★★★★★
Seven years in the making and three-and-a-half hours in the watching (including a 15-minute intermission), this majestic historical epic starring Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones is, immediately, the film to beat for the big Venice prizes (and indeed next year’s Oscar statuettes). The movie’s actual subject is, according to its director and co-writer Brady Corbet, “virtual history”. He means that the tale of a Hungarian-born Bauhaus-educated Jewish architect called Laszlo Toth, who flees war-ravaged Europe in 1947 for a chance to sample the American dream, is entirely fictional. It looks and feels like a regal cousin of The Pianist, but it is instead an eerie testimonial to mid-20th century talent unlived, suppressed, or denied by conflict.
The film, classicist to the core, opens
