The Brutalist: a review of Brady Corbet’s new masterpiece
An instant cult classic: The ordeal drama of a Hungarian architect clashing with the capitalistic harshness of US reality
Index
Film Profile
Introduction
Review
Reception
Sources of inspiration and cross-references to other movies
Complex characters and amazing acting performances
Conclusion
Film Profile
Title: The Brutalist
Release year: 2024
Film length: 3h35m
Director: Brady Corbet
Writers: Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold
Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn
Introduction
The Brutalist is a 2024 epic historical drama film written and directed by Brady Corbet, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Mona Fastvold. It is an international co-production between the United States, United Kingdom and Hungary and it stars Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola, Jonathan Hyde, and Guy Pearce.
After several delays mostly due to pandemic, filming finally began in Budapest, Hungary on March 16th, 2023. Production then moved to the city of Carrara in Tuscany, Italy on April 29th, 2023, and wrapped on May 5th, 2023.
The Brutalist was in competition for the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival and it was also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6th, 2024.
I got the amazing chance of watching The Brutalist in 70mm in world premiere at 81st Venice International Film Festival on September 2nd, 2024. Unfortunately, I did not get to attend the premiere with the cast in the theatre, but I still managed to meet a couple of the stars of the cast, among which are Joe Alwyn, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones and Alessandro Nivola.
On the last day of the Festival, the winning films also got one last screening and I could not avoid going to watch this masterpiece for the second time. I really cannot wait for you all to watch it as well and to share opinions about it. I am also looking forward to watching it again in cinemas. It is already the best movie of the year for me.
Review
In an ordeal long drama spanning 30 years of chronicles, The Brutalist narrates the fictional story of László Tóth, a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to the United States of America with his wife so to experience the "American dream".
As the duration of the film may lead to think, this is a true odyssey featuring the life of a man attempting to social climb and change his poor condition. The extended duration of The Brutalist is inextricably linked to its nature, to Corbet’s idea of cinema, to staging of grandeur. The bookcase built for Van Buren, the next seemingly endless great project, the marble quarry of Carrara: everything is huge but never superfluous.
I do not use this word lightly but this film is truly a masterpiece as it phenomenally portrays the rises and falls of a nobody who eventually becomes one of the most talented architects of modern art.
The Brutalist depicts all the hardships and injustices of life, though also professing a message of hope and rebirth and displaying both ambition and reality.
Though erecting this giant of steel and reinforced concrete, Tóth sacrifices himself, his relationship with his wife Erzsebet and his few friends, to leave an indelible and gigantic mark on US territory.
The opening sequence presents the Statue of Liberty seen from an unusual perspective, crooked, upside down, yet even more real, uplifting and symbol (largely misleading) of what will be and what they have left behind.
László initially endures poverty and indignity, but he soon lands a contract with a mysterious and wealthy client, Harrison Lee Van Buren, that will change the course of his life.
Tóth gets a job remodeling Van Buren’s library in his palatial estate – although Van Buren knows nothing about it for the job was commissioned as a birthday surprise while he was away by his bumptious and slippery son Harry Van Buren, masterfully played by Joe Alwyn. Tóth is thrilled by the possibilities in the library’s high ceilings and its amazing lighting.
Van Buren Sr. is initially furious at his son, who presumed to get crappy foreigners to rebuild his library behind his back. However, he then decides he is delighted by the bold modernist reimagining that makes the library look larger than it is. Afterwards, he offers Tóth a king’s ransom (and also uses his political contacts to get Erzsébet and Zsófia into the US) so that Tóth can mastermind the building of a vast community centre in the town in memory of his late mother.
The absurd grandeur and hugeness of this project recalls a bit the sumptuousness of Xanadu mansion in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane.
The Brutalist - a movie about desperation and anguish - asks us to decide if and how the brutalism of the title applies to something other than architecture. It is a movie about antisemitism and the capitalist adventure, about the unassimilated immigrant experience and the contrast between American naivety and the tragic, painful depths of European culture and expertise.
It feels as if it must be based on a real-life case, or at least a literary source – but this is an original screenplay by Corbet and his co-screenwriter Mona Fastvold. During the whole film I indeed wondered about the possibility of this being a biopic and searched it up right after the film ended because the story is so majestically written that it felt like it could not have been just figment of mere imagination.
