From the musical score to the cinematography, director Brady Corbet’s ‘The Brutalist’ is a triumph of epic filmmaking. Running at three hours and thirty-five minutes (with a 15-minute intermission hard-coded into the film), it’s a sweeping story about the immigrant struggle during World War II in America. Writing with Mona Fastvold, Corbet creates a rough sketch of a Hungarian-Jewish man who fled Nazi occupied Germany to suffer the indignities of racism in America despite being an accomplished architect. From the opening overture of Daniel Blumberg’s lush score and then the striking imagery of Lol Crawley’s gorgeous cinematography, Corbet manages to build an immense story of a man’s struggle to build himself up again after losing everything.
In a way, it is both a testament and a condemnation of the American dream in equal measure.
Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) arrives in America, having just fled the concentration camp of Buchenwald. He has been separated from his wife and niece. In America, he finds work and shelter with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) in his furniture shop. They are able to secure a job refurnishing and remodeling the study of the wealthy Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) and turning it into a library.
This is a surprise set up by Van Buren’s son, Harry (Joe Alwyn) but when the elder Van Buren arrives home earlier than expected, the surprise of seeing the remodeled study sends him on a rampage, fires Laszlo and Attila and Harry doesn’t pay the two. This event compounded with others forces Attila to break ties with Laszlo.
Three years down the line, now a junkie and working in construction, Van Buren finds him after discovering who Laszlo really is and having enjoyed the genius of Laszlo’s design of the library, invites him to his home and pays him for the job. The two strike a friendship and Laszlo eventually is tasked to build a memorial building for Van Buren’s mother. Laszlo stays at the guest house in Van Buren’s sprawling mansion and is reunited with his wife, Erszebet (Felicity Jones) and their niece (Raffey Cassidy) through Van Buren’s connections and pull. But Laszlo’s design is met with resistance – from Harry, from the town to the rising cost, and other things – and it becomes clearer and clearer to Laszlo and Erszebet that while America was quick to take in refugees, they were never promised kindness or equality.
Spanning from 1947 to the 1980s, the film takes on an epic scale that centers around Laszlo Thot and his reconciliation of his life and genius after it was all stripped away from him after the Nazi’s sent him fleeing for another land. To add bigness to the story, the film transitions moments with old newsreels about marketing the state of Pennsylvania as a booming state of industry and progress. Juxtaposed with Laszlo’s own hardships and struggles while people like Van Buren just get to do what they want; it creates a disconnect which forms the central theme of the film: that the American dream is nothing more than marketing ploy. Not everyone gets a seat at the table.
Adrien Brody’s Laszlo Thot is a broken man yet, someone who still has a lot of pride. It’s a delicate performance that he manages well. I recognize how good Brody is but there are shades of this brokenness from his performance in ‘The Pianist’ but the pride and the swagger, I’ve seen in his work in ‘Peaky Blinders’ or ‘King Kong,’ and even his obsessive doctor in ‘Splice.’ It’s a great performance but nothing I haven’t seen him do before. Felicity Jones is solid and steadfast but it’s Guy Pearce’s Van Buren that really propels this movie as he becomes representative of all the well-meaning American industrialist with their big dreams and reckless abandon; how quickly they can dismiss the people they help when things don’t go their way. The selfishness and unconscious greed are wrapped up in Pearce’s charming performance that makes it all so human. So that when Van Buren commits the ultimate act of jealousy and show of superiority in the shocking third act: it makes perfect sense despite it coming from absolutely nowhere.
But for all its immensity and grandness – ‘The Brutalist’ is a gorgeous, well-crafted movie – I find that the film leaves me so cold and connecting very strongly with Felicity Jones’ Erszebet when she calls America a “disgusting, awful place.” The way the film rends America’s veneer of polish and shine is a little brutal, pun intended. The building that is at the center of all the conflicts in the second act is never ever given its visual moment in its entirety, like a promise that is never fulfilled. It’s shown in parts but never whole and it feels like a symbolism of what America must be like for the immigrant.
It’s a magnificent movie; I cannot say that enough. I feel that the musical score should win the Oscar as it has already won the BAFTA and if the cinematography won, I wouldn’t mind as well. I also enjoyed that film really carved a 15-minute intermission which allowed us to really take in the whole epic-ness of the film. It’s worth it to see in the big screen.
My Rating:
The Brutalist is now showing in cinemas. Check showtimes and buy your tickets here.
