The linchpin scene of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist arrives nearly an hour into its 215-minute runtime when Adrien Brody’s Hungarian architect, László Tóth, sits down for a cup of coffee with millionaire industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) for the first time. Some years earlier, László, who fled to America in shambles after surviving the Holocaust, was hired by Van Buren’s adult son, Harry Lee (Joe Alwyn), to surprise Harrison with a renovated study at the older man’s Pennsylvania estate. A diligent professional, László transformed a cluttered space of no real distinction into something sparse with no extraneous parts; where every design choice was congruous and in service of a cohesive whole. And the elder Van Buren hated it. Slow to recognize the genius of the work, he threw a screamy temper tantrum and ran László and his men off the grounds; and in a final indignity, Harry stiffed László of his commission, placing him further into personal debt. But things are different now: a lifestyle magazine wrote a profile about Harrison set against a photo spread of his “forward thinking” home library, which is roundly praised by high-society types and intellectuals alike, and Harrison has reconsidered his initial position. He now finds himself intensely curious in the soot-covered, sad-eyed man sitting across from him whose minimalist monuments of concrete and clean visual lines were the sensation of Europe before the war. Harrison possesses no greater understanding of architecture as an artform, but he hungers for the validation that comes with owning something that others covet.
The Brutalist is a film that announces its aspirations to be not just a great American film, but the great American film with every fiber of its being. From its already infamous length — which includes a 15-minute intermission, complete with on-screen clock counting down the minutes accompanied by foreboding piano music — to the decision to shoot the film in the archaic VistaVision format, which has mostly been retired since the early ’60s, and releasing it as a 70mm roadshow, to the causal inclusion of semi-explicit sexuality which has (as of this writing) left the film’s MPAA rating shrouded in uncertainty. First and foremost, the film is about the craft of putting up buildings, but that’s merely a gateway to explore capitalism, upward mobility, the immigrant experience in post-war America, and most forcefully what it means to be a great artist living under the yoke of thoughtless financiers (the film even sticks its toe in the fraught waters of Zionism). Corbet’s formal interests evoke the films of Francis Ford Coppola, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Paul Thomas Anderson (amongst others), which might as well serve as a “kick me” sign hung on the filmmaker’s back. And this is the part where one has been conditioned to anticipate that the filmmaker’s reach has exceeded his grasp; that Corbet, a former child actor whose prior film to this, Vox Lux, similarly took wild stylistic and thematic swings with only limited success, has revealed himself to be a dilettante or a lightweight. Yet, cynicism be damned, the film soars as an intimate yet sprawling period drama, consumed with the very nature of what it means to be an outsider and an artist presented on a massive canvas. The film has the shape and interiority of great literature, yet the language it speaks with is entirely cinematic.
The spine of The Brutalist is the push-and-pull relationship between László and Harrison spread across parts of three decades; a benefactor and employee dynamic which alternates between genuine kinship and predatory behavior. After their momentous cup of coffee, where Harrison sheepishly apologizes for flying off the handle the first time they met, László is invited to a party at Harrison’s home where he is, unwittingly, made the guest of honor. There, László meets wealthy elites who gush over his work on the library and lawyers who pledge their resources to the cause of reuniting László with his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and teenage niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), who are still stranded in Europe. Throughout the evening, Harrison hungrily sizes up László, trading stories with him of his own relatively troubled upbringing and listening with rapt attention as his special guest shares his philosophies on the enduring nature of his creations that are meant to transcend the tumult of time and global conflict, inspiring quiet reflection in those who put eyes to them. It’s all leading to Harrison’s big announcement: that he intends to build a multi-function community center dedicated to his dearly departed mother, and he would like László to oversee the design and construction of the facility. It would appear to be a dream assignment, one where money is no object and Harrison content to defer all creative matters to László. Yet there is always a cost to working for someone, be it meddlesome special interests imposing their own demands, fumbling middlemen trying to save the boss money, or the sheer fact that uncompromising ideals are rarely understood by businessmen and tolerated only so long as they don’t become an inconvenience.
