Score: 4.5/5
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a gargantuan American epic that demands to be seen on the big screen.
The Brutalist chronicles the life of Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth following his immigration to America in the height of post-World War II Europe. Upon his triumphant arrival, László is faced with challenge after challenge as he works to rebuild his life in this foreign land. He soon becomes involved in a project working for the wealthy Harrison Van Buren and with time, begins to discover the rotten underbelly of the promising country he once landed on.
Let’s get one thing out of the way: this film is very long, with a total runtime of 3.5 hours including an intermission halfway through built into the timeline of the story. If you’re locked into the colossal story the film builds, your attention will likely be held steady throughout. It’s a story that, for the sake of the point it wants to make, does benefit from the staggering runtime, even if its second half becomes somewhat long-winded and indulgent.
To address the elephant in the room, we should bring up Adrian Brody’s towering performance as László, which could be his finest work since The Pianist. Brody vanishes into László in the first fifteen minutes of the film. Equally deserving of recognition are the two primary supporting performances from Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones. Pearce taps into a fascinating manifestation of evil as the wealthy Pennsylvanian estate owner Harrison Van Buren, who connects with László’s artistry and ambition, tasking him in charge of a personal project.
Jones makes the bulk of her appearance in the film’s second, more conflicting half as László’s newly immigrated wife, Erzsébet Tóth. In a year where many supporting performances are arguably lead or co-lead, Jones gives a true supporting performance in this film, adding layers of character to her own and Brody’s performance, while also getting a handful of showy scenes.
It’s remarkable what Corbet was able to achieve with only a ten-million-dollar budget, crafting a detailed portrait of post-war America filmed on gorgeous, eye-catching VistaVision film.
The film’s score is also glorious, packed with triumphant, big-band brass and percussion that replicates that sound of steel and construction. The music never stays in one place for too long, evolving sonically with the story while still having a recognizable heart at the core of its sound.
It’s impossible to succinctly encapsulate what The Brutalist wants to say, but the film itself doesn’t seem interested in doing so either. It’s practically flashing a sign in your face announcing to you that it wants to be the antithesis of surface-level metaphors and singular answers to its questions. The colossal journey the film takes you on speaks for itself and is the primary vehicle for its criticisms of America and the way artists are treated.
By the end of our exhaustive efforts to realize our creative visions, who really owns our art? When messages and meanings are retold and reinterpreted, how much space is left for the artist to impart on their work?
The Brutalist doesn’t decide this for you. It presents a large, warts-and-all lifetime of a film and invites you to decide: Is the destination you reach worth it? If it is, what does that destination look like?