By Marc S. Sanders
Before I started writing this article, I had to marinate on my impression of Brady Corbet’s magnum opus film, The Brutalist. It has the makings of a biography but it’s fiction. It indulges practically every inch of a Holocaust survivor’s life after immigrating to America. It takes daring approaches in its photography particularly since it was filmed using an antiquated 35 mm print in Vista Vision. (The director found it appropriate to use the filming methods that were available during the mid-century decades when most of the film takes place. Wise and insightful choice.) Despite using questionable AI techniques, two of the leads use impressive dialects and fluently speak in Hungarian and Hebrew as well. Set designs, score, sound, visuals. It’s all here. Yet, I don’t feel I wholeheartedly enjoyed the experience of watching the picture, and this is coming from a guy who had the entire AMC auditorium #16 to himself on a chilly Thursday afternoon at 4:45pm. Not a cell phone lit in my line of sight or a crying baby within earshot. The theater was my oyster. The Brutalist was not.
Adrien Brody won his first Oscar at age 29 for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. He earned his accolades for a heartbreaking performance. He arguably works even harder as a visionary architect named László Tóth. This nuanced creation from Brady Corbet is a most convincing historical character…of fiction, that is.
László arrives on Ellis Island, separated from his wife and niece by concentration camp assignments during the war. The ladies remain in captivity while he reunites with his brother, Atilla (Alessandro Nicola) and Christian sister-in-law who reside in Philadelphia, operating a custom furniture and carpentry shop.
Enter a raving mad and wealthy industrialist named Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) who arrives home to find out his son Harry Lee (Joe Alwyn) has hired the carpenters to redo a library as a big surprise. Harrison is outraged at the finished product and denies payment for the job, thus causing a permanent rift between László and Atilla. László is kicked out of his brother’s home following an accusation of making a pass at the wife, and he can only find refuge within a church shelter.
Harrison has a change of heart however when his socialite friends take a special liking to the new room. He tracks László down, pays him for the work, invites him to a Christmas party and subsequently insists he stay on the property while also connecting the Hungarian with an attorney who will make efforts to reunite him with his wife and niece who remain overseas.
Meanwhile, an ambitious Harrison conjures up big plans right off the top of his head. He wants to commission László to design an enormous building consisting of a library, a gymnasium, theatre and a chapel on a wide expanse of Pennsylvania land nearby his grand estate. The building will be erected in honor of his loving mother’s memory. A humble László accepts the assignment though he’s funding a heroin addiction with the monies given to him by Harrison.
Though The Brutalist is fiction, I believe it should still be considered a lesson in north eastern American history. As building gets underway, a perfectly timed intermission in the middle of the film arrives when we learn of Pennsylvania state’s aggressive campaign to manufacture and build with the precious commodity of US steel. Fictionally speaking, we have Harrison Lee Van Buren and László Tóth to thank for these newly created jobs of construction and commodity developments.
There is a whole lot of story to tell in this three-and-a-half-hour picture that traverses through decades. Brady Corbet’s depiction of his main character, László, runs the gamut of so many circumstances. He’s a stranger in a strange land, even towards his newly Americanized brother who has shed his Jewish identity for prosperity. The Anglo Christian mentality of Harrison Lee Van Buren, along with his family and fellow socialites, curiously study László as the alienated man he appears to be. Loneliness is not a direct message that Corbet offers in the film, but how can László not feel lonely in this new land without the sensibilities of a wife to help him mind his boundaries and stay away from the poisons of heroin or personal betrayals that will challenge him?
The second half of The Brutalist oversees László growing accustomed to reuniting with his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), who has drastically changed in her physicality since they were last together. Their primarily mute niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), has arrived as well. The problem is that László has had opportunity to shed his weakness of being a Holocaust prisoner while taking charge of his most mesmerizing architectural design yet. His family’s arrival does not feel conducive with his new way of life, both intimately and religiously. The Brutalist covers a lot of conflicts while also showing massive progress for Harrison’s grand investment and László’s treasured work.
