Dispatch: Chicago International Film Festival Recap—What We Saw and What to Watch For

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The 60th Chicago International Film Festival has come and gone, and with it the chance to see many of the year's most anticipated films before they arrive in theaters in the coming months.

But before we sign off from all of our coverage, our team of film writers is sharing what they saw and what you should watch for at your local cineplex.

Blitz

After a career including films like 12 Years a Slave and Widows, one awaits a new Steve McQueen movie with a certain sense of anticipation. And Blitz, which the filmmaker also wrote, is worthy of that interest, even if it fails to deliver McQueen's typical intensity and genius. Set in London during the depths of World War II, the film follows single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) raising her school-aged, mixed-race son George (Elliot Heffernan) as the city imposes wartime sanctions like curfews, blackouts and sheltering in Underground stations as the city is bombarded by Germain air strikes.

McQueen's jumping off point is the mass exodus of thousands of children sent off to the countryside and beyond for their own safety during the onslaught; George decides this fate is not for him, so he leaps off a moving train in order to find his way back home. The rest of the film turns into a fantastical journey for young George on the backdrop of the war and all the depraved and dangerous things humans are capable of during times of conflict. He navigates his way back to his mother through unexpected obstacles and with the help of some kind (and not so kind) strangers. Before long, it's clear that George is little more than a vehicle for McQueen's larger intentions of chronicling the dichotomy of both our collective resilience and depravity during wartime.

As a fable that distills its broader messages down to one stand-in family with All The Things to worry about (racism, elder care, workers' rights, and the big one: war), Blitz is an engaging enough drama that takes its audience on a dramatic (if ultimately uninspired) journey where at every turn we're reminded of what it took to survive such a perilous moment in history, namely a community of fellow human beings, regardless of color, creed or religion, who look out for each other and show up in whatever ways they can. (Lisa Trifone)

Blitz opens in theaters November 8 and arrives on AppleTV+ on November 22.

The Brutalist

The Brutalist leapt from production purgatory to the top of a thousand watchlists after its Venice Film Festival premiere last month. But for every critic raising Brady Corbet’s film up alongside The Godfather, there are a dozen commenters predictably questioning the runtime of three hours and 35 minutes. The Brutalist triumphs by skirting both of those interpretations.

This film is more character study than traditional epic, which is why its 215 minutes rarely flag. We stay eye level with László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian architect who survives the Holocaust and gains the attention of an industrialist (Guy Pearce) in Pennsylvania. The film draws much of its juice from the fundamental contradiction that art and money need one another to survive.

Part 1 effortlessly inhabits mid-century America, recalling The Master (2012) and Carol (2015). The meager $6-million budget may have benefited the production by necessitating small details to shade Tóth’s world.

In Part 2, Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold drill into the architect and his concrete creations. We see mountains of stone ready to be mined and crafted. And we see Tóth’s pain—a career stolen, a wife (Felicity Jones) stranded in Europe—feeding his art. Everything and everyone in this world consists of raw materials waiting to be shaped.

This all sounds cerebral, but The Brutalist is surprisingly light on its feet. Every choice, from stream-of-conscious editing to format changes, feels urgent and alive. If some second-half turns muddle the overall impact, it’s because of the film’s commitment to this ethos. Brody is game for it all, filling every moment with a lifetime's worth of tonnage.

Many find brutalism crude and impenetrable. When my eye catches on one of its concrete monuments, when my fingers cool on its surfaces, I feel myself dipped into something mysterious and elemental. I felt the same way watching The Brutalist. (Anthony Miglieri)

The Brutalist opens in theaters beginning December 20.

Maria

Acclaimed filmmaker Pablo Larraín collaborates with screenwriter Steven Knight (who also wrote Spencer) for a fever dream of a film in Maria as it follows a deteriorating star as her mind and body begin to fail her and the small group of people around her try their best to make sense of it all. But more than that, Maria is a visually gripping, creatively realized homage of liberation and letting go for a woman who spent much of her life being what others expected of her and pushing herself to go beyond the limits of what her voice, her body and her heart could manage.

