If you get a chance to see THE BRUTALIST at a 35mm showing, please seize the opportunity. You will not regret it. THE BRUTALIST was shot on 35mm film, and it’s visual gorgeousness is best seen that way. But any way you see it, THE BRUTALIST is a masterpiece, a remarkable, moving drama with breathtakingly beautiful cinematography and starring Adrien Brody in one of the best performances of his career. Brody plays a Jewish-Hungarian modernist architect, working in the then-new “brutalist” style, who survived the Nazis’ brutality in his home country and now, post-war, immigrates to America. The architect arrives with the high hopes of many immigrants but soon is struggling to find his way in this new and very different land.
THE BRUTALIST is a masterpiece on all levels, an award-winner and leading Oscar Best Picture contender. Adrien Brody’s performance rivals his Oscar-winning one in THE PIANIST, sparking its own Oscar buzz, and both Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones are being touted as Oscar contenders for their portrayals of wealthy business titan Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. and the architect’s Holocaust survivor wife, respectively. The photography is breathtaking, shot on 35mm film, and the late 1940s -early 1950s period costumes and sets are impressive, particularly those representing the architect’s work. The script is fiction but so engrossing and believable that it is hard to accept that this is not a real person. The editing and pacing is perfect in this epic, so one does not really feel it’s considerable running time (thankfully, split by a brief, well-placed intermission). It is, simply put, essential viewing for any serious fan of cinematic art.
Brutalist architecture is a minimalist modern style that rose to prominence in the 1950s, a style stripped clean of ornamentation in favor of structure, and using raw, basic elements like exposed concrete and bare brick. Brutalist structures were often imposing, monumental works that divided public opinions, leaving some cold and others impressed, but few unmoved. Many of its leading figures came from Europe, and director Brady Corbet saw parallels between post-WWII psychology and post-WWII architecture. Director Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold saw parallels between the post-WWII experience and the brutalist architecture that flourished after the war. Unable to find a real person who fit their idea of a renowned Jewish architect with his own firm, who fled Europe post-war to restart in America, they decided to create a fictional one, drawing on various post-war immigrant experiences. While, personally, I am not an admirer of brutalist architecture, director Corbet makes good use of the idea of an artist whose career was disrupted at it’s height as the leading edge of that movement, and now finds himself struggling to start again as a stranger in a stranger land.
As the film opens, Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) jubilantly arrives in America, with all the starry-eyed hopes of generations of immigrants before him, but with an extra joy at having survived Hitler’s deadly plans. Upon arriving, Laszlo is greeted by a cousin he had been close to in his youth, but who had immigrated earlier, The cousin offered the architect a place to stay and help – more than many arriving refugees of the war had. But Laszlo quickly discovers that things are very different than he expected and that life in this new land will not be easy. He also quickly discovers that his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones), from whom he was separated by the war early on, has also survived but is stuck in Europe, along with their niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy). As they work to join him in America, Laszlo confronts the hard realities of immigrant life in this new land.
In THE BRUTALIST, Laszlo Toth is a renowned modernist architect, working in the innovative, cutting-edge if chilly brutalist style. In his native Hungary, Toth is a famous and lauded figure, lionized as an artist by both the public and those in his own profession, a name that commands respect and admiration. But in America, Laszlo Toth is an unknown, just another Jewish refugee from war-ravaged Europe, and even his cutting edge style of architecture, brutalism, is an unknown to many in America as well.
After his hopeful arrival in America, Laszlo finds himself living in a tiny room of the furniture store owed by the cousin and the cousin’s non-Jewish wife in Pennsylvania. While the cousin has left his Jewish faith and identify behind, Laszlo still seeks out and attends a local synagogue, as we see in a few scenes. Still, even there, he sticks out as an immigrant, and still feels an outsider. Laszlo gets occasional letters from his wife, from time to time, but when, or even if, she will be allowed to leave Europe is unclear. Meanwhile, the architect does menial work for his cousin’s furniture store, which is filled with old-fashioned but newly made furniture, in a style that the the artist abhors.
