OSCARS 2025: The Brutalist (2024)

I suppose every filmmaker, once they have a bit of clout to their name, desires to make a proper epic. The likes of "Lawrence of Arabia," "Barry Lyndon," or "Apocalypse Now" are inevitably the kind of massive myth-making that, when experienced on the biggest screen possible, transport your mind and fire the imagination. Most directors never get the chance, as three hour-plus historical melodramas are expensive and not what most studios think audiences want to see. Brady Corbet has won some praise for "Vox Lux" and "The Childhood of a Leader" but he hardly seemed prestigious enough to get the blank check necessary to make an enormous film. I suppose someone – people at fourteen different production companies and financers – saw potential in Corbet and Mona Fastvold's script for "The Brutalist" though. Despite the commercial potential of a 215 minute long gloomy drama about architecture and drug abuse seeming grim, the risk has paid off. "The Brutalist" has done well at the box office, thus far tripling its (admittedly modest, as far as epics go) 9.6 million dollar budget. The film has since received the validation all cinematic endeavors of this scale aspire to, by being nominated for ten Academy Awards. 

László Tóth, Hungarian Jew and Modernist architect, barely survives the Buchenwald concentration camp. He immigrates to the United States, his beloved wife Erzsébet and niece Zsófia unable to make the journey. He travels to Philadelphia, staying in touch with Erzsébet via letters. Tóth nurses a heroin addiction, the aftermath of an injury to his face, but is taken in by his cousin, Attila and his Catholic wife. They get a job redesigning the library in local millionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren's mansion. Harrison is initially aghast at the change, refusing to pay László, leading to his cousin kicking him out. After some time of homelessness and whatever work he can find, László is contacted again by Van Buren. The rich man has come around to loving the library after realizing the architect's artistic standing. Van Buren takes Tóth in and commissions him to build a massive community center and chapel. Being friends with a millionaire also allows Erzsébet and Zsófia, the former wheelchair bound and latter mute, to journey to America. Tóth's temperamental nature and artistic perfectionism soon has him butting heads with the Van Burens, his drug habit creates problems with Erzsébet, and the immigrant family in general find their new home hostile to outsiders. 

Having now seen it, I'm not surprised that "The Brutalist" was well received by the Academy. It's a film about many things but frequently touches upon one of Hollywood's favorite topics: An artist struggling to express himself against the narrow-minded money people who finance his work. Tóth's extremely ambitious designs for the building are immediately scrutinized by Van Buren's associates, who demand minor changes to the plan. Such alterations enrage László, who is unwilling to compromise his vision for any reason and cuts his own pay to allow the original plans to go through. "The Brutalist" handles this idea better than most films on the topic. Mostly because Tóth's work – inspired by a number of real life modernist architects – truly is impressive. When the library, with its circular design and striking chair in the center, is assembled, I did actually gasp a little. The plans for the community center and chapel include the detail of the shape of a cross reflecting onto the altar from the sunlight above. The glimpses we get of the finished building do provoke an emotional response. It's genuinely impressive stuff, filmed with the proper amount of awe. 

Moreover, "The Brutalist" also acknowledges something else: So-called "geniuses" are often assholes. Tóth's unwillingness to make any concessions to his artistic vision makes him argumentative and belligerent. The indignity of removing a few feet from the structure pisses him off to the point that he punches out the other contractor working on the gig. When talking with customers, his demeanor is generally unmoving and confrontational. He's implied to be a bit of a womanizer, seeing a prostitute and dancing with other women while married to Erzsébet. I know there's a lot of debate about personal responsibility when it comes to addiction but László never seems to consider fighting his drug habit for the benefit of his family or those working for him. He is, most charitably, a complicated person. In more general terms, he's a bit of a prick. Does his genius justify his behavior? Is the architect producing brilliant work – as a way of processing his own trauma, the ending makes clear – a fair trade for him being a jerk to everyone around him and neglecting his family? “The Brutalist” makes no clear statement either way, making it a much more complex rumination on the nature of d-bag brilliance than “A Complete Unknown,” for one example. 

This is merely one of many questions “The Brutalist” raises. In a lot of other ways, it's primarily a movie about the immigrant experience. It's not a positive depiction. Upon moving into his cousin's business, László notices Attila is doing everything he can to disguise his accent and has converted to Catholicism for his wife. He is a Jew that has assimilated totally into the native culture, something László – who attends temple several times throughout the film – has no interest in doing. While at a fancy Van Buren dinner, he talks with two American Jews and points out that his religion and heritage is merely one element that makes him an outsider in this country. His accent, his nose, the way he conducts himself marks him unavoidably as a foreigner. This is in contrast with the Van Buren family, who are all tall, stout-chested, blonde men. A key moment has Harrison's son telling Tóth that they “tolerate him.” Van Buren was incensed that these strange men – among them, a black guy – where in his home until he realized Tóth was a respected artist who could bring prestige to his reputation as a distinguished man of the arts. Yet his mere presence among rich, powerful, Aryan Americans will only be tolerated – not accepted nor embraced – for as long as he is useful to them. 

It's a not at all subtle metaphor for the treatment of all immigrants by American culture as a whole. The American dream is referenced throughout, no more powerfully than in Tóth seeing the Statue of Liberty after making it across the ocean. The idea is that anyone can come to this country, with nothing but their name, and become successful. The much grimmer reality is that American is as segregated by class and power as any other place. László is homeless for a stretch, those waiting outside dismissed when the soup kitchen closes for the day, and that's where he meets Gordon, a black immigrant and a fellow heroin addict. This is another person who is kept around by those that perceive themselves as proper Americans only when it suits them. The Tóth family's luck come down entirely to the whims of an impulsive millionaire. When the building project is abruptly called off after a train crash, László, his wife and niece are left practically back where they began. The vulnerable – of which immigrants from any place surely are – must always walk a careful line, dare they displease their so-called masters higher up in the social hierarchy. 

