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| Director Brady Corbet |
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| Corbet with Silver Lion at Venice |
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| Corbet (right) in Haneke's Funny Games, 2007 |
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| Corbet with Mona Fastvold |
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| The director on the set |
THE BRUTALIST A- USA Great Britain Canada (215 mi) 2024 d: Brady Corbet
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. —Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), quoting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1809, in a voiceover letter read to her husband
The Holocaust is a frequent topic in cinema, with films as diverse as Alain Resnais making one of the first to confront the brutal devastation of the extermination camps in his 30-minute short film NIGHT AND FOG (1955), Marcel Ophuls’ intellectually inquisitive THE SORROW AND THE PITY (1969), Claude Lanzmann’s definitive yet dizzyingly expansive testimonial documentary SHOAH (1985), Louis Malle’s lyrically compassionate AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS (1987), Roman Polanski’s tragic first-person account in THE PIANIST (2002), or László Nemes’ frustratingly claustrophobic vantage point of Son of Saul (Saul Fia) (2015), where this is another entry, tying immigration and the postwar flight of Jews from the Nazis to Weimar-era Bauhaus and postwar Brutalist architecture, creating a monumental structure that matches the formulist design with this three-and-a-half-hour film that includes a fifteen minute intermission. While that alone can seem overwhelming, that’s also part of the intent, as this is meant to be taken seriously, where we can’t forget that Auschwitz was designed by a Bauhaus architect, Fritz Ertl - Auschwitz. The epic scope and sheer audacity of this film is tremendously appealing, filled with giant ideas, where the boldness of the vision is hard to miss, moving with frenetic energy and pace, brimming with optimism, where the overly bombastic style is unique, creating a larger-then-life canvas that is utterly captivating, using the eloquence of highly structured, Kubrick-infused, old-school filmmaking that is intense, but the film bogs down after the intermission, shifting the focus of the film, becoming more pessimistic, taking a slow turn into a downward spiral, where the initial allure turns exhaustive and emotionally draining, even disappointing, considering the ambitious wealth of artistry in the opening half. Not sure this film needed an intermission, though after the explosive cinematic bombast, the quietly abstract, intermission piano music was one of the pleasures of the experience, Intermission (feat. John Tilbury) - The Brutalist Original Motion Picture Soundtrack YouTube (11:22), accompanied by a still image of a historic wedding photo surrounded by family (ghosts of the past) that counts down the seconds, as it may have played out differently without a break, but the anticipation created from such an extensively detailed set-up is one of the pleasures for viewers, but it ran out of imagination, feeling overly conventional by the end, speedily wrapping things up in a tidy bow, becoming more in line with what other movies do. Instead of being inspired by the force of ideas, this limps to an anticlimactic finale that simply runs out of steam. Surely there was a better way to end this film, as it frustratingly fails to pack an emotional punch, yet it’s fascinating how the title of the film can refer to different things as the film evolves over time, as it’s an art movement but it’s also a way of behavior. The grandiosity of the film may remind viewers of Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling epic There Will Be Blood (2007), while also exposing the darkness that lies within the heart of the American Dream. Matching the ferocious spirit of Marco Bellocchio’s bombastic historical drama VINCERE (2009), which delves behind the scenes in the rise of Benito Mussolini, or the sweeping landscape of Visconti’s 19th century THE LEOPARD (1963), this fictionalized version of Jewish-Hungarian architect László Toth has a similar historical arc, escaping postwar Europe, leaving his wife and orphaned niece behind as he arrives in America to begin a new life. The film accentuates a decisive difference in what America expects from arriving immigrants, and what an artist expects from himself. It’s a cautionary tale, one fraught with wonders and grandeur dreams, and the price that is ultimately paid to fulfill one’s personal destiny, where narrow-minded moneyed interests have a way of interjecting their own soul shattering, narcissistic self-interests in reshaping or even undoing that artistic legacy. In an interesting aside, Laszlo Toth is the same name of the mentally unstable Hungarian-born Australian geologist who vandalized Michelangelo’s La Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in 1972, attacking the sculpture multiple times with a hammer (The day Michelangelo's Pietà was vandalised in a ...), perhaps a metaphor for how an artist is both a builder and a destroyer.
Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Direction at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, taking seven years to conceive, yet only 34 days to shoot in both Hungary and Italy, made for less than $10 million dollars, loosely inspired by the experiences of Jewish-Hungarian architect Marcel Breuer and Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead, written by Corbet, who was one of the psychopathic home intruders in the American remake of Michael Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES (2007), along with his partner and regular collaborator, Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold, the film is told in two chapter headings that move from 1947 to 1960 before leaping ahead to an epilogue in 1980. Beginning with an extended overture playing over the highly stylized opening credits, Daniel Blumberg - Overture (Ship) | The Brutalist (Original ... YouTube (4:50), we hear a confusion of chaotic voices and a high-pitched siren as László (Adrien Brody) makes his way through the underdeck of a crowded ship arriving in America, while we hear his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, who doesn’t even appear until the second half, revealing a completely different side of herself) reading a letter in voiceover, indicating she must stay behind in Budapest, “There is nothing left for us here,” before we are plunged into darkness. Emerging out of the depths, he is bombarded by light and the first signs of the Statue of Liberty, inverted initially, suggesting things are askew in pursuing the American Dream, as it keeps changing positions before finally standing upright. Welcome to America. Fast-forward to the present, the metaphorical tilt of Lady Liberty reminds us of the self-righteous political trend of demonizing immigrants, which is an attempt to whitewash history, as America is a nation of immigrants, founded on the premise of freedom of religion. What stands out in this mesmerizing opening sequence is the unbridled power of cinema, in all its awe and splendor, where the technical level is astonishing, as the grand and imposing music by Daniel Blumberg (the original choice was Scott Walker, who died in 2019, where the opening credits end with “In Memory of Scott Walker”) and equally impressive sound design that includes a healthy use of industrial noises are in perfect sync with the 70mm VistaVision imagery from Lol Crawley, giving it an aesthetic of movies from the same time period, the first American film to use that format since Marlon Brando’s sole directorial credit with ONE EYED JACKS (1961), where right from the outset we can tell this is virtuoso filmmaking. The subject, however, happens to be an intricate examination of the people who inhabit the film, a character study of adults doing adult things, living real lives, where disappointment is built into the fabric of the human experience. There are a gazillion producers listed, with an equal number of different opinions, no doubt, on how to make this film, where the relationship between the financiers and the filmmaker couldn’t be more personal, but it’s Corbet’s singular artistic vision that stands out, unfettered by their input, as opposed to what happens in the film itself, where the benefactor interferes with every minute aspect of artistic creation. Adrien Brody won a Best Actor Academy Award, still the youngest actor at the age of 29 to win the award, infamously kissing unsuspecting presenter Halle Berry on the lips, playing a celebrated Jewish-Polish classical pianist and Holocaust survivor in THE PIANIST (2002), also appearing in a cameo role as Salvador Dalí in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011), so he’s not afraid to take on roles with extreme range and emotional depth. Here he is the central focus of this entire film, inflicted by personal demons, having survived Buchenwald, one of the biggest Nazi concentration camps, but the weight of the past refuses to let go, remaining an oppressive burden that is in every fiber of his being, fortunate to even be alive and breathing, as so many others were not so fortunate. As he passes through Ellis Island and makes his way to Philadelphia, he finds his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who owns a custom furniture store that’s not exactly bustling with business, euphorically informing him that his family is alive. Taking a spare closet in the back of the storeroom, where he has to go outside and back inside to use a bathroom, he’s a helpful hand with few complaints, but saddened at the slow developments in reuniting with his family, as Erzsébet was not born Jewish, but converted for the marriage, with all the required records and documents lost in transit, leaving them in limbo. While standing in line at a soup kitchen, he runs into Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé) a black father with his young son, immediately striking up a friendship that will last decades, as they find themselves in similar circumstances, immigrants alone struggling to survive in America, sharing that same sense of rootlessness and outsiderism.