A stroke of luck brings Laszlo a ray of hope in this grim situation, when his cousin recommends the architect to Harry Lee (Joe Alwyn), the son of wealthy businessman Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce). The business titan’s grown son wants to hire someone to remodel his father’s library, as a surprise for his father while the industrialist is away. Harry thinks Toth is just a construction worker, but the architect seizes that chance to return to his profession. Laszlo remakes the library room in a fully modern style, in a redesign that solves the many of the problems in the original room, and making it both more practical as well as visually striking. Actually, the remodeled library is more in the manner of Frank Lloyd Wright’ Prairie style than brutalist form, and when the business titan returns, he initially is angered by the changes – until his better-informed friends point out it’s ground-breaking artistic merits and its practical solutions to the spaces problems. His mind changed, Van Buren puts the architect under contract for a bigger project, and appears to take him under his wing, inviting him to live on his estate while working on the new project.
But having this powerful patron has a cost, as Laszlo and his wife, finally arrived in America but in fragile health, find out. As Laszlo fights to restart his career under his new employer, he must also find a way to reconnect with his wife, from whom he has been separated for many years. There is pain and trauma, and communication is difficult at first yet the film also gives us a touching love story of these damaged but still striving people.
Laszlo’s story is both heart-breaking and inspiring. The “foreignness” of this new place to him, combined with post-war Americans’ tendency to treat these new arrivals as if they are uneducated as well as penniless, adds an extra layer of social commentary, as well as challenge for the architect and his wife.
There is human story here too, of a husband and wife parted by war, as well as the more universal immigrant one. There is also the very particular experience of Holocaust survivors who fled to America for a new life, one version of all their myriad, individual, and astonishing stories. Despite the sense of the “real” that surrounds this moving epic story, this is fiction, and the main character is not based on one real person. Yet, that character feels so real, thanks in large part of powerful Adrien Brody’s performance, but also aided by director/co-writer Brady Corbet and co-writer Fastvold’s script, inspired as it was by the post-war period in America and immigrant experiences, particularly of the many Jewish refugees who sought a new start in America, far away from Europe.
Adrien Brody is superb in this role, a performance that rivals the one he gave in THE PIANIST. He presents the great range and complexity of emotions that he goes through, confronting the strangeness of America, facing the hardships and grappling with restarting his marriage. The supporting cast are all strong but Guy Pearce, as the American business titan deserves special mention, in a haunting portrayal of perhaps the film’s villain. There is a moment of disturbing violence in the second half of the film, for which audience should be braced, but the moment serves a narrative purpose in Laszlo’s dramatic American journey.
This film is a true epic, and the running time fits that description as well, but fortunately, wisely, THE BRUTALIST has a short intermission. It is well-placed in the story and not so long that you forget where the story left off, yet long enough for a refreshing re-set and rest. With so many films, particularly ambitious one like this, now sporting running times in excess of 3 hours, adding a brief intermission like this is a wonderful idea, an example that, hopefully, other films will follow.
THE BRUTALIST explores post-war America from this outsider’s view and also offers overall social commentary on the nation and that time period, with social class, privilege, post-war prejudices and lingering antisemitism all in the mix. Beyond that, the film also explores the tentative, fragile relationship between a husband and wife traumatized by war and the Holocaust. They are both haunted by their history and experiences in the war, and stripped of their past before the war. As the drama follows Laszlo’s path of discovery in America, it also explores aspects of differences in cultures, flaws in 1950s America, ethnocentrism, the undercurrent of barely-buried antisemitism and the sense of privilege in the wealthy businessman and his circle. The result is an unforgettable epic story, told with a power and style that reflects the monumental if difficult architecture the protagonist creates.
THE BRUTALIST opens Friday, Jan. 10, in theaters.
RATING: 4 out of 4 stars
