Director: Brady Corbet

Writers: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold

Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, and Alessandro Nivola

Running Time: 215 minutes

Please note there may be spoilers below

What’s extraordinary about Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is that it’s fictional. This immigrant drama about the fictitious Hungarian architect László Tóth has the impression of real history burnt into its bones. Tóth’s story feels like a comes from a biographical tome by someone like Robert Caro, such is the richness of this type of seldom seen literary-cinema. But in reality it comes from an original screenplay that provides us with a type of grounded humanity that makes great cinema so special. The Brutalist reminds us that the occasion of experiencing a three hour+ exploration of human struggle can be affirming, beautiful, intellectual and profound.

In a cinema year that brought us Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 and Megalopolis, you would be forgiven for thinking the era of the extended-length auteur epic was dead, beaten down by the vanity of legacy filmmakers. But now with Brady Corbet, we have someone unashamed to build a gorgeous structure of captivating drama, one with unexpected sharp edges and myriad dark rooms. He’s here to challenge us, entertain us, remind us there is still unexpected brilliance around the next corner. Adrien Brody plays Tóth with the sensitivity of a man carrying pain in his worn boots. As a holocaust survivor, The Brutalist’s opening sequence depicts Tóth’s arrival to New York, a wandering, dipping, rotating camera depicting the confusion of the arriving immigrant and his lost geography. Daniel Blumberg’s wondrous score soars as we see a low-angled Statue of Liberty, and suddenly the joy of Tóth’s survival is palpable. We only hear briefly of Tóth’s history, yet Adrien Brody’s continued brilliance includes his ability to communicate loss and grief through a hollow smile.

Living in homeless shelters, queuing for soup kitchens, sleeping with prostitutes, Tóth’s experience of America is an honest appraisal. For someone of Tóth’s artistic skills, America is a place of grand potential, but too often its flaws threaten to drown him – shameless anti-semitism and economic disparity are never far from the conversation. The Brutalist is keen on indicting America’s turbo-charged variation of capitalism as a major bruise on anyone who doesn’t fit the mold of established wealth. When Tóth designs the library of business magnate Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), he is allowed to embrace the warmth of being under the wing of old-money. Van Buren is completely enamored with Tóth’s artistic talents, a man in love with a creator who is himself incapable of creating anything. He hires Tóth to design and manage the building of a monumental community center – 1 building of 4 buildings; a library, theater, gymnasium, and by enforced request: a christian chapel.

The fascinating dichotomy between commerce and art plays out amongst roaring sequences of jazz infused heroin trips, extravagant construction of enormously high-ceilinged rooms, and the verbal acrobatics that occur when an artist fights for his vision in a world where the sudden decision of a millionaire changes everything. Corbet captures truth after truth within this struggle. Tóth’s wife Zsófia (Felicity Jones) is his source of strength and honesty. Whilst Tóth obsesses on his work, Zsófia senses early how the landscape of wealth can grow bored so quickly. She sees the ruthless nature of American wealth and power – to the Van Buren family, Zsófia’s family are simply ‘tolerated’ until they are not. The Van Buren’s have access to the many things that make life easier, and they allow Zsófia and her family to indulge in this life, until they don’t. There is only room for deference when the wealthy control your survival.

Felicity Jones is magnetic as the deftly sharp and supportive Zsófia, sensitive to the obsessions of her husband but dexterously intelligent to the workings of the world. Watching her physically reconnect to her estranged and guilt ridden husband is a highlight of a film full of vulnerable performances. Remarkably the film’s 215 minute length feels closer to 2 hours, since each scene is committed to extracting the fascinating intimacy of it’s characters. There is a Paul Thomas Anderson-esque sincerity to fearless emotions – that is, each scene is asking the actors to wear their souls in bared form, each moment unafraid to have it’s characters be defenseless whilst facing the challenges of total displacement.

A great fear for the immigrant is the fear of losing oneself. By moving to another country, by speaking another language, by marrying another person, the ponder of maybe loosing yourself is always present. For Tóth, looking at images of the buildings he designed in Europe brings tears to his eyes – he thought that person was gone, replaced by a man that simply shovels coal for a living. When he visits his established emigre cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), Tóth mentions that Attila now speaks ‘like an American from the television.’ Attila has an American wife, Audrey, and has changed his name from Molnár to Miller because ‘Folks here like a family business,’ by which he means a white American business. Attila is assimilated, different now, a difference that threatens the very family he came from. As Tóth stretches toward artistic achievement, he consciously reaches back into his past, into his trauma, and under the noses of the rich and powerful, creates art that represents the very flaws that threatens them all and the humble freedom he so desperately craves. In a world where he was powerless to the forces of change, he instead found himself amongst the turmoil. There probably isn’t a more inspiring message.