Along with Cool Hand Luke, Brubaker is one of director Stuart Rosenberg’s most popular films in a career which is criminally undervalued. Rosenberg seemed to have a knack of using genre to craft genuinely gutsy political cinema. However, a lot of his loosely structured films which are fuelled by a particular ambience, would easily see him being labelled as a hack, which of course is far from the truth. In the case of Brubaker, Rosenberg revisits the territory of prison and reform, and unlike Cool Hand Luke, as much a vehicle for Newman’s beaming charisma, this sentimental polemic not only aligns itself with the liberal politics of Redford but adopts a totalizing leftist stance that scorns the concept of political compromise, a concept that is situated as abhorrent and counter-productive to the development of a fair and civilised society. Rod Lurie’s 2001 The Last Castle, also starring Redford on auto-pilot, pays reverence to Rosenberg’s film, at times even parodying the anti-authoritarianism of Brubaker.
Rosenberg is arguably one of the few American filmmakers to have succeeded in detailing the morbid intricacies of prison life, often adopting a sort of quasi neo-realist approach in which action is supplemented by revealing political conversations, an undeniable star quality of W. D. Richter’s Oscar nominated screenplay. Perhaps even more terrifying is the ways in which the powers that be which Brubaker comes into conflict with, namely the prison board, and essentially a manifestation of capitalist corporate machinations, align themselves against his attempts to reform a system of perpetual dehumanization. The final catharsis of Redford’s sordid tears as the prisoners clap in unity is unreal, delirious and prodigiously orchestrated by Rosenberg’s characteristically intimate close ups.
Movie Mahal 