A film about grief and loss that examines the motives of religious and racial discrimination, the misery of addictions, and economic exploitation, while offering a scathing critique of America as a bastion of freedom and the land of plenty, as there is a brutal underside to capitalism and the obscene wealth of a precious few, creating an overcontrolling, ego-driven billionaire mindset that has run amok (especially today) and derailed the hopes and dreams of ordinary people, or especially anyone that’s different, by creating unending chaos for the most vulnerable living amongst us, while also having a neutralizing impact on art, toning down the rough edges, obscuring originality, belittling anything that’s provocative, regurgitating the same formula over and over, making everything more homogenized for the mainstream. One of the frequently recurring motifs is a head-on POV shot of a car speeding down an open road, or a train barreling down a track, typically accompanied by industrial sounds, where that percussive thump emphatically accentuates the power of progress, which is given a literary sweep, with a visualized mix of roads and rails and architecture, as time waits for no one moving forward. There is a newsreel-like insert of the history of Pennsylvania in the making of America, as it is the center of the steel industry, with smokestacks puffing billows of smoke into the skies. It isn’t pretty, but it illustrates how necessary the hard, dirty work is in building a nation, where there is a grim look to the postwar rebuilding years in America that this film brilliantly captures. A break comes when a wealthy family wants to commission the services of the cousins in renovating a personal study on the grounds of a massive estate in nearby Doylestown, where Harry (Joe Alwyn) wants to surprise his millionaire father Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) by transforming his prized, yet darkly cluttered reading room into a state-of-the-art library, with László tearing down the velvet curtains covering the massive windows while cleverly shielding the books from the sunlight with moving bookshelves, transforming it into an ultramodern, minimalist mecca of open space and light, creating a quiet place of reflection that is completely different, while bringing Gordon along for the construction. Even if you know next to nothing about architecture, this film makes you intrinsically understand that it means something personally, yet it so offends Harrison upon his return that he screams for the trespassers to leave, refusing to pay for this abomination, leaving the cousins fending for themselves afterwards, even threated with an expensive lawsuit, basically driving them in different directions, with Attila angrily kicking him out, fueled by false accusations from his Catholic wife of sexual advances. It’s a sad state of affairs, driven to desperation and anguish, living in a shelter while turning to drugs and dangerous construction work, where it’s Harrison’s turn to surprise László, having done some research into his background, discovering he’s a visionary European architect, having studied in the Bauhaus, considered way ahead of his time, with many important buildings on his resumé, but in America he’s a misunderstood nobody. Apologizing profusely for his unforgivable behavior, Harrison, based in part on chemist and art collector Albert C. Barnes, has become a big fan of that futuristic library transformation, becoming the envy of his peers, given a photospread in Look magazine, yet this is also the first time viewers get a chance to see to full extent of László’s creations, where he’s not some ordinary man, but a tormented artist with aspirations to leave behind a monumental legacy that’s designed to last. Harrison, a self-made industry titan who is the epitome of the American Dream, is a wealthy patron who wants to avail himself of that daunting possibility by building an enormous shrine to his late mother on a nearby hillside high above the stately grounds of his estate, offering László the complete freedom to design a mammoth project that would include a community center comprised of an auditorium, a library, a gymnasium, a meditative house of worship, and possibly even a swimming pool, all sharing the same space, his own City upon a Hill. Living on the grounds while it’s under construction, the family attorney Michael (Peter Polycarpou) helps him expedite the process of reuniting with his family, helping them procure the necessary documents, where the obstacles are formidable, as both women endured Dachau and are now stuck in a displaced-persons camp in Hungary under Soviet control, The Brutalist (2025) Movie Clip 'Announcement' Adrien Brody ... YouTube (1:13). It’s the chance of a lifetime, where László’s dream mirrors America’s postwar transformation, and in each case it’s full speed ahead, where the future is suddenly limitless, as the frenetic energy on display is emblematic of László’s unconstrained joy and optimism, having dug himself out of the depths, bringing the first half to a resounding close.
