing the Concrete as it objectively is, you're seeing something which falls short of Concrete done properly. It also undermines the desire to crush individualism to create a stronger collective, far too many shiny, flinty stars insisting on standing out from the crowd. However this dark, earthy, rock-like appearance of imposing tower blocks blocking out the Sun further adds to the sense of being trapped underground.
Brutalist Urban Plans do incorporate Freeways/Highways. However they do so as a way to increase Social Isolation and Ghettoisation, serving as uncrossable barriers to keep everyone within their designated module.
I think the model of private vehicle use Brutalists idolise is the one which existed in the Communist Soviet Bloc nations, where Brutalism was very popular. If you wanted to own a private vehicle you would have to apply to a council and convince them that you had a need for a private vehicle. If you were approved then you would have to wait, often years, for a vehicle to be assigned to you. Volgas for top ranking Central-Planners and Zaporozhets for lowly, yet still quite high-status, workers.
Instead Brutalist Urban Plans favour centrally-planned mass transport systems. Arguably in Metropolis there is a fifth module, the Transport Module. At the start and end of every shift the workers are shown taking these long, drudging mass marches through underground tunnels. In order to board large electric elevator cars which take them between the Dormitory Module and the Machine Module.
This is a reference to the Underground Railways which were still a new invention at the time. Really the internationally recognised name for Underground Railways is; "Metro." That's because the first to open in the World was The Metropolitan Line in London, UK. This was built in 1863 and electrified in 1905. Then copied by the New York City Subway in America in 1900 and the Paris Metro in France in 1904. As The Metropolitan Line grew into the London Underground the term "Metro" fell out of use in the city which had coined it.
The attraction to Brutalists of centrally-planned mass transport is that it further reduces the power of the individual. They can only travel to places and at times that the Central-Planners give them permission to.
If an individual has the audacity to try and walk anywhere at the time of their choosing they will find their path blocked by the vast distances and the vast Overground Railways and Freeways/Highways in their way. The only time they can access these Railways and Freeways is when the Central-Planners provide them with trains or buses. Although not even Joseph Stalin managed to completely eliminate private vehicle ownership the Freeways/Highways are intended to be reserved only for mass transport vehicles and industrial vehicles carrying out their work for the good of the collective.
Unlike Brutalists and other Totalitarian-Socialists (Marxists) Anarchists, or Libertarian-Socialists, tend to spend their time actually doing things. Rather than writing elaborate theories about how things should be done. However over the years a handful of Anarchists have attempted to address the Marxists in their own language, providing a counter-perspective to The Brutalist Style. Most notably Murray Bookchin. Although towards the end of his life even Murray Bookchin acknowledged that his propensity for writing long theories about how things should be done meant he wasn't an Anarchist.
Brutalists view the shift from the rural to the urban (Urbanisation) as Human's separation from nature. A escape from a world dominated by factors beyond Human's control such as the changing seasons and weather into a world which Humans can control, cities. This allows Humans to engineer their environment and through that environment engineer society itself. Social Engineering.
The likes of Murray Bookchin view Humans to be intrinsically part of nature. Even the environments they engineer for themselves are dictated by their biology and the biology of what surrounds them. A Brutalist may build a TV Building with windows clearly designated as the Light In/Out part of the machine. However it is Human's biological need for light, from the natural world, which requires Brutalists to include windows in their buildings. Likewise Concrete is still made from natural materials by natural processes.
Murray Bookchin's philosophy is best described as Social Ecology. Where Brutalist Social Engineering want to crush the individual to engineer a society which they deem best for the collective Social Ecology believes that what is best for society, the collective, will be decided by the interaction of individuals between themselves and their environment. It is really a very extreme form of Participatory Democracy. Where instead of there being a large national government led by Central-Planners, the pilots, the Top 10,000, there is a network of hyper-localised autonomous groups making decisions together. More like town or even street-level councils.
The only time that Murray Bookchin's theories were ever put fully into practice was in the Kurdish regions of Syria. The Democratic Autonomous Cantons of Rojava, established by the Kurdish People's Protection Forces (YPG/J), which became the Syrian Democratic Forces (QSD/SDF), in 2014. Bringing the West's seeming abandonment of the SDF amid the ever deteriorating situation in Syria into discussion.
It must be said that despite being heavily involved in that war up until the point the West abandoned it and being familiar with the work of Murray Bookchin I didn't actually notice. I was far too focused on how the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) society functioned. In order to identify the most efficient places to apply the explosives.
Social Ecology inspired Urban Planning has long been fascinated by Slime Mould. These are Eukaryotes; very simple single nucleus membrane bound organisms. Fungus or Bacteria, essentially. What is interesting about Slime Mould is that when these very simple single-cell organisms are hungry they can join together into a vast collective. That collective develops an intelligence which can move itself about to find food.
