The Brutalist [NYFF 2024]

Studio: A24
Director: Brady Corbet

Sep 28, 2024 By Kaveh Jalinous Web Exclusive

There are still a couple of months of films left in 2024, but it’ll be difficult to find one that locks you in as quickly as Brady Corbet’s newest feature, The Brutalist. The film’s five-minute(ish) overture—after all, one immediately loses their sense of time when thrown into a 235-minute work—tells you much of what you need to know about both the film’s characters and much of the story to follow.

Amidst Daniel Blumberg’s booming score, Corbet’s camera quickly follows Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody) as he navigates a dark, overcrowded area, At the same time, a letter he hasn’t received yet from his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) is read via voiceover, telling him that both her and his niece Szófía (Raffey Cassidy) have been held up in Hungary and cannot join him. Throughout the sequence, it’s paradoxically impossible to focus yet impossible to look away—there’s just too much happening at once. The climax of the sequence, involving a quick pan to an upside-down shot of the Statue of Liberty, is thundering, jaw-dropping, and chills-inducing. Metaphorically, the shot toys with many ideas that The Brutalist will explore much deeper—the quick awe, yet upside-down reality, of the American Dream.

A true epic (in a time where epics don’t really exist anymore), the rest of The Brutalist tracks László’s experience making a name for himself in America. As we soon learn, László was a wildly renowned architect in Hungary, having studied at Bauhaus and designed some of the city’s most notable buildings. In the United States, none of that matters, as the architect works at his cousin’s furniture design shop (not even on the payroll). After a work assignment goes badly, László crosses paths with Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a tycoon who takes a liking to László—much to his son’s (Joe Alwyn) dismay—and commissions him to build a community center/Church on the hill near his mansion. The nature of their relationship is confusing—is it Van Buren’s pity? His desire to pretend to know and understand “art? Perhaps a mix of the two. Regardless, it is from this premise where The Brutalist takes off, constantly complicating its own story (mostly, in a good way) to the point of no return.

It may be because the film is literally divided into two, roughly equal halves—a 15-minute intermission is baked into the film itself, even with a countdown—but, in a sense, The Brutalist feels like two different films. The film’s first half, setting up the pieces of the story, feels much like its opening scene—a fiery, bold and precise narrative served by complex characterization and quick pacing. The film’s second half, in which Erzsébet and Szófía play much larger roles, feels like the antitheses of that. The film still moves quickly—after all, with László’s entire life to cover, how could it not? Yet, at the same time, the narrative becomes bogged down by the amount of ideas—sometimes direct, many times implied—that Corbet wants to include. Scenes begin to feel longer; plot points begin to crash into one another, even resolving themselves in sometimes frustrating ways. The film is riveting throughout. Even when there’s so much movie to invoke, it’s difficult to not connect to László’s journey and hardships. But, because the film is naturally divided by an intermission, it becomes difficult not to compare the work’s two halves with one another. And, by doing so, it’s easy to notice how Corbet’s command of the story feels somewhat diminished across the second part.

Of course, some would argue that the spiral-y nature of The Brutalist is the film’s overarching point. Given the film is meant to explore László’s entire life in the United States (of which the journey lasts over 30 years), it wouldn’t make sense to not dive into the more complex aspects of human existence, passion, and relationships. Alongside being a stunning exploration of the American immigrant dream, the film is ruminating on so many ideas at one time that it constantly feels overwhelming to watch unfold. Van Buren’s character is especially fascinating in this regard. A figure introduced to the audience by yelling at László for modernizing his grandiose personal library against his will quickly warms up to the character upon learning more about László’s storied past and acclaimed status. Every one of the tycoon’s lines reek of faux intellectualism and a false understanding of art’s true purpose and power, seeming more of a joke than of anything substantial. Watching the two’s relationship develop and complicate becomes a taxing process, as Corbet explores the ways in which humans that belong to different social classes, no matter the circumstance, value and treat one another. This element especially makes the film’s second half, despite its flaws, so haunting, effective, and completely impossible to forget about.

And that’s what makes The Brutalist so fascinating—it’s a treasure trove of elements, filmmaking decisions, and themes to constantly uncover, even after the film’s 235 minutes pass by. Even nearly 850 words later, I haven’t even mentioned anything about Brody’s lead performance, which is one of the best, most complex, and most heartbreaking of his career. Jones and Pearce are excellent as well. The film, shot on stunning VistaVision and projected on 70mm (all screenings of the film at NYFF will be presented in 35mm or 70mm), looks absolutely stunning. Corbet’s framing decisions are bold, his camera movements are kinetic, his vision is clear from start to finish. Elements like this only reinforce the film’s epic nature—making the film’s flaws more interesting than distressing. Comparisons to Coppola’s Godfather—of which there have been several—may be questionable at best and inept at worst. But, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything quite like The Brutalist, and it will likely be a long time before we see anything like it again. (www.filmlinc.org/nyff2024/films/the-brutalist/)

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