The Errol Flynn Blog

Dear Flynnstones,

an epic picture is coming your way, where Flynn is and isn`t in.

A young lad named Brady Corbet brings us “The Brutalist”. After debuting with “The Childhood of a Leader” and the much loded “Vox Lux”, his third international feature film is a brutally honest and beautifully shot movie starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and a fierce Guy Pearce.

British born and Australian bred Pearce was playing Errol Flynn in the 1996 released “Flynn”, retitled later as “My Forgotten Man”. Quite understandably so, since it is a most forgettable film (User-submitted review of “My Forgotten Man”). Inaccurate, sensationalist and highly influenced by Charles Higham`s hoax biography, it is one of the few flicks I did not bother watching to the finish. But this was by no means Guy Pearce`s fault. Remember, that same year he did “L.A Confidential”, the until then deemed unfilmable novel from James Ellroy, excelling at the role of bespectacled cop, Ed Exley, opposite another great actor from way down under- the New Zealander Russell Crowe. The Aussie and the Kiwi got along great and do so to this date. Guy went on filming the monumental “Memento” with Christopher Nolan and earned an Emmy for the remake of Michael Curtiz` “Mildred Pierce”, courting Kate Winslet. Versatile to the hilt he can be seen in films as diverse as “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”, as action heroic as “Iron Man 3” and as pop corney as “The Time Machine”. He also appeared in two more Academy Award winners, “The Hurt Locker” and “The King`s Speech”. Three may be his lucky charm, because he is nominated this year in the category of Best Supporting Actor.

Harrison Lee Van Buren, a chip of the old prick like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Astors is the epitome of the American capitalist. He wants to do good on his deeds bestowing boons on the less fortunate fellow citizens. He envisions a community center built in honor of his late mother, high on a hill overseeing the small town of Dudleyville, PA. He commissiones the project to Lázló Tóth, an accomplished Hungarian architect well versed in the style of Bauhaus-Brutalism, who escaped the Nazi concentration camps. The artistic intellectual Lazló had to leave his wife Erzébet and niece Zsófia behind, but does everything he can to fit into society in order to be able to bring them over too. Brody picks up right where he left off at his Oscar performance in “The Pianist” and plays Tóth with a subtle, humble and weary inclination towards the American Dream. These two antagonists feed off each other`s energy, and mix very much like the planned center`s components of concrete and Carrara marble. Tóth is aware that whenever he is put on a pedestal by his benefactor Van Buren, a brutalist by nature, it can turn into a hangman`s chair at a moment`s notice. Survival is the dish of the day and his austere architecture is the symbol to go along with it.

Corbet`s film is constructed like a two part theatre play. It has an overture, an epilogue and an interval of 15 minutes like in the good old movie time days of a David Lean. Incredibly it boasts 215 minutes, was filmed in VistaVision, and wrapped up in mere 34 days at a budget of only $10 million.

Another Aussie film and music video director, John Hillcoat, who worked with him on three occasions, elaborates on Guy Pearce`s fortes in a GQ article: “Australia is a remote colony…and being a colony we have this antiauthoritarian attitude and we`re quite irreverent. It is an extreme place. We have a kind of not-giving-a-fuck to us, not playing by the rules, not doing what`s expected.”

Our man Flynn would agree.

Enjoy,

— shangheinz