The Brutalist
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a deep look into the American Dream and its ability to inspire people, while also sending them down paths that only result in trauma and tragedy. Jewish architect, László Tóth (played by Adrien Brody), has been displaced from Europe to America in the middle of World War II, where he meets up with a distant cousin. Here, through a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events he meets Harrison Van Buren, a big spending business owner who commissions him for a massive community center in honor of his late mother. Van Buren is played by Guy Pearce, and while there are notable performances throughout the film including Felicity Jones as Toth’s wife, and Joe Alwyn as Harrison jr., Pearce and Brody control the film whenever they are on screen.
Corbet, who not only directed but wrote the screenplay along with Mona Fastvold, is obsessed with the image of travel. Constantly the film returns to shots that are placed on the front of cars and trains as the surroundings fly past the lens. It both propels the film forward through story and time, while grinding on the concept of travel for immigrants. The story’s core is in two pieces. How do artists make great art? What do they need to accomplish this? And what is it like to be an immigrant in America?
In the case of architecture, art requires a lot. It requires funding, hands, materials, and great concepts and ideas, which Tóth never lets up on. Every time another character attempts to cut on his plans he insists it is all necessary. And it also appears, that maybe great art comes from places of darkness, of trauma. As the film concludes, it reveals some of the inspiration for the work Tóth had made, and how it’s rooted in the horrors he existed in in Europe. There is only one scene in the entire film where Tóth breaks his somber and complacent attitude to vocalize the thesis of what Corbet has to say about immigration. He shouts, “They don’t want us here. They don’t want immigrants.” Throughout the film Tóth, his wife, and his niece are paraded around like exotic goods, until they are discarded by those that took them in, usually in the most undramatic fashion. To the Americans of the film, immigrants are goods that can be picked up and discarded like grocery store items.
Corbet shot the film on 35mm film and printed it on 70mm, and the beauty of it shows. Huge shots that dance the camera around the pieces that Tóth is working on, and on the interiors of Van Buren’s home highlight the important of film in the modern cinema experience. The graininess accentuates the colors and captures sunlight that is always a pivotal part of Tóth’s pieces. The film is simply gorgeous.
The supporting cast made up of Van Burens’s family and friends, and Tóth’s wife and niece, round out the film. Felicity Jones in particular portrays a very harrowing role in the second half of the film as the woman behind the man, despite being an accomplished woman herself. The second half of the film where Jones’ character is introduced does fall apart, but it’s almost doing it on purpose. To accentuate the messiness and chaos that is ripping this family apart from the very interior of their beings, the second act pulls moments out of thin air that could never have been imagined to be there, maybe even further trying to place the audience in the immigrant’s shoes. Things truly do happen in America that they never would’ve imagined.
Running over three and a half hours, the film has its very own included intermission, calling back to cinema of yesterday, just as the setting and characters remind of us an America that is both present and from the past. Brody is stellar, and while Chalamet finally winning his Oscar would be exciting, it’s undeniable that Brody gave not only one of the best performances of the year but one of the best performances of his lifetime. With award season wrapping up the question on many people’s mind is what will bring home the award of best picture, and if I were voting, The Brutalist would be at the top of my list.