Like Jackie and SpencerMaria is not interested in giving audiences a primer on a famous personality; this is not a paint-by-numbers review of the birth-to-death milestones of one extraordinary life. Told over the course of three acts with a series of flashbacks to revisit key moments in her life and employing a curious personification of the side effects of one of her medications, Mandrax (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog) as a reporter chronicling her noteworthy life), Maria is centered by Angelina Jolie's vulnerable and beautifully troubled performance. 

For years now, Larraín has been a filmmaker whose new work I eagerly seek out. His films are not always easy to find a way into, to be sure. In fact, I have no actual evidence of this, but I get the sense that as an artist, he is not only not interested in the easy but actively bored by it. Instead, his work, now including Maria, offers the kind of delectable challenge that offers rich dividends to reward our investment. (Lisa Trifone)

Maria opens in theaters November 27 and arrives on Netflix on December 11.

Suçuarana

Suçuarana is the Portuguese word for cougar. It is also the name of the town Dora (Sinara Teles) and her mother are apparently from, written on the back of a photo. A drifter who works odd jobs here and there, Dora decides to give away her dog and hitchhike her way to Suçuarana. On her way, she is met with hostility and, on the rare occasion, empathy. Her dog somehow makes his way back to her and, after causing an accident, guides her to a community of former factory workers who make a living out of stripping apart whatever’s left of their workplace. 

The film truly comes alive in this second half, for which co-directors Sérgio Borges and Clarissa Campolina collaborated with the Guarda de Moçambique Nuestra Senhora de Rosario, Santa Efigênia de Ouro Preto, a community group that are an important part of the cultural and religious celebrations known as congados in the state of Minas Gerais in the southeast of Brazil. Each act of disdain, hate, indifference and even cruelty Dora encounters on the road is met here with joy, sharing, giving, and most importantly, song. It sounds utopic but its residents know that their time there is limited. Suçuarana is a modest film that finds beauty in that sense of community, in the traditions that African slaves brought to Brazil and in a simple game of dominoes. I wanted to spend more time here and less time on the road with Dora. (Alejandro Riera)

Suçuarana does not yet have a U.S. release.

Transamazonia

For her first film in ten years, South African director Pia Marais travels all the way to Brazil’s Amazon region to deliver this eco-thriller that checks off all the political boxes when it comes to that country. The illegal deforestation of the Amazons? Check. The influence fundamentalist churches and preachers have over marginalized Brazilians? Check. The displacement of the country’s indigenous communities by both forces and their? Check. As entertaining and compelling as Transamazonia is, you can’t help but feel that this film is the product of an outsider who has yet to understand the dynamics between all three. 

NIne years after miraculously surviving a plane crash in the middle of the Amazon, Rebecca (Helena Zengel, News of the World) is the main attraction in her father Lawrence’s (Jeremy Xido) evangelical sermons in which he has positioned her as a faith healer. Rebecca has begun to question her own role in these religious shenanigans. An opportunity to diffuse the tensions between the local indigenous community and the loggers that threaten their livelihood arrives when the head of the operation offers to shut it down if Rebecca wakes his wife up from her deep state of coma. Will they be found out as fakes?

So many storylines, so little time to tell them all…except that Transamazonia is close to two hours long. Most of the plot feels like ornamental decorations to what should have been a coming-of-age story, especially the indigenous characters who fall prey to the traditional white person’s view of them as noble beings that need a white person to save them. Compared to past CIFF offerings from Brazil addressing the same subject matters, Transamazonia falls short.  (Alejandro Riera)

Transamazonia does not yet have a US release date.

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Third Coast Review Staff

Posts with the Third Coast Review Staff byline are written by a combination of writers, credited by section within the article.