When Erzsébet and his young niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) finally arrive, it’s clear they’ve been through Hell, as the trauma of the war is everpresent, with his vulnerable wife in a wheelchair, her legs crippled from famine, while his teenage niece is mute, her parents killed in the death camps. Despite the immensity of the tragedy and the horrible impact on their damaged lives, they are not exactly welcomed to the grounds, remaining strangers even to one another at first, thankful for the relief of finally being reunited, though the cultural disconnect with the surrounding community is everpresent. Harry, the arrogant and entitled son, is oblivious to what they’ve been through, finding them odd and peculiar, and not one of them, suggesting they are not liked, but merely “tolerated,” while smugly insinuating sexual abuse of Zsófia, accentuating a racist perspective of hostility toward Jewish outsiders in their midst, suggesting they will never be equals, where local demands have been made to change a universal space of reflection to a Christian chapel, in accordance with the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) values of Doylestown. While the size of the project is massive, accentuating industrial materials like concrete, steel, and glass, with starkly minimalist, modernist, and even futuristic designs, abstract shapes are used sparingly for décor, with a wealth of exposed space, using simple color schemes, creating a holistic design that is conceptually awe-inspiring while also functional. Harrison keeps finding ways to undermine László’s vision by tightening the strings on the budget, callously insisting on changing the dimensions to something smaller, hiring cronies who are only concerned with minimizing costs, which leads to cheaper products, producing catastrophic results, as we see a freight train with building materials from an aerial view disappearing in a cloud of smoke before bursting into flames, incurring the wrath of Harrison, shutting the project down with plenty of finger-pointing and ensuing legal woes, creating an artistic divide that sends László spiraling into an alcohol and drug-dependent depression, which changes how he navigates the world. The whirlwind nature of the first act slows down considerably as we see the deepening psychological ramifications, with Zsófia believing it is their duty to live in Israel, a newly formed Zionist nation, free from the prejudicial assaults they are continually faced with, needing a safe haven where they can live without fear. Erzsébet is inclined to agree, though László holds out hope of fulfilling his dreams in America. Years later, Harrison reconnects with László, going on a strange and mysterious odyssey to the mountainous village of Carrara in Italy in search of the most beautiful marble on the planet, which becomes a mind-altering experience, where a visit deep into the mines is like plunging into the depths of the underworld, but in the alcohol-fueled celebration afterwards, something deeply bullying and dominant happens, changing the entire trajectory of the film, as Harrison once again imposes his will in the most heinous manner imaginable. The film internalizes the damage done in ways that are shocking, exposing the self-centered, insular nature of the rich and powerful, whose sole objective is making a profit by crushing those who are weaker, immune to any consequences, pretending to be pillars of the community and devoted patrons of the arts, but they prove to be heartless and soulless scoundrels caught up in narcissistic megalomania, who only want to cement their own legacy by enlarging their already considerable egos, incapable of comprehending what it takes to conceive great art. Corbet has an ability to create carefully choreographed, elongated sequences that are dramatically impressive, allowing the actors to expand upon their roles, as there is an inevitable confrontation of this deepening divide that plunges us into the psychological depths of moral depravity, where art may be the saving grace, but it is absent in the brutality of unspeakable acts, leading to a strikingly powerful moral abyss of epic proportions, with a few shocking surprises, as Erzsébet stunningly conveys what an amazing woman she is, brazenly confronting the despicable behavior of the more privileged Van Buren family, who treacherously prey on the weak. Their angry yet entitled response is to have her forcibly dragged out of there, yet what follows is an ecstatic labyrinthian journey of pure cinema. The film suggests we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes we do not recognize in ourselves, revealing the cyclical nature of history, cleverly and transparently bringing the film into the present. The brief epilogue inverts what we’ve seen before, jumping ahead two decades, where the earlier, perpetually unfinished projects have been completed, and now it’s László in a wheelchair, with Erzsébet wheeling him into a retrospective of his work that is being commemorated in Venice, where an adult Zsófia (Ariane Labed, the wife of director Yorgos Lanthimos), the proud guardian of her uncle’s legacy, gives a speech highlighting how their experience with the Holocaust inspired her uncle’s works, suggesting the past is always present, while the transcendent immortality of art literally has no price. The improbable closing music over the credits is a rousing disco song by Italian pop duo La Bionda, La Bionda - One For Me, One For You (1978) YouTube (5:33), ironically sending viewers on their merry way.
