Director: Brady Corbet Starring: Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Alessandro Nivola, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Isaach De Bankolé Running Time: 215 minutes
A film over six years in the making, that replaced an entire A-level cast before filming (Joel Edgerton, Marion Cotillard and more were originally set to star), one with obviously lofty awards ambitions and an effort to enter the canon of Hollywood epics before it alongside Spielberg, Wyler et al, on the surface The Brutalist is a decidedly maximalist production. Although director Brady Corbet is dreaming big with this production, it is assembled from a more minimalist mindset – a lower budget than some of its Oscar rivals, a small cast in sparse locations. That’s all the better for the film to drill down into bigger ideas, of how ugly self-interest is inevitably embedded inside American exceptionalism, of how beauty and craft and care get buried under the concrete of capitalism. Like any brutalist structure, the film is harsh, stark and imposing, but assembled with a skill that reveals its practicality, a dedication to its mission rather than a flashy outer message.
It’s a similar skill and mindset that’s possessed by László Tóth, the fictional architect played by Adrien Brody, who arrives in America desperate to experience the Dream after enduring the nightmares of World War Two. He sees the Empire State Building as he emerges from an immigrant ship, and the image, soundtracked by blaring horns, is awe-inspiring. And upside down. Brought from Hungary to Philadelphia to do the donkey work for the furniture and renovation business of his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), László is soon bewildered and soon abandoned by the promise of a new life Stateside, particularly when a home renovation for wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (a sensational Guy Pearce) goes unappreciated and unpaid. His letters home to wife Erzsébet remain hopeful, his descent into heroin addiction and homelessness shows the brutal truth. László is ground down, but when Van Buren discovers the depths of the architect’s talent, the money man develops a covetous fascination with him, and brings him into his employ for an enormous, egocentric project. Tóth throws himself into the work, and even before he’s reunited with his family (Felicity Jones emerging impressively on the other side of the film’s intermission), we get the sense that Tóth’s ability to work through the passions of his patron and his family’s hopes of surviving in this new world are made of the same material.
Whatever one thinks about the AI accent controversy the film has picked up recently, Brody’s performance shines in the contrasts between the crestfallen way that he carries himself as he’s being ground down by wealthy WASPs, with his steely insistence bossing around other architects, his quiet deference being patronised with a fiery temper inside; László Tóth is a stubborn, self-destructive, self-pitying character, but Brody wrings real pathos out of the way the man and his art are uncaringly abused. For the epic scale it’s a very interior story, one about a fairly miserable man who nevertheless is capable of creating great beauty, and a man who yearns for that beauty even when faced with overwhelmingly cold artifice.
That contrast might tip the film into the overwrought for some, even with the refreshing presence of an intermission (every feature should have one!) The Brutalist can be occasionally suffocating, a recurring feature of Corbet’s films. But the depths that are held within this film make it worth the effort, from Guy Pearce’s all-too-real take on uberwealthy evil and arrogance, hilarious or chilling depending on what stage of the story its in, to the sweeping score of Daniel Blumberg, to the immersive, awe-inspiring images that come through in the 70mm VistaVision shots by Lol Crawley, an appropriately grandiose cinematic style, which blows up every racist microaggression against the Hungarians, every pathetic drug-fuelled stupor, and every petty disagreement over correct building materials into high stakes high art, the filmmaking enhancing the emotions the better to communicate the ideas underneath. The America in The Brutalist is one that’s crumbling in real time, a place of hopelessness, and hypocrisy – making whatever lasting beauty that is able to be built all the more meaningful, all the more essential to endure.