One of the leading researchers in Slime Mould has been Atsushi Tero at Kyushu University in Fukouka, Japan. His experiments have helped showcase the incredible intelligence of Slime Mould. In a series of experiments he got Slime Mould to recreate the mass-transport systems so favoured by Brutalist Central-Planners. The Tokyo Metrosystem and Freeway/Highway systems in 14 nations including Germany, Brazil, China and the US. In all cases the Slime Mould came up with more efficient solutions than the Central-Planners. Rather destroying their self-illusion of superior wisdom.
Slime Mould's intelligence is created in the same way that Human and animal intelligence is created. The individual cells transmit electrical messages to each other through their membranes. Almost exactly like individual Human brain cells transmit electrical messages between each other.
Like Humans Slime Mould applies what is known as Meta-Heuristic Problem Solving. Traditional computing uses Algorithmic Problem Solving. Essentially computers cannot think. They can only rigidly follow a set of mathematical rules in the hope of finding a solution.
An example would be trying to crack Diffie-Hellman Encryption. The type of encryption used for all secure Internet traffic, that little padlock in the address bar. The Diffie-Hellman method is based on two encryption keys, both of which are the product of two 7-9 digit Prime Numbers multiplied together. In order to break the encryption you have to work out what one of these 7-9 digit Prime Numbers are.
The Algorithmic Problem Solving of traditional computing can only address this problem by starting with the number 0000001. If that fails then it can only try the number 0000007 next. As a result it can be a very slow process. Rather like a Human Meta-Heuristic Problem Solving can think enough to realise that it's unlikely the first six digits of the seven digit Prime Number are all going to be zeroes. So will start by trying 1237547. The type of shortcut that means it's likely to arrive at the correct answer much faster. Meta--Heuristic Problem Solving is what you need to achieve in order to create Artificial Intelligence (AI).
So you could metaphorically liken Brutalists inability to grasp things like Expressionism to the Algorithmic Problem Solving of traditional computing. However the Social Ecology approach to Urban Planning has actually helped to develop the AI which was only imagined in Metropolis.
Alongside Ernő Goldfinger Adrian Brody's character also seems to closely resemble the life of George Soros. Both are Jews who lived in Hungary during the time of The Nazi Holocaust. Erzsébet, Lázló Tóth's wife is actually the name of George Soros' Mother.
George Soros' is a self-confessed Progressive Social Democrat. A believer in Karl Marx's Two-Stage Theory of Communism, society must become so unbearable that Communist revolution becomes inevitable. Through the Open Society Foundation George Soros has been one of the main creators of the Marxist Black Lives Matter.
George Soros created Black Lives Matter in 2014 with the express call to; "Defund the Police!" in response to the lawful killing of the thief Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. One of the first people to consider the idea of a Social Contract, the set of rules that creates Human society was John Hobbes' in; "Leviathan" (1651). He proposed just two clauses; that we can't kill each other and we can't steal from each other. These two clauses are enforced by the Police as a Sovereign entity.
Through creating Black Lives Matter and its demand for the elimination of the Police in defence of a thief George Soros seems to be trying to destroy the most basic foundation of society. The objective seeming to be to make crime so rampant that it becomes another form of oppression, crushing the individual in order to have them serve the Central-Planners with absolute obedience.
Something which is another hallmark of The Brutalist Style of Urban Planning. Brutalist designs are synonymous with crime fuelled by Social Isolation and Ghettoisation. To the point that if UK movies and TV shows are looking for a visual shorthand for rampant crime and urban decay. Then they just use stock exterior footage of Ernő Goldfinger's Trellick Tower.
Of course George Soros is one of the World's richest men who made his fortune as a Merchant Banker, the ultimate Capitalist. Something of a Robber Baron George Soros made much of his fortune by short-selling the British Pound on the so-called "Black Wednesday" in 1992. You could almost describe him as the unnatural offspring produced by the sexual encounter between Hungarian-Jewish Lázló Tóth and the American Robber Baron Harrison Lee van Buren.
As such it is hard to image that George Soros wants to progressively make society worse in order to trigger a revolution and establish a Totalitarian-Socialist society. Instead it seems more likely that George Soros wants to create a Totalitarian-Capitalist society. Where the individual is crushed, not to serve the Central-Planners for the collective good but to serve George Soros and his desire for wealth. George Soros is quite open about the fact that as a child he saw himself as a god.
Through the deceptively named Open Society Foundation and Black Lives Matter George Soros has also extensively supported the Muslim Brotherhood's Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) which is actively conducting another Genocide of Jews. It's probably worth noting that George Soros survived The Nazi Holocaust by collaborating with the Nazis. Delivering train tickets to the Death Camps to other Jews.
So The Brutalist does seem to be a clear warning to everyone, but particularly Jews, about George Soros. The Community Centres he funds look exactly like Death Camps.
Movie to be continued in Part 4.
17:15 on 7/4/25 (UK date).
