With a few Golden Globes already under its belt, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is heading into the Oscars race as one of the most widely-discussed and polarising films of 2024. László Tóth, a Hungarian- Jewish architect who settles in Pennsylvania after fleeing persecution in post-war Europe and is commissioned by a wealthy industrialist, struggles with personal relationships and his own identity after glimpsing power in American high society.
Despite its 215-minute runtime and relatively measly $9.6 million budget, the film succeeds in immersing the viewer from beginning to end. Its excellence on a technical level is grounded in its convincing costuming and production design, alongside engrossing visuals shot using VistaVision. Some terrific performances include Adrien Brody, who shines as the protagonist, portraying the entire gamut of human experience over decades of Tóth’s onerous journey, and Joe Alwyn as Harry Lee Van Buren, who manages to embody contempt and vile entitlement in a frighteningly effortless manner. The score is also impressive, with a memorable brass motif which lends itself to the film’s ambitious scope. Yet, the sounds of low, heavy piano chords and scratchy violins also effectively punctuate moments of sinister horror.
Thematically, a critique of the abuse and injustice directed towards the “other” — whether that be the immigrant, the Jew, the creative, the Brutalist — is particularly resonant given the several years of setbacks faced by the production and Corbet’s status in the industry, transitioning from acting to directing. Effective narrative framing is exemplified in the final scene as Tóth’s young niece, Zsófia, who is mute upon her arrival to America, partially reclaims her agency and identity; she becomes an understated but indispensable representation of the long-term effects of cultural and ideological oppression, tying the overture and epilogue together. Yet, overall, the film rings hollow: promising a detailed and nuanced character study in the first half, but ultimately failing not to retread familiar territory.
It is the film’s undignified treatment of its characters and lack of subtlety which imbue its second half with quite a dissonant tone. For such a lengthy film, one would hope for the fallacy of the American Dream and the protagonists’ alienation to be interpreted in revelatory ways. Yet it seems preoccupied with the reiteration of clichés: the Van Burens’ hyperbolic haughtiness, Tóth’s heroin addiction, and his family’s reliance on their benefactors despite the way they are treated. László is left completely helpless by the end of the second half, with the completion of the institute being squeezed into a time-lapse sequence, and his wife Erzsébet spends most of her time on screen in agonising pain caused by osteoporosis. Despite the enduring legacy he leaves at the epilogue, we never get to truly see Tóth taking full creative control over his work or reclaiming the agency he lost both in Buchenwald and in Doylestown.
Felicity Jones also seems miscast, delivering a fairly one-note performance as Erzsébet who is confined to the archetype of the tortured artist’s wife; she bears the brunt of Tóth’s darkest impulses and his creative obsession whilst using her sexuality as a means of control. Her presence is at its most powerful and moving in the first half, though we merely hear her voice dictating her letters to László and see her still image in the wedding picture on display during the intermission. Although Gordon’s background is touched on, he is completely absent from the last few scenes and so we lose a potentially compelling perspective from one of Tóth’s only authentic companions, and one of the only black characters in the film. Finally, Van Buren’s sexual assault of Tóth stands out as a particularly jarring manifestation of the film’s strained anti-capitalist metaphor. These frustrating shortcomings ultimately lead to an unsatisfying conclusion. One gets the impression that the film’s deliberately provocative or subversive elements, namely the unexpected Italo-disco track which initiates the end credits, serve to highlight ironies about the protagonist who, despite his genius, fails to integrate into American society. Without revealing anything especially unique or insightful, however, these ironies remain inconsequential.
Nonetheless, despite its flaws, Corbet’s ambitious work stands as a fascinating example of contemporary filmmaking which harkens back to a bygone era of 1950s epics, whilst also raising pertinent questions about the increasing use of AI in mainstream cinema and challenging attitudes about how audiences should consume media. The Brutalist owes much to Minari (2020), Tár (2022), and Oppenheimer (2023), but is also a natural progression from Corbet’s first two features, albeit not quite in the way one might expect.
Illustration by Tiana Sung @tiana.sung