The Brutalist stages the point of clash, the incompatibility between art culture and the Capital. It is a film that does not belong to Hollywood and to that form of gigantism often superficial, but that rather aims to reach forms of artistic immortality, regardless of the audience, of the consensus. The Brutalist is a manifesto of a clear and ambitious idea of cinema, far from any mainstream logic.
Reception
By the time I am writing this article, The Brutalist has reached 97% on the Tomatometer (Rotten Tomatoes) and an 7.9/10 on IMDB, which is an extremely excellent response.
All the journalists and cinephiles who had attended the world premiere of The Brutalist were sure that the film by Brady Corbet would win the Golden Lion but it was not so. Corbet still won the Silver Lion for Best Direction and - flash news - the film production company A24 has decided to spend ten million dollars to distribute the film in the United States.
Sources of inspiration and cross-references to other movies
Corbet reworks in his own way to The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand - a novel already brought to the big screen by King Vidor – and immerses us in a dark journey through the second half of the short century, from post-Holocaust the late 80s.
Naturally, providing the film the illusionary so-called American dream, it takes inspiration from all those films that deal with the same theme as, for example, The Crowd, still directed King Vidor.
The violence, the torment and, above all, the ambition of the protagonist are very similar to those of the main character in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.
Complex characters and amazing acting performances
The Van Buren father-son duo embody the capitalist elites, but also those who under the guise of culture and affinity for the arts, savagely maintain hierarchies based on wealth.
One of the prime movers of the whole story is the meeting-clash between Tóth and the tycoon Van Buren, with his patronage of facade, ostentatious and vulgar. Mr. Van Buren is characterized by excessive impulsiveness and eccentric patronage. He tries to prove himself to be a refined and tasteful man, but then turns out to be bigoted and violent, unable to hide his darker sides.
The patriarch wants his name to be associated with László’s singular talents. However, he progressively reveals a loathsome attitude as a cultural gatekeeper, only interested in his own legacy and in making money.
As for Alwyn’s Harry, he grows into a detestable fella who believes that anything he takes is rightfully his.
An uncompromising visionary, student of the Bauhaus school, at the end of World War II, Tóth leaves Hungary, the horrors of the Holocaust and his family to reach the United States and start a new life. First welcomed and soon after kicked out by his cousin Attila, he is left without money, contacts and prospects, no longer able to express himself as a professional. Because of that, he is obliged to perform humble and exhausting jobs and he keeps on living in poverty for a long time, before being able to secure a contract with the wealthy entrepreneur Harrison Lee Van Buren, who would change the course of his next thirty years. But Tóth’s haughty perfectionism, quick temper and his own problems with drink and drugs make the project an ordeal.
Adrien Brody is absurdly amazing and I would not be surprised at all if he will be nominated and win best actor at the Academy Awards. Brody has got an expressiveness, a talent, a charisma, a prestige that are so remarkable to leave utterly speechless. He is indeed one of the best living actors and I am so in awe of him. I hope he will get the recognition he deserves throughout this year’s Award Ceremonies.
Conclusion
I knew very little about the film before entering the cinema because there were no trailers of any kind. Anyway, I always love going to the theatre to watch films that I know very little about so as not to be influenced by others' comments but to enjoy the view to the fullest and without prejudice.
The Brutalist feels willed to be the kind of movie that is not souited for everyone: a grand American saga that is openly intended on telling a big story with big ideas. Not a perfect choice for superficial and picky watchers but most definitely a life-changing movie for cinephiles and lovers of the seventh art in all its nuances.
As many people said, The Brutalist was very inclined to be elected as best feature film of Venice Film Festival and I sincerely hoped and believed so. Unfortunately, the film won Silver Lion (per say, best direction) and Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door was elected as best feature film.
I did like Almodovar’s new movie very much as well. However, I personally believed The Brutalist had a higher gear. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the Spanish director’s brand-new film did not deserve the award nor that a Silver Lion is not a great achievement as well.
At this point, I am manifesting for The Brutalist to win the Oscar for Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards!
You should check my Instagram page as well as I have published photos and videos of celebrities I’ve met at the Festival.
Do not forget to also follow me on Letterboxd, where I always publish shorter reviews.
You made me want to watch it!
Great write-up, anticipation off the charts now