An Intermission At The Movies

My experience at "The Brutalist"

My first movie theater outing of 2025 was on the first Saturday in January - an 11:00am showing of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (in 70mm). As an AMC A-List member, I entered the theater with my head held high, with my ID ready, like I own the damn place.

I was very excited to kick off my 2025 entertainment with this epic film. I had heard a lot about it - from the length to the powerhouse performance from Adrien Brody to the scale given a surprisingly small budget. With A24 distributing, I had a feeling it would be giving art house film vibes and take me for a ride.

While this isn’t a review, I will say that the film was excellent. Despite loving the first half better than the second, I continued to reflect on the actual structure of it all. Notably, The Brutalist is presented with a 15 minute intermission built in.

Why is this the first time I have ever experienced an intermission in the movie theater?

As an opera lover and a Broadway girlie, I am used to a multi-act structure. Early 17th century Renaissance Italian operas were presented with an intermission. This intermission often included an intermezzi or intermedio, a smaller show within a show or a musical performance to provide comedic relief or contrast to the dramatic tension from the larger piece. Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo popularized this model and given that his opera was 5 acts, patrons were pleased. With capitalism on the rise and theater attendance becoming a symbol of status, a break meant an opportunity for patrons to mingle as well as buy merchandise and concessions. Nowadays, you enter a performance space knowing that there will be a break and while in your seat, you relish the opportunity to have a quick chat and handle your business i.e. going to the bathroom later on. Anticipation builds during that down time and you get a sense of how the piece is landing on others and hopefully you look forward to what is going to come. While this arrangement is typical of stage musicals and plays, in the film medium, the rules do not apply.

At the movie theater, you sit down and lock in knowing you won’t be standing up until the credits roll (unless you have a dire bathroom emergency or coughing attack - it’s happened to the best of us). I am not dissuaded by a long movie. Some people see a film’s run time and automatically make assumptions and sink themselves into their own pit of boredom and angst before watching a single second. I personally do not want to cut a minute of Titanic or The Godfather. But now that we are entering an era of enhanced screen time and short attention spans, filmmakers may have to think more carefully about the viewing experience. The intermission conversation in film came up during the theatrical run of Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). The film was 206 minutes long, just shy of three and a half hours, and there were reports of some theaters screening it with an intermission - which is not the way the director intended. In my view, we must adhere to the way the film was intended to be shown.

Brady Corbet created his majestic 3 hour and 35 minute (215min) long film with this intermission in mind throughout his filmmaking process. Structured in three parts - Part I: The Enigma of Arrival, Part 2: The Hard Core of Beauty and an Epilogue: The First Architecture Biennale - each section was definitive with a unique arch and perspective. When Part I ended, it felt buttoned up while also providing intrigue into the next chapter.

Once Part 1 was complete, a photograph of the protagonist's family was presented on screen as a 15 minute countdown clock began. The photograph clues us into the new characters we could meet in Part 2. When the lights came up, I set a timer on my phone just in case and headed to the bathroom where the men’s bathroom line was way longer than the women’s line for a change. I, of course, brought a snack with me, refilled my water bottle and continued to stretch my legs. I went to this movie outing solo and am a big proponent of the “table for 1” theater experience. But I loved observing the conversations of others around me during this pause. One woman, arriving to see another movie, was so confused as to where all these people in the lobby had come from. As if in one voice, multiple people said “it's the intermission of The Brutalist” as if we were all in some exclusive club together. When I headed back into the theater, the countdown clock was reminiscent of the ball drop on New Years. There were even reports of audiences doing a dramatic countdown for the final 10 seconds. While my theater was more subdued, as the final seconds ticked by, there was a collective hush. The power of cinema can always be found in the most quiet, still moments. We were all ready to experience something familiar yet new together.

Intermission energy at AMC Lincoln Square (my home away from home)

Surprisingly enough, the sense of community that I felt during this viewing reminded me of seeing a franchise film. While The Brutalist could not be more different from Avengers: Endgame, both films are long and require a sense of commitment but also foster a sense of excitement. With Endgame, there were many films that were required viewing beforehand. It was truly years in the making. With The Brutalist, you had to ask yourself if you wanted to devote about 4 hours of your life (the film + trailers) to a period piece about a Hungarian architect. The intermission enhanced the prestige of this film in a way that I was not expecting. The intermission felt like a breath of fresh air and the beginning of something new in film. It just goes to show that all roads seem to lead back to the standard of theater that was set years and years ago. What a wonderful time to be an entertainment junkie!

Now my big question is : how will The Brutalist’s structure be altered in a VOD or streaming format? When you are home — and can have an intermission by pressing pause on your remote wherever you want — will the film be as impactful from the couch?