An ambitious feat of filmmaking from director Brady Corbet, The Brutalist tells its sprawling story of a Jewish mans struggle between assimilation and artistic expression in post-WWII America with an unwavering artistic eye that results in an astounding if not at times frustrating experience.
From The Godfather Part II to Minari, the immigrant story is one often told on film, yet few are as bold and confronting as The Brutalist. Shot with VistaVision camera on 70mm film with a runtime of 3 hours and 33 minutes (with 15 minute intermission), The Brutalist demands commitment not only for its length but the way in which director Brady Corbet (Von Lux) presents his story that evokes the European cinema sensibilities of Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci whose epics The Conformist and 1900 are considered masterpiece of filmmaking, albeit not very appealing to your average Friday night film fan.
Yet such is the point of The Brutalist; a film not willing to bend or conform to any rules or expectations. Corbet has delivered an outlier from a different time yet still very much relevant in its themes of societal assimilation and artistic individualism, and the complex if not at times ugly obstacles found in between.
The Brutalist stars Adrien Brody as Lazslo Toth, an acclaimed Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who emigrates to America in 1947 without his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) from whom he was forcibly separated during the war.
After a stay with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) goes pear shaped, a heartbroken Lazslo finds himself destitute and hooked on heroin. At this point a grand opportunity arises in the form of wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce) who commissions Lazslo to build a community centre on his land. Unbeknownst to Lazslo, this golden opportunity will usher a destructive path through hell, as the American dream for this Jewish man and his newly reunited family becomes a never-ending ordeal.
Many have assumed Laszlo Toth to be a real-life figure, so complexly human and depth filled is this character written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold (The World to Come) whose visionary talents is mattered by a penchant for self-destruction. It is a character that Adrien Brody brings to life with astounding power in a fully realised performance filled with passion, guilt, stubbornness and trauma. The Brutalist is indeed a film about antisemitism, but it also speaks to the plight of the immigrant, especially during a time when “the other” is tolerated at best.
Terrific as well is the cinematography from Lol Crawley (45 Years). During the opening scene of The Brutalist we watch as Laszlo is awakened the hull of a ship as it pulls into Ellis Island, and stagers onto the front deck and views the Statue of Liberty (shown upside down) looming over him. It is a bewildering and euphoric sequence that Crawley captures with powerful clarity.
There is, however, a level of frustration that arises from The Brutalist that, although a great film, is not necessarily one that can be recommended for those outside of the arthouse crowed. The Brutalist is an unnecessarily long movie, at times exhausting in pace and at times uncomfortable in its sexual imagery, that in one moment becomes violent.
From such risks, though, there is an admiration for what Corbet has achieve with The Brutalist. This kind of monumental, confident filmmaking is a rare occurrence, and while its hard-stone façade can make it hard to embrace at times, the details found in The Brutalist is worth the investment.
