THE BRUTALIST - Mark Reviews Movies

The Brutalist, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 19, 2024

No description could better define a cube than the thing itself, according to the architect at the center of The Brutalist. That seems to be co-writer/director Brady Corbet's own philosophy with his film, which is about the making of a huge and ambitious artistic project in the face of people who only understand the bottom line.

One can only imagine the pushback Corbet must have received by the financially minded when pitching this film, which is over three and a half hours long (including an intermission), revolves around the designing and construction of a massive building, and is filled with the miseries of the post-war immigrant experience, the struggles of an artist and his family, and dealing with people whose only vocabulary has to do with money. If he hadn't already made this film, the process of getting it made surely could have inspired its own story, but as the architect says, the best definition of a thing is the thing itself.

That man is László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Jewish Hungarian man whom we first see amidst the huddled masses of a ship arriving at Ellis Island a couple years after the end of World War II. A narrated letter explains the basics of the man's situation: a survivor of a concentration camp, separated from his wife and niece, and leaving Europe to find some opportunity in the United States. From here, László's fates and fortunes will wane and rise, only to fall again, over the course of about a decade, and it's not until the film's final minutes that we realize why the man has put himself through all of this frustration and pain for a project that, as it's being made, no one sees as his.

It is László's fate to build, though, and his personal, if not financial, fortune to build things the way he wants to. For all of the characters and details and sheer length of the story here, Corbet and co-screenwriter Mona Fastvold never lose sight of the man at its center—one who becomes obsessed with someone else's dream, because he can use it to put his skills on full display and for that other reason that isn't revealed until the finale, and who will endure anything to ensure that the thing is built his way and no other.

He has experienced worse, of course, as a survivor of the Holocaust who has actually or ostensibly lost everyone closest to him, the career he made for himself in Budapest, and whatever dreams he might have had for himself in his homeland. His new dream, along with ego and the hopes of seeing his wife again and heroin, is the only thing that keeps him going over the course of this tale. As expansive as this story is, László's almost self-destructive determination gives the film an intimate core that drives everything to its various ends.

Brody's fully committed performance grounds that character, as well, because here is a man who experienced the unthinkable, is initially happy simply to be alive and to know that at least some of his family is, and gradually descends into a kind of madness at watching his grand plans be budgeted, adjusted, and debated nearly to death. The film may be cleanly divided into two acts, with the first one broadly moving toward hope and the second falling into despair, but Corbet's ambitions allow for a lot of little details to add layers to László's story.

That early hope, for example, doesn't come easy. László must find his way from New York City to Philadelphia, reunite with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and get a job at his furniture store, deal with the seemingly prejudiced machinations of the cousin's wife (played by Emma Laird), and receive a promising job redesigning a magnate's private library but watch that collapse when Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) returns home and doesn't appreciate that strangers have been in his mansion. Some time later, after László has become displaced and taken a job of manual labor, Harrison realizes the error of his ways, invites the architect to a party, and surprises him with the commission for a gigantic community center.

Those are just the basics of the plot, of course, but the scope of Corbet and Fastvold's story is as much a component of the film's purpose as the story it's telling. It's wide and deep and expansive, just like the building László has envisioned, and that self-reflective nature in the storytelling might get in the way a bit of some of the more character-based elements. László's wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) do eventually arrive, for example, but by then, they might as well be absent from László's life, considering just how focused he becomes on the building. That tells us something about the man, obviously, but since we already know that quality of him, it's redundant.

Then again, the grind of the project, which starts and stops over several years, is part of the point, too, and there's simply no denying the way Corbet brings this marathon of a story to life, while making it feel like a relative sprint. With cinematographer Lol Crawley, the director shoots most of it on film, and the payoff of seeing László's vision come to physical realization over time is an achievement unto itself. After all, the building is right there for us to see, eventually explore, and finally comprehend within our protagonist's motive for building it.

The Brutalist isn't shy about wearing its ambition or meaning on its sleeve (A character in the finale makes it clear that the revelation at the end, which is never even hinted at until then, is supposed to be the main takeaway of the entire film). There's a lot to admire about this personal—for both the main character and, clearly, the filmmaker—epic, but its straightforward sincerity might be quality that stands out the most.

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