THE BRUTALIST Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Brady Corbet
Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Gay Pearce, Alessandro Nivola, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Isaach de Bankole, Stacy Martin, Emma Laird, Ariane Labed, Michael Epp, Peter Polycarpou, Salvatore Sansone.

Heavily favoured to win the major awards at the Oscars is this ambitious epic drama and film festival circuit favourite from Brady Corbet, who gave us Vox Lux in 2018. But The Brutalist comes with a punishing 215-minute running time plus a built-in fifteen-minute intermission around the halfway mark.
The Brutalist follows Lazlo Toth (Adrien Brody, an Oscar winner for his performance in Roman Polanski’s WWII set drama The Pianist), a visionary Jewish-Hungarian architect who managed to survive the Holocaust after being interred in the Buchenwald concentration camp. He emigrates to the US in 1947, but has had to leave behind his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones, from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, etc) and her niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy, from Dark Shadows, etc). In Pennsylvania he finds work with his cousin Atilla (Alessandro Nivola), who runs a furniture shop. He is hired by Harry van Buren (Joe Alwyn, from Boy Erased, etc), the son of millionaire industrialist Harrison Van Buren (Australian actor Guy Pearce, from LA Confidential, etc) to redesign a room in his house and convert it into a library. But when Van Buren senior arrives he complains about the work being done without his approval and sends Lazlo away without payment.
Three years later the architectural community has lauded Lazlo’s design, and Van Buren re-enters his life offering to make amends for his earlier behaviour, He commissions Lazlo to design and construct a massive community centre that will stand as a monument to his beloved late mother. He wants Lazlo to design it in his signature brutalist style.
Van Buren meanwhile arranges for his lawyer to expedite Erzsebet’s immigration process, enabling Lazlo to be reunited with his wife. But Erzsebet is confined to a wheelchair due to her treatment at Dachau concentration camp, and Zsofia has been rendered mute by her own traumatic experiences during the war.
But during the project Lazlo clashes with Harrison over his vision. The project is temporarily halted following an accident. Lazlo’s driven nature and his striving for perfection often alienate the construction workers as he is unwilling to compromise his vision. After an ugly incident with Harrison, Lazlo’s mental state begins to deteriorate further, and he becomes increasingly addicted to heroin and grows more paranoid.
Corbet wrote the script with frequent collaborator Mona Fastvold. This bold and ambitious film addresses weighty themes including the immigrant experience, cultural displacement, the souring of the American Dream, racism and anti-Semitism, post-WWII trauma, art versus commerce, creativity, the corrosive nature of capitalism, power, and the influence of writers like Ayn Rand is obvious. Corbet has even incorporated some newsreel footage that gives us insight into the industrialisation of America of the era. His direction though is unhurried and the film lacks a sense of urgency.
Judy Becker’s production design gives us a strong sense of place. Lol Crawley’s breathtaking but often bleak cinematography captures some stark imagery of architectural structures, often shot from strange and disorienting angles and the muted colour palette gives the material a gritty edge. Crawley and Corbet shot The Brutalist using the Vistavision process, which was developed in the 50s, to enhance the aesthetic look of the film. Daniel Blumberg’s bombastic score underscores the emotional undercurrents. The Brutalist is certainly a film that deserves to be seen on the big screen.
The performances of the leads are uniformly excellent, and Brody and Pearce have rarely been better. Brody captures Lazlo’s flawed character – he immerses himself in his driven nature, his addictions and paranoia, his ambition and arrogance, and even his pain. (His character is apparently an amalgam of several emigre architects from post-WWII Europe who shaped American architecture in the 50s.) Jones also delivers a strong performance as the long suffering Erzsebet, capturing her intelligence and stoic nature. Pearce brings an oily quality to his performance as his suave but bigoted and jealous Van Buren, giving the character a sinister edge. Alwyn also registers strongly as Van Buren’s entitled son, a nasty piece of work.
With its punishing run time, epic sweep (the film spans over a decade) and weighty themes and at times bleak outlook, The Brutalist is something of a slog to sit through. I did find my mind wandering a couple of times during the screening, especially during the second half which was not as compelling and loses its way.
★★★