If only the treatment of immigrants as accessories to the rich and powerful, to eventually be discarded, ended there. After a spat with Harrison's son – in which he says some lewd things about his niece – we are treated to a sinister shot. The rich young man looms in the distance over Zsófia as she climbs out of a pool in a swimsuit. It is never addressed but the implication of sexual violence floats in the air, the young woman making an ideal target without the ability to speak. “The Brutalist” eventually takes it a lot further than that. Harrison seems the most tolerant of  László's eccentricities throughout, welcoming him into his home and inviting him to his fancy parties. When in Italy, he stumbles across the architect in an intoxicated state, any veneer of respectability the Hungarian might have had no longer apparent to Van Buren. What happens next is a disturbing literalization of one of the film's central thesis: The rich and powerful will fuck over the poor without a moment's notice, caring more that their perception as important and right over another human being's need for autonomy. 

Ultimately though, there is something like a hopeful ending. When László is first shown photographs of buildings he designed in Europe, he is deeply touched. He had no idea that they survived the war or that evidence of their existence was still around. This is a man who puts everything into his art, whose creations are an extension of his life. The closing monologue lays it down that the building Toth is trying to finish throughout the film is him expressing his experiences in the Nazi death camps. By the future flung ending, that building is still standing. Harrison Van Buren, however, the man who paid for it, is nowhere to be seen. (A conclusion  Corbet takes in a hauntingly ambiguous direction.) No matter how much power and influence the rich wield in life, a building – an artist's expression of their own life and feelings, a piece of themselves that they have put into another form – will outlive them. 

Not that “The Brutalist” has a simply rosy perception of legacy. “The Brutalist” takes place over several time periods, neatly broken up by act breaks. The epilogue, taking place long after the rest of the film, has been hotly debated. Eventually, the Tóth family settles in... Israel. I certainly don't think Corbet and his team were unaware of Israel's controversial position in the world. The layer of irony is detected when an especially clichéd line of dialogue wraps up the film. All throughout “The Brutalist,” we see outsiders coming to a new country, in search of freedom and happiness. Instead, they find themselves excluded and mistreated. It's the story of the Jewish diaspora in many ways. However, the creation of the Zionist state – and the displacement of another persecuted group of people by former outsiders who now find themselves in a seat of power – seems to be a cruel climax to this arch of history. “The Brutalist” more than hints at this, with the Tóth's family experiences in the Holocaust becoming the foundation for another development all together. A commercialized one, at that. That makes the ending hard to read as pro-Israel but instead a criticism of the country's policies.

A lot of heady ideas are floating around inside “The Brutalist's” three and a half hour runtime though. Corbet has stated that the film is about “human complexity.” And László and Erzsébet's relationship is certainly complex. They are so close as for Erzsébet to claim some sort of supernatural, mental connection. She seems aware of all his indiscretions and forgives him. His wife certainly isn't spared from his temperamental moods. As with many relationships, such tensions are resolved in the bedroom. The details of the Tóths' sex life aren't kept from us and they further shed light on the shaky, codependent relationship they share. Feeling as if you share a soul with someone means you share all their bad qualities too, which “The Brutalist” brings to the forefront in its last act. Like the drugs he takes,  László's bond with his wife feeds into him and keeps him alive as it slowly drains him away too. Once she's gone, he's left an unspeaking invalid in a wheelchair too.

All the personal turmoil of “The Brutalist's” journey is conveyed through its grand cinematography. The very first thing the film does is announced it's presented in VistaVision, in the tradition of many grand films of the past. Lol Crawley's cinematography captures wide vistas of incredible beauty. Whether that be the rolling mountains of the Italian countryside, the towering skyscrapers of New York, or the green hills of Pennsylvania, they are all presented with a sense of vastness. This extends to the repeated shots in the film of moving down a road, letting us know that we are in for a story about the journey. As epic as the cinematography can be, the camera also focuses on intimate moments too, of faces in dark rooms and bodies in sleazy buildings. The impression is a film that stretches the personal out as far as the glorious expanses of the world, connecting to the theme of art transforming interior feelings into large physical places. 

It's a very textured film, in other words, and that extends to the performance. Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones both give into the subtle and the substantial as they express these characters. László's anger is apparent in little actions, in how Brody clicks a cigarette lighter shut. Jones adapts a physical frailty to Erzsébet but her face and eyes remain unwavering and steely, suggesting this woman is a lot stronger than she appears. Guy Pearce, meanwhile, makes Harrison Van Buren a construct of outer nobility that suggests something broken within. His mother holds such a sway over him that he left his wife for her and later dedicates a massive building to her. We never know exactly what Van Burren's hang-up with his mom were. That his son and daughter seem disturbingly more like husband and wife than siblings suggests rich people getting up to incestual freakiness inside the walls of their mansions. Nevertheless, Pearce brings a committed power to the illusion Van Buren creates of himself and subtly shows the darkness within. 

“The Brutalist” is epic filmmaking not only in its visuals, runtime, and distance. Its ideas are massive and complicated, with many thoughts on the Jewish condition in the 20th century, the artist's relationship with his art, and the plight of journeying from one land to another. I doubt there's a more ambitious film nominated at this year's Oscars. The film has been criticized for using A.I. technology to finetune the Hungarian accents of its stars. This, to me, is probably the kind of thing this technology should be used for and certainly not the same as the plagiarism and anti-human ugliness of generative A.I. Either way, the controversary has been enough to take some of the award season shine off a motion picture that is likely to be looked back on as an impressive creation of its own, long after the glow and buzz of Oscars season has faded away to history. [9/10]