The Brutalist

4
American dreams
The Plot: New York, 1947. Laszlo (Adrien Brody) is a Hungarian Jew who flees the ravages of post-war Europe to start a new life in America. He connects with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), but awaits the arrival of his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy). In the meantime, he’s contracted by Harry (Joe Alwyn) to renovate the house of his father Harrison (Guy Pearce). It turns out that Laszlo is an architect of some note, resulting in Harrison taking him under his wing to design and construct a grand community centre and church. It will be Laszlo’s magnum opus…

The Verdict: 
The Brutalist has been getting plenty of buzz in Awards Season circles and, on the evidence presented in the final film, that would appear to be justified. It recently scooped the Best Motion Picture – Drama category at the Golden Globes. Should the film be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar (which is a certainty) and actually win, that would be something of a coup for former actor-turned-director-of-note Brady Corbet. His decades-spanning epic is a merciless takedown of that most cherished of American concepts: the American Dream. It’s been the subject of many a film, particularly involving immigrants who buy into that concept and await their just reward (e.g. Scarface). This is not that film. If anything, The Brutalist is a reverse engineering of The American Dream – pulling it apart, dissecting it even further and then putting the pieces back together in a new, very different form that is as unwelcoming as the cold, Brutalist architectural style at its core.

One has to admire Corbet and his ambition, as high as his subject Laszlo Toth – named after a man who defaced a Michelangelo statue. He shopped the film around various studios and was told that a 3½ hour film about the kind of architecture memorably featured in A Clockwork Orange was unreleasable. Undeterred, he pushed on anyway and believed in his vision, even going so far as to shoot it in high-resolution VistaVision – being used for the first time since Marlon Brando’s sole directing outing One-Eyed Jacks. He even helpfully included an old-school intermission (sorely missed on long films these days – take note Martin Scorsese), which is well-placed and divides the film into two distinct chapters. Corbet’s script with his wife Mona Fastvold first focuses on Laszlo’s pursuit of The American Dream, showing the potential for Laszlo to move beyond designing bowling lanes to embracing his true talent and ignite his greatest ambitions with the help of a wealthy benefactor.

The first half of the film is consistently strong, opening with a rush of swirling images and emotive narration conveying the chaos of arrival in the land of opportunity. We’re with Laszlo all the way as he finds his feet and uses his discretion and humility to find a path to success. The first half is multi-layered, showing the complexity of moving forward in a new home while maintaining a connection to the land of his birth. It’s the immigrant experience viewed through the tortured but hopeful eyes of an excellent Adrien Brody – who himself has Hungarian immigrant connections. The second half of the film adds another layer of complexity by introducing Erzsebet (an emotional but strong Felicity Jones), but this is also where character motivations get a bit… murky. The film drags in spots here, then jumps around timeframes and leaves plot threads, characters and other elements hanging in the air. Maybe there’s a 5-hour director’s cut in there somewhere that would fill out these narrative holes. It’s a film that’s already long, but it could do with being a bit longer for its own sake.

And yet… the second half of the film features some astonishing cinematography, production design and lighting – among the best of the year. It’s as cinematic and immersive as it gets, with ardent cinephile Corbet building upon his visual style that he established with The Childhood Of A Leader and further enhanced with Vox Lux. He clearly understands the language of cinema and how to use the camera in its relationship with actors and in its own visual space. The Brutalist is his most accomplished film to date and could be the dark horse at the Oscars this year. It’s undeniably impressive filmmaking, but there’s also a sense here that what’s holding it back from being a five-star masterpiece is that difficult second act and souring of these American dreams. The epilogue is more about recognition rather than confronting the false hope of these dreams. Corbet ultimately shys away from really going for the jugular, but his conviction to take his view of the immigrant experience to a certain point is commendable. There’s plenty of food for thought in this well-constructed deconstruction of what makes The American Dream tick… and then some.

Rating: 4 / 5

Review by Gareth O’Connor

The Brutalist
American dreams
The Brutalist (USA / UK / Canada / 16 / 215 mins)

In short: American dreams

Directed by Brady Corbet.

Starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Alessandro Nivola.

4
American dreams