What follows — primarily confined to the film’s second half with The Brutalist having the same lift-him-up-then-tear-him-down shape of the similarly grand Lawrence of Arabia — is we watch pieces of László’s spirit being torn away as he’s confronted, for the first time, by what it means to be an artist in America. Although finally living under the same roof with the wheelchair-confined Erzsébet and aphasic Zsófia (both, side effects of their physical mistreatment during the war), László is incapable of feeling joy. He spends his days fighting a losing battle against the small-minded men who callously make alterations to his blueprints, xenophobia from the local population that is weary of a Jew in its midst, the start and stop nature of taking on a venture of this size and expense, and finally cost overruns that would see him pouring his own salary back into the project in order to preserve his vision (in a film that frequently invites comparison between being an architect and a film director, this last bit especially stands out). And then there’s László’s heroin use — a habit he claims to have picked up on the voyage to America to medicate a broken nose — which leaves him susceptible to being taken advantage of. In toto, it’s a portrait of America both as it wishes to present itself (a meritocracy where the lowest of the low can rise to greatness through talent and hard work) and as it truly is (with inescapable class hierarchies, suspicion of outsiders, and a system where the wealthy and powerful are free to exploit their “lessers” without consequence).
Produced for a relative pittance — the film shoots Hungary for 1950s America without drawing attention to itself or sacrificing an ounce of visual splendor — there is a sweep and an innate appreciation of production value as an end unto itself that makes the film something of a rarity in the world of independent filmmaking. There’s noticeable intentionality in every decision that Corbet makes; it’s all bold gestures and impeccable choices in service of something unabashedly in love with its own self-importance. To wit, the film opens with László making a several minutes-long odyssey through the darkened bowels of a steamer ship teaming with outstretched humanity — shot in one of several long and unbroken Steadicam shots used throughout — that concludes with the character ascending into daylight, at which viewers are greeted with a knowing distortion of the Statue of Liberty and Daniel Bloomberg’s brassy fanfare (subtlety can often be the domain of the timid). From the typeface and layout of the opening and end credits (stunning in a way that emphasizes how few films seem to give this particular discipline much thought) to Judy Becker’s production design, which demands to be scrutinized at length while living up to the brilliance demanded by the plot, to the clever integration of archival footage in establishing the setting, offsetting budget deficiencies, and serving as a bridge between interludes. Some of the most moving moments in the film simply involve Brody’s character pausing to take in his work in all of its magnificence, and it’s as overpowering for the viewer as it is for the character. This is the sort of film where the dialogue describes László’s buildings as defining “an epoch” that transcends “all time,” and it doesn’t come across as laughably pretentious.
Yet there is a hard-earned obstinacy that pulses through The Brutalist that feels personal (one doesn’t make a three-and-a-half hour film about officious suits demanding cuts while questioning your choices without it also scratching an itch). Brody is Corbet’s primary vessel for exploring his rage and disillusionment; the character of László is initially filled with gratitude at merely arriving in the new world, which gives way to flowering self-confidence at his gifts being appreciated for what they bring into the world, only for the light inside of him to be slowly dimmed by those who risk nothing while demanding something common and cheap. At one point, when László calmly tells a penny-pinching intermediary, “everything that is ugly… cruel… stupid… but most importantly ugly… everything is your fault,” it feels like a level of spleen-venting aimed squarely at the development executive class. And what are we to make of the film’s impish final scene, which not only scoffs at the notion we’ve been on a picaresque journey where a single moment has been without purpose, but tweaks the very notion of compromise to get along? One for you, one for me? Not this filmmaker.
DIRECTOR: Brady Corbet; CAST: Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn; DISTRIBUTOR: A24; IN THEATERS: December 20; RUNTIME: 3 hr. 35 min.
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