It’s a brief moment in The Brutalist’s superior first half, but in a film so leaden with heavy-handed visual metaphor, it seems to have slipped easily through the cracks of analysis. The architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) and his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) are celebrating their work on renovating millionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren’s library; László designed the room according to his own artistic persuasion, and a blustering Van Buren summarily dismissed the construction workers from his property in an unceremonious fit of rage.
Still, the library was a marvel of modern, minimalistic taste, featuring a clever mechanism for opening the shelves and allowing light into the spacious room. For such an ambitious commission, László and Attila can’t help but drink and be merry in their small home. At the center of their bacchanalia is Attila’s shiksa wife Audrey (Emma Laird), her carefully coiffed blonde curls bouncing as she dances.
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Caught up in the whirlwind of movement and ecstasy, a drunken Attila commands László to dance with Audrey as Dinah Shore’s “It’s So Nice to Have a Man Around the House” begins to play (a chipper, fast-paced tune which isn’t exactly suited for slow dancing). László refuses, mildly, despite Attila’s increasingly aggressive suggestions; it won’t be the first time in the film that László bodily autonomy is ignored so outright. “Come on, it’s her favorite song,” Attila says emphatically amidst László’s protests. Audrey waits, keen eyes watching this interaction between the two cousins.
Finally, László concedes, and their bodies tangle together clumsily; László, all long, lanky limbs, embodies a discomfort that the audience shares. The scene further elucidates a tension between the two characters: László, a newly arrived immigrant, retains a thick Hungarian accent and attempts to speak his native tongue with his cousin; Attila, having successfully assimilated into American society, admits his own cultural concessions. “She’s Catholic,” he explains when László first arrives, skeptical of his marriage to Audrey, before he clarifies: “We are Catholic.”
This conflict is also characteristic of the post-World War II immigrant experience, which is what The Brutalist ultimately is most interested in understanding; even when László is reunited with his family, he remains an outsider amongst the Van Burens and their sphere of influence. In her book Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, writer Barbara Ehrenrich argues that the act of collective dance, recorded as early as the Paleolithic age, signified social cohesion, one that transcended even the development of written language. “To submit, bodily, to music through dance is to be incorporated into the community,” writes Ehrenrich, “in a way far deeper than shared myth or common custom can achieve.” In a film like The Brutalist, these scenes of dance function to delineate social divides.
There is no shortage of dance scenes in Jon M. Chu’s Wicked, though not all are necessarily created equal. “What is This Feeling?” plays as a sprawling set piece through the corridors of Shiz University, further electrified by a central performance by Ariana Grande; “Dancing Through Life”, on the other hand, has been critiqued ad nauseam for questionable lighting and CGI rendering the production’s elaborate set design cheap and its spectacle ineffective.
However, the film’s most emotionally poignant moment occurs at the end of that sequence, as students from the university – under the influence of the charismatic Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) – gather at the Ozdust Ballroom, a seedy underground club off-campus. Elphaba arrives late and alone, ever the outcast, donning her soon-to-be signature witch’s hat which Galinda offered to her earlier as a joke. She begins to dance in isolation, an act of solemn defiance as the gathering crowd looks on.
On stage, the scene is largely played for comedy; Idina Menzel’s Elphaba sways her arms with inelegant, unwieldy arcs around her body in the center of the dance floor. When Kristin Chenoweth’s Galinda shamefully joins Elphaba to mimic her movement, ripples of laughter erupt through the live audience. It’s a decidedly more somber moment in the film; as Cynthia Erivo dances the choreography, creating sharp, jutting angles with her hands and elbows, the surrounding audience respond with surprise, even fear.
The shapes that Erivo creates with her body are deliberate, reminiscent of voguing positions, while intimate close-ups show not only Elphaba’s gritted resolve, but an earnest change of heart for Galinda as she joins in the dance. In a film full of strange, often ill-advised decisions, the scene manages to improve upon its original source material; a new piece of music was composed for the scene, and “Ozdust Duet” swells in the empty space which otherwise audience laughter would have filled.
Throughout the most noteworthy films of 2024, these scenes of dance underscore a rare, increasingly nuanced form of intimacy. Often thematically in parallel with sex scenes — Wicked being the outlier — the unabashed vulnerability on display is just as visceral and, at times, difficult to watch. There’s something horribly intimate about not simply dancing, but dancing with someone – the entanglement of bodies, the shared physical connection.
There are some undeniably sensual scenes throughout Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, which are further heightened by a plethora of slick linen suits designed by Jonathan Anderson; however, the film’s climax reveals an entirely different dimension of sexuality, a mode entirely unfamiliar across Guadagnino’s filmography. Having journeyed together through the thick Ecuadorian jungle, William Lee (Daniel Craig) is keen to try ayahuasca, in pursuit of acquiring telepathic connection, while his companion Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) is seemingly just along for the ride.
They encounter Dr. Cotter, who eventually brews the psychedelic for the pair, derived from the root of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine; what follows is a hallucinogenic dream of a dance scene. In their earlier encounters, the aloof Allerton holds Lee at an emotional distance, disaffected in the face of Lee’s eager attempts to impress the younger man. However, in the depths of the rainforest and under a sheen of sweat, Lee and Allerton melt into each other, their naked bodies folding and collapsing together with swaths of elegant movement. As much as Guadagnino’s other 2024 release, Challengers, served as perhaps his most accessible, Queer is more focused on challenging the audience with such evocative imagery. It’s here where the true tragedy of Queer is highlighted – the capacity for connection, denied.
