The Brutalist [2024]

 The Brutalist is an impressively imagined epic – at once monumental and intimate – on trauma, hubris, immigrant experience, corrosive ambitions, and demythologization of the American Dream. Its novelistically structured form, punctiliously conceived Eurocentric aesthetics, and exhilarating yet distancing tone obsessively mirrored its brilliant but flawed protagonist, and the modernist but abrasive titular architectural style. The intricacy and exactitude with which the narrative unfolded made it appear as an actual biographical account, even if it was, at most, a film à clef; this bold combination of faux-verité and quasi-historicity recalled the two extraordinary recent films Tár and The Zone of Interest. It follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor and renowned Bauhaus-trained architect, as he arrives at the US and settles in Philadelphia after WW2; finds in Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) a wealthy patron who places him in charge of a significant architectural commission, but malevolently extracts his pound of flesh; and finds his fierce love for his wife (Felicity Jones) replaced with conflicted emotions when they’re finally reunited after years of forced separation. These are juxtaposed with the borderline insanity with which he builds the colossal brutalist memorial over many years, and his self-destructive tendencies accentuated by his unprocessed trauma, inability to assimilate and heroin addiction. His first glimpse of America – strikingly captured through an inverted Statue of Liberty – sets the film’s feverish mood, which was sustained through stunning visual compositions – shot on VistaVision and 35mm film stock – and compelling score that was alternately orchestral, jazz and atonal. Incidentally, contrary to what the film’s muted coda ended with, director and co-writer Brady Corbet made it particularly about the complex, ferocious and tumultuous journey that preceded the destination.

Director: Brady Corbet

Genre: Drama/Historical Epic/Film a Clef

Language: English/Hungarian/Hebrew

Country: US