The brutalist achieves to combine visual beauty and clarity, contemporary sound, and meaningful writing to produce a captivating experience reflecting on many of the biggest ideas and concepts which define America and modern western life. It takes a very good stab at finding the balance between having meaning and forcing the audience to see it. Although at points I felt that it's approach sacrificed immediate emotional impact for intellectual purity. The movie uses visual story telling through acting, blocking, and even clever camera effects (the marble losing detail under the eye of capitalism), to support and develop its ideas in a refreshing way. This combined with great dialog, where seemingly small details can have massive meaning, leads to an overall great experience.