The Brutalist is 214 minutes long. Here are 10 epic films worth watching

Brace yourselves — another very long, must-see movie has landed. Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, which tells the story of the fictional Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor Laszlo Toth, has a running time of 215 minutes. Yes, the Oscar favourite is three and a half hours long and comes with an intermission.

Too much? The film’s director doesn’t think so. “I think it’s quite silly, actually, to have a conversation about runtime,” Corbet said at the Venice Film Festival last year. “Because that’s like criticising a book for being 700 pages instead of 100 pages.”

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In fairness, some of cinema’s finest (and most award-winning) films boast long running times. Here we select ten of the best, including some recent picks (all timings according to IMDb). Get ready for your posterior to be tested — and let us know in the comments the best films you’ve watched with long running times.

Cleopatra (1963, buy/rent)

Running time: 5hr 20min
Initially six hours long, Joseph Mankiewicz’s epic was the most expensive film made at the time of shooting, with a monstrous budget of $31 million (not counting the $5 million spent on the original, abandoned British shoot), which translates to about$261 million today. It was also a titanic flop — but is worth revisiting for the fiery chemistry between new lovers Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as Cleopatra and the roguish Mark Antony.

Hamlet (1996, buy/rent)

Running time: 4hr 2min
Not even Laurence Olivier’s 1948 version (2hr 35min) attempted to squeeze the entire text of Shakespeare’s play into a film. Cue Kenneth Branagh, who took on the challenge. Shot in sumptuous 70mm format, the action may be a tad slow but a star-studded cast, including Derek Jacobi, Kate Winslet, Charlton Heston and Robin Williams, bring verve to the tragedy.

Gone with the Wind (1939, buy/rent)

Running time: 3hr 58min
The producer David O Selznick paid a record-breaking $50,000 for the rights to Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller and turned it into one of cinema’s great epics of passion and adventure. Vivien Leigh is Scarlett to Clark Gable’s Rhett in nearly four hours of ravishing Technicolor. Some critics thought Selznick had “left too much in” — but his ambition was rewarded with financial success: adjusted for inflation, ticket sales rank ahead of Star Wars and Avatar.

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Once Upon a Time in America (1984, Disney+)

Running time: 3hr 49min
Sergio Leone’s Depression-era epic follows Jewish immigrants-turned-mobsters across their lifetimes. Robert De Niro stars as a thug racked with guilt in a film that undercuts any idealism about the American dream. Its original European cut of 229 minutes was brutally reduced to 139 minutes by American cinema distributors, but you can watch it in full on Disney+.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962, buy/rent)

Running time: 3hr 47min
David Lean’s movie remains an astonishing achievement. Monumental in scale and duration, it stars Peter O’Toole as the maverick TE Lawrence, who united Arab tribes in a guerrilla campaign against the Turks in the First World War. The original release, including overture, intermission and exit music, ran for an impressive 222 minutes (or nearly 25,000ft of 70mm film) — an epic experience that immersed audiences in its sweeping narrative.

The Ten Commandments (1956, Paramount+)

Running time: 3hr 40min
Charlton Heston stars in the director Cecil B DeMille’s final film, which follows the life of Moses from his early years as an Egyptian prince to his divine calling to free the Hebrew slaves from the pharaoh’s oppression. While the running time may challenge your endurance levels, the spectacle of the Red Sea parting still delivers.

Ben-Hur (1959, Sky/Now)

Running time: 3hr 32min
Charlton Heston again in a multi Oscar-winning film that also drew on the (then) largest budget in film history, running to 300 sets, 200 camels and a million props. The famed chariot race alone took two years to plan, three months to set up and five weeks to shoot, with 15,000 extras. Its daunting running time, with intermission, didn’t stop the film from topping the US box office for six months.

The Irishman (2019, Netflix)

Running time: 3hr 29min
Who was the real star of Martin Scorsese’s film: Robert De Niro or the CGI that made him look four decades younger? A lovingly made celebration of the mobster greats, De Niro stars opposite Joe Pesci and Al Pacino in this tale of the man who shot Jimmy Hoffa. If you want a briefer Scorsese experience, watch his follow-up, Killers of the Flower Moon, which comes in at a whole three minutes shorter.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, Sky/Now)

Running time: 3hr 21min
The climax to Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy crams in as much of Tolkien’s plot as possible, resulting in an excess of heroic dialogue and grand battles as Middle-earth faces its final battle with evil. It became the first film since Titanic (3hr 14min) to break the billion-dollar box-office mark and earned 11 Academy awards.

Avengers: Endgame (2019, Disney+)

Running time: 3hr 1min
Marvel fulfilled every comic book nerd’s dream by stuffing almost every character who has appeared in the franchise into this epic conclusion — from Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts to Robert Redford’s Alexander Pierce. The longest superhero movie, it is bombastic, has lots of punch-ups and was a fitting send-off for a team who, for better or worse, transformed the blockbuster. Mercifully, at 181 minutes — about two full football matches — and with no interval, it’s also the shortest film on our list.

Which very long films do you think justify their running time?

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