It’s all a little too easy to accuse actor-turned-director Brady Corbet of indulging in his own self given the running time of his third feature The Brutalist; the 215 minute drama following 2015’s The Childhood of a Leader and 2018’s divisive Natalie Portman feature Vox Lux. The length, however, (which also includes a needed 15 minute intermission) is justified when you take in the sheer scope of what Corbet has executed, with “the American dream” adhered to in an oft-brutal, unnerving, but always compelling fashion.
The skewered view of the Statue of Liberty welcomes László Tóth (Adrien Brody) in the opening minutes of the film, perhaps something of a foreshadowing of what the Hungarian Jewish architect will endure as he pulls into Ellis Island off the back of his harrowing journey. In his immigration, Tóth has had to farewell his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), a journalist sent to a concentration camp and has since been trapped in a displaced persons camp under Soviet control. To not disturb his state of mind, she omits that she’s now bound to a wheelchair following her treatment as a prisoner, and his niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), though safe, has become mute.
With every intention to bring Erzsébet and Zsófia to live with him, Tóth arranges their travels as he navigates his own existence in a city that doesn’t particularly care about his architectural background in his native Hungary. He thankfully has a familial connection in America through his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola, more than making up for the nonsense that was Kraven the Hunter last month), who has married the particularly catholic Audrey (Emma Laird), and opened up a furniture firm in Philadelphia. Attila proves instrumental in an eventual partnership, and subsequent tortured relationship, with industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who’s as wealthy and charming as he is volatile and snobbish.
Initially, it’s Harrison’s children, the pompous Harry (Joe Alwyn) and his much kinder twin sister, Maggie (Stacy Martin), that connect Attila and Tóth to their father, and it’s their connection that threatens to undo much of their well-intended work of renovating the Van Buren estate’s expansive library. Harrison is none too pleased with Tóth’s minimalistic approach to design, throwing him and Attila out, leaving them penniless in the process; Attila then twists the knife a final time for Tóth, accusing him of making advances on Audrey and throwing him out, leading Tóth to a heroin addiction off the back of his emotional and physical pain.
Across the film’s monumental running time, Corbet dances with both a tragic and an inspiring mentality. Sequences of Tóth’s drug addiction and abusive relationship with Harrison – even after the latter helps him out when his minimalistic library design is praised by experts as being an example of genius work – prove disconcerting to watch (a rape sequence may prove triggering), but Tóth’s delight at being reunited with his wife and niece, despite their conditions, and the tenacity he expresses in seeing his planned build go ahead can’t help but feel emotionally rousing; much of the film’s latter half is dedicated to the erecting of a community centre that he has designed as a means to pay respect to Harrison’s late mother.
However one responds to The Brutalist‘s mentality, it can’t be denied just how ambitious and special a film has been created, with the powerhouse performances of Brody and Pearce, the compelling nature of Jones, and the terrifying aura of Alwyn merging together for an experience that is truly, without hyperbole, masterful cinema. This is only further exacerbated through Judy Becker‘s production design, Lol Crawley‘s cinematography, and the commanding Daniel Blumberg score, resulting in a cohesively constructed drama about the expansive nature of architecture and what it means, both figuratively and metaphorically, to one’s survival.
A technical and visual marvel, The Brutalist stands strong with its psychological scaffolding, earning its extended minutes with every narrative reveal.
FIVE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
The Brutalist is screening in Australian theatres from January 23rd, 2025.
