Chloe Sevigny Gets Brutally Honest About ‘The Brutalist,’ Says Watching It ‘Felt Like Homework’
Oh look, another day, another hot take from everyone’s favorite indie queen and professional eye-roller, Chloe Sevigny. Because apparently, we weren’t already tired enough of hearing about “The Brutalist” — the three-and-a-half-hour architectural fever dream that critics are calling “a masterpiece” and normal people are calling “a great way to catch up on sleep during a matinee.”
In a new interview with *The New York Times* — because where else would a downtown legend go to drop truth bombs but the Grey Lady herself? — Sevigny didn’t hold back. She revealed that watching Brady Corbet’s 215-minute epic about a Hungarian-Jewish architect rebuilding his life after the Holocaust “felt like homework.” And honestly? She’s not wrong.
Let’s be real for a second. We’ve all been there. You see the Rotten Tomatoes score (97%, critics). You see the buzz. You see Adrien Brody looking like he’s about to cry into a pile of blueprints for the third time. And you think, “Yeah, this is important cinema.” Then you sit down, the first hour passes, and you start calculating how much of your life you’ve just spent watching a guy argue about concrete. By hour two, you’re checking your phone under the seat. By hour three, you’re questioning every life choice that led you to this dark, pretentious theater.
Chloe gets it. She’s the voice of the people we didn’t know we needed.
“I was like, ‘Am I supposed to be taking notes? Is there a quiz later?’” she reportedly told the NYT. “I respect the craft. I respect the ambition. But my God, I have a life. I have a dog. I have better things to do than watch a man be sad about brutalism for four hours.”
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? We’ve created this culture where you’re not allowed to say you didn’t enjoy a “prestige” film without being branded a Philistine. You can’t just say, “Hey, that movie was boring as hell and I wanted to leave after the first intermission.” No, you have to couch it in terms like “I appreciate the formal rigor” and “the pacing was deliberate.” Fuck that. Sometimes a long movie is just a long movie. Sometimes a movie about architecture is just a movie about rocks and sad feelings.
Sevigny, who has never been one to shy away from a controversial opinion (remember when she said she didn’t like *The Master*? Absolute queen shit), is doing the Lord’s work here. She’s reminding us that we don’t have to worship at the altar of every self-serious auteur who thinks a runtime over two hours is a sign of artistic integrity.
And let’s talk about the irony. “The Brutalist” is a movie literally about the weight of history, about the crushing burden of legacy, about trying to build something meaningful in a world that wants to tear you down. And what did Chloe feel? The weight. The burden. The crushing boredom of someone else’s homework assignment.
I’m not saying she’s wrong. I’m saying she’s probably right, and the only reason people are clutching their pearls is because they’ve invested too much emotional capital in a movie they haven’t even seen yet. It’s the same energy as people who say “*Barbie* was a masterpiece” because they want to seem woke, or people who say “*Oppenheimer* was incredible” because they want to seem smart. Newsflash: You can think a movie is fine. You can even think it’s boring. It’s allowed. The cinema police aren’t going to come to your house and take your Criterion Collection.
What makes Sevigny’s take so delicious is the timing. We’re in the middle of awards season. Every studio is dumping their three-hour-plus “important” films on us, hoping we’ll forget that movies used to be fun. Remember when movies were fun? When they didn’t require a pre-game coffee and a post-game therapy session? Chloe remembers. She was in “Kids.” She knows what raw, unfiltered cinema looks like. And she’s telling us that “The Brutalist” ain’t it.
Of course, the internet is already losing its collective mind. Film Twitter — or whatever we’re calling it now that Elon bought the bird — is in full meltdown mode. “How dare she? She’s not even an architect!” “She just doesn’t understand the language of cinema!” “She’s just jealous she wasn’t cast in it!”
Bro, calm down. It’s a movie. A long, boring, incredibly well-shot movie. Sevigny is allowed to have an opinion. In fact, she’s one of the few people in Hollywood who seems to have an actual, unfiltered opinion that isn’t just PR-speak. That’s refreshing. That’s rare. That’s why we still care about what Chloe Sevigny thinks in 2025.
Let’s also address the elephant in the room: the runtime. 215 minutes. That’s almost four hours. With an intermission. An intermission! In 2025! We’re not living in the 1960s anymore. We have attention spans the size of a goldfish. You can’t expect people to sit through a movie that’s longer than a transatlantic flight and not complain. And if you do, you’re delusional.
Sevigny is the hero we need. She’s saying what half the audience was thinking but was too afraid to say out loud because they didn’t want to look stupid at the after-party. She’s the friend who tells you that the emperor has no clothes — or in this case, that the emperor’s concrete monument is really, really boring.
So here’s my hot take: “The Brutalist” is probably a very
Final Thoughts
Chloe Sevigny has always been the cult hero Hollywood never quite knew how to market, which is precisely what makes her so indispensable. Her career is a masterclass in choosing the jagged, interesting path over the smooth one, proving that an artist’s true currency isn’t fame, but the integrity of their singular, sometimes stubborn, vision. Ultimately, she’s a reminder that the most compelling actors aren’t the ones who chase the spotlight, but those who trust their own peculiar instincts enough to let the spotlight chase them.