The Brutalist (2024)
Directed by Brady Corbet
When an innovative modern architect flees post-war Europe, he is given the opportunity to rebuild his legacy. Set during the dawn of the modern United States (in Pennsylvania), his wife joins him, and their lives are forever changed by a demanding, wealthy patron.
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Written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold with a scope worthy of the best Paul Thomas Anderson films – reminiscent of There Will Be Blood and The Master’s aspirations – The Brutalist wows from start to finish.
In recent years, it felt as if that might be forever. Although there have been signs of its revival, particularly with a pair of P.T. Anderson films, There Will Be Blood and The Master.
This sequence, which I guess is a reference to the Ellis Island arrival scene in The Godfather Part II (1974), is shot with a crazily spinning camera, like a sped-up outtake from La Région centrale (1971).
Corbet’s go-to cinematographer Lol Crawley (Childhood Of A Leader, Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years), together with the formidable production design by Judy Becker (Todd Haynes’s Carol, David O Russell’s American Hustle) create a 70mm tableau that functions as a palimpsest of memories and dreams, realities and archives.
Joining him is Adrien Brody, whose turn as a Holocaust survivor is both raw and fascinating in the way varying shades of tumult and passion intertwine at all times. It recalls his work in Polanski’s The Pianist, and his engrossing performance as a man who is perverted by the company he keeps, becoming a creator who “worships only at the altar of himself”, is matched by Felicity Jones’ turn as Erzsébet in "Part 2: The Hard Core of Beauty."
Brody, who won his Academy Award for portraying a Holocaust survivor in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002), is equally anguished here, impressively speaking Hungarian and accented English.
Adrien Brody, who won an Oscar back in 2002 for The Pianist, delivers the performance of his career in The Brutalist.
Though fictional, the character of László Tóth – as whom Adrien Brody delivers an all-timer of a performance that outdoes even his Oscar-winning turn in The Pianist – is an amalgamation of countless migrants who came to the United States in search of grander opportunities, only to be met with merciless exploitation by those too privileged to fully understand their plight.
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There are moments in this film (just wait for the marble quarry in Carrara) that I will carry with me in much the same way I carry the sunset dance from Lee Chang-dong's Burning or the great wave in Pacifiction: the kind of things that help you remember you why you fell in love with this thing in the first place.