Actor-turned-director Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” is the third feature in his filmography. “The Brutalist,” which won Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, is Corbet’s follow-up to his divisive — but great — 2018 film “Vox Lux.” His previous film worked with big ideas about fame and gun violence, but “The Brutalist” finds the director operating in a completely different register.
There’s been a lot of chatter about the scale and scope of “The Brutalist,” as compared to its budget (which is allegedly around $10 million). “The Brutalist” isn’t a great film because of what it accomplishes on a fairly small budget; it just makes the movie all that more impressive to watch.
It’s easy to be daunted by the three-and-a-half-hour runtime attached to the movie (which includes a built-in 15-minute intermission), but from the film’s opening, Corbet captures audiences’ attention with a gorgeously shot and scored (by composer Daniel Blumberg, who delivered the best score of 2024) overture.
As the movie opens, Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody, in serious contention to win his second Academy Award) is traveling to America. The overture swells as László exits the boat and a shaky cam pans up to an upside-down Statue of Liberty — one of the most memorable movie images of the past year.
“The Brutalist,” among many things, is about the American Dream and ambition, which is made perfectly clear from the early image of Lady Liberty. Once in America, László meets his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who offers him work in his furniture store. László wishes to continue his architecture work, which was his passion before the war took over and the Nazis rose to power. Not only is architecture László’s art, it also brings him great comfort amongst his demons.
László is commissioned for a project by Harry Lee (Joe Alwyn), who wants to surprise his father Harrison Lee Van Buren, Sr. (Guy Pearce, in a mustache-twirling performance). Harrison isn’t on board with the idea of László’s architecture from the start, but ends up commissioning him for a much grander project. Harrison’s entrance into László’s life provides the movie’s drama, particularly post-intermission when Felicity Jones appears as László’s wife Erzsébet.
Given the length, subject matter and sweeping nature of the movie, “The Brutalist” could have felt entirely self-important. Here’s a small movie (by industry standards) that moves and looks like an old-fashioned epic, but never feels like it’s striving for adoration. The world Corbet creates is enveloping, but there’s never a sense the director is patting himself on the back for creating something epic in scale on a small budget.
Corbet’s movies don’t invite comfortable opinions or unified reactions from their audiences; it’s what makes him such an interesting filmmaker. “The Brutalist,” while receiving critical praise, is destined to spark various reactions from those who see it — especially in the last act and epilogue. Ultimately, “The Brutalist” is a one-of-a-kind movie, and the closest modern audiences may get to feeling like they are going to the movies in the 1970s.
“The Brutalist” opens at The Little Theatre on Friday, Jan. 24. More details and tickets here.
Matt Passantino is a contributor to CITY.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
