“The Brutalist” Review

There’s something so grand about Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist that the notion kept crossing my mind that it must’ve been plucked from something else. It’s an ambitious and intricate film with such masterful construction that surely it was based on a true story or adapted from a novel. Maybe the towering structure that dominates the narrative is a real place. But none of this came from a real person, real building, or acclaimed book. The Brutalist is a true original of filmmaking that taps into the erosion of the American dream like no other historical drama I’ve ever seen.

Adrien Brody gives one of his most complex performances as the Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth. He enters America as a Holocaust survivor who has yet to be reunited with his wife and niece, left behind in Budapest. László is never presented as a simple man, considering his concerns for his family, but his vices of booze and prostitutes populate his nights. Although he tries to prove his worth working for his immigrant cousin Attila and his American wife, Audrey, he soon discovers how unfair America can be towards any “other.” It takes very little for him to be kicked to the curb, the experience of America’s bigotry validated under capitalism.

Eventually, László lands a dream project when the rich industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) commissions a monumental community center. The favoring of modern design leads to László’s design being one that will represent faith and togetherness, drawing on natural light and shadows that are as visually alluring as they are representative of the strife he faced. However, problems arise in the construction, where his designs are tampered with, and materials become an issue. The inevitable arrival of László’s wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), does little to ease his worries about being treated as a second-class citizen. His bitterness only worsens with Erzsébet’s medication turns to heroin when times are tough, and somebody with enough power rapes Zsófia, never to face any consequences for his actions.

While the first act of the film establishes the brooding antisemitism that festers in capitalism’s power dynamics, the second act is all about the construction of László’s magnum opus of architecture. It’s a dream he considers worth fighting for as his primary passion, but something is always holding him back. The hatred grows within him for how everything he wants to build is at the whims of wealthy tyrants who can take away as easily as they give. László’s many works survived the war in Hungary, serving as a resilient reminder of his legacy. In America, his culture struggles to find a placement within in his work, further removing the drive and hope, where booze bottles and heroin needles look like better structures to get lost within.

Brady Corbet infuses this film with a delicate balance between the beautiful and the grotesque. One of the most mesmerizing scenes is Lázsló’s trip to Carrara to acquire the necessary stone for the project. The stone in a vast quarry is a gorgeous, quietly wondrous sight. That scene, however, is followed up with Lázsló being humiliated in the worst way a human being can be treated. The brooding fury for America boils so hard that Lázsló angrily admits to his wife that this country hates them and can get away with that hatred without any consequences. Even when Lázsló’s mistreatment is called out, there’s an almost surreal resolve to how corrupt figures don’t answer for their crimes and will often fade away into the annals of history, their atrocities remaining unspoken. The fact that Lázsló’s center is eventually completed further down the timeline serves as a testament to how slow and nightmarish the American dream has become. You might finish that towering project that labels you as a genius, but only after you suffer through the worst bigotry and inequality that should not be recognized as necessary rungs on that ladder.

The Brutalist is such a masterful historical epic that it becomes so much more than a critique of the American dream. That’s typically been how I’ve described the film briefly, but I almost have to bite my tongue at such a description for being so much more than that. While immigration and discrimination is at the core of the film, the swirling of addiction, capitalism, architecture, faith, and scandal is such a perfect brew of a complete life that is rife with vicious realization. There is never a compartmentalization of these human qualities, constantly feeling like a construction as grand as Lázsló’s designs. Lázsló’s problems can not be so easily solved with a rich brat brought to justice, getting help for an addiction, or calling out discrimination. There’s so much that paints this experience and the audience can feel the weight of it all, making us want to scream out in as much rage as possible for the impossibilities surrounding us. The American dream was a lie, and we’re all just as trapped as Lázsló, trying to figure out the path forward, hoping something is fulfilling over the next mountain we’re forced to climb.