JuguAbraham

The film's tale is inspired by Ayn Rand's book "The fountainhead" and the film is broadly an inversion of that book, though Ms Rand is not credited. The character of Laszlo Toth in the movie is an amalgam of two Hungarian architects, who emigrated to USA and made interesting architectural works, which are indirectly referenced in the film. Interestingly, there was a real Laszlo Toth, a geologist, who vandalized Michelangelo's famous sculpture "The Pieta" in 1972 (housed in St Peter's Basilica, Vatican) made from the marble sourced from the same mines in Italy, as shown in "The Brutalist." (For more information on the subject of that marble source and how Michelangelo used it, view Konchalovsky's film masterpiece "Sin".) As a film, the director and the co-scriptwriters have procured real information and melded them into a fictional tale. The use of Vistavision and blowing the Vistvision print into a 70mm version is a fascinating technology. Interesting film but not great cinema.

There have been several Iranian award-winning filmmakers in Iran who have made fictional films that reflect the true conditions of repression, brutality, and unjust prison sentences against Iranian nationals who have chosen to speak out and faced the consequences, e.g., Mohammad Rasoulof and Jafar Panahi. Unlike them, director Amir Zargara, a Canadian of Iranian descent has made a notable film on a similar subject using the real tale of a talented wrestler Navid Afkari who spoke out and paid with his life in Adelabad prison. Director Zargara chooses to refer to Navid as Arash in his film. The tale is intelligently scripted--with public protests seemingly against rising costs of gasolene and little else, while it is amply clear in the film that Arash is making an overt stand on more substantial issues against the current government, knowing fully the implications of his actions for his career as a wrestler and for his already decimated family. Evidently his father died protesting as well. This film is accepted as an entry to the 2025 Oscars' Short Documentary section. I do hope it wins and gets noticed not as Iranian film but as a realistic film critical of the policies of the current Government there without any reference to religion by a filmmaker who has once lived in Iran. And the film extrapolates the words and moods of the dead wrestling martyr "Our power lies in our united voice."

A major performance of Burt Lancaster in Hollywood films, ranking alongside "The Swimmer." His later performances for Italian directors Visconti ("The Leopard" and "Conversation Piece") and Bertolucci ('1900") were more sophisticated. His performance as Elmer Gantry was propped up by the excellent script of director/scriptwriter Richard Brooks and the original novel of Sinclair Lewis. Lancaster deserved his best actor Oscar in this film as did Brooks for his adapted screenplay. Arthur Kennedy's role in this film seemed to anticipate his similar role in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia."

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