After providing all of this exposition for the film, I think I’m ready to deliver my point. It’s too much. There’s so much story here that some of it feels unwelcome. László’s heroin addiction never seems to add up or intrude effectively enough. Because of the long running time of the movie, there are long sections where any reference to his yearning for heroin feels neglected. This man of energetic and artistic passion is hardly ever weighed down by his vice and I questioned just how important it was for the drug addiction to be included in the film. The script goes in so many different directions at times, it feels like it forgot about this important monkey that should be on László’s back.
László also gets challenged by Harrison’s American business and architectural partners which is one more conflict. Unexpected fallbacks also occur that affect both László and Harrison’s years-in-the-making plans. Then there is László’s friendship with an assistant who started as a fellow drug addict. Finally, there is László and Erzsébet and the problems they face intimately and as common partners. The reunification of the married couple has new, unexpected dynamics to face.
It’s a lot. While I never minded the running time of The Brutalist, all of these layers of storytelling become exhausting.
Guy Pearce actually impressed me the most. I loved his character and the shrewdness he exhibits to everyone he shares a scene with. His gruff dialect with a pencil thin mustache, slicked back hair and perfectly tailored suits are distinct, but his presence in a room is always felt even when the camera is not on him or if he has nothing to say. His stature gave me an impression of Rockefeller, a man with the appropriate and seemingly out of reach dreams that will deliver a future of advanced American building and development. I may have loved Harrison Lee Van Buren’s story more than László Tóth’s.
However, I got angry with the film as the story was beginning its descent towards the end. Harrison commits a truly unexpected and heinous act that arrives out of nowhere. This is a fictional story. So, I feel comfortable with my stance that what Brady Corbet opts for Pearce’s character seems wrong and unjust; a downright inappropriate take that did not add up for me. Guy Pearce is giving a career high performance, but I did not care for how his character’s trajectory concluded.
Felicity Jones is a powerhouse actress as Erzsébet. She appears so confident within the skin of her character as a defiant woman, unhinged by any sort of attempted intimidation from her husband or the Van Burens.
Adrien Brody is the sure front runner to win a Best Actor Oscar, though I wish Ralph Fiennes would finally get his due recognition for Conclave. There are so many directions that László Tóth is pulled in. This is a very challenging personification for an actor to belabor. For this one character alone, The Brutalist feels like five different movies are being played at once. If you have read my reviews before then you may know that I’m a big admirer of multi-dimensional characters. It’s hard to find a character this nuanced. Michael Corleone is a comparison that comes to mind. As I write this review, it astounds me how much depth I’m reflecting on within Corbet’s script and Brody’s performance.
I told a friend who has also seen the film that The Brutalist feels like a marriage between Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood and Milos Foreman’s Amadeus. While these characters are considered audacious, great artists beyond comparable realms, they are never the most powerful people in the room. The power belongs to those with the resources of wealth and those who proudly carry the rank and titles bestowed upon them. For the artists, men of power stand in the way of the achievements they strive for, forcing them to vent their frustrations with self-harm and abuse towards the ones closest to them.
Everything I saw in Brady Corbet’s film is interesting. Beginning with the arrival on Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty towering over a lost László, all the way to a visit at the seemingly unreachable mountains of Italy where beautiful, white porcelain exists in the highest reaches of nature. You feel like you have traveled to places uncharted by most people of this Earth. It’s breathtaking.
The Brutalist follows the trajectory of a man arriving in America to accomplish his dreams and obtain a destiny he feels worthy of. Only there are obstacles that will divert his path and thus a different outcome may arrive.
Visually and with Brady Corbet’s ambition for this picture, The Brutalist is often astonishing to absorb. Still, at least on my one and only viewing thus far, the film was overwhelmingly abundant, and I could not feel comfortable with all of it coming at me once. Then again, that is likely how László and Erzsébet Tóth felt upon their arrival in the land of the free.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 