The Brutalist
(2024, Brady Corbet)
Initially, The Brutalist impresses with its differences: it has a very different beginning, a different titles sequence (the start and, particularly, the end-titles) and the way it tells its story is different, initially impressionistically. Its length is also impressive: 3hrs, 36mins, which at the screening I attended necessitated an intermission at the 100 min mark. And director Brady Corbet impresses by keeping our attention (or at least mine) for the entire time. The film looks beautiful, with interesting lighting, framing, effects and general camera work, together with production design, making many memorable scenes. All this results in a film that’s fascinating to watch. It’s clearly a film made with much love and attention to detail.
But a few hours after the film ended, I began to feel as if I had earlier consumed a huge meal, but was now hungry again, and I started to questioning what it was that I had actually eaten.
There’s no doubt about Adrian Brody’s towering performance. He’s absolutely convincing as Laslo Toth, the Hungarian architect who comes to the USA after WW2, fleeing persecution, famine and privation (he’s Jewish and has survived the Buchenwald concentration camp). To touch on the recent controversy: whether or not AI was involved in producing his Hungarian accent at some points doesn’t worry me (although I did detect a discrepancy between Brody’s dialogue and his mouth movements on more than one occasion). All the Hungarian accents were – at times – quite hard to follow and required some effort on my part, but I see that as a non-issue. Felicity Jones also impresses as Toth’s wife, Erzsebeth, a survivor of Dachau. She brings so much more than her impressive accent to this role.
Guy Pearce – and it pains me to say this as I’m a big fan – seems to be trying to channel John Huston, in portraying Toth’s mentor, the millionaire Van Buren Snr. And much of his dialogue, in its style, had for me the ring of inauthenticity to it. He’s forced to say things like “Truth be told…” which sounds like something out of a 1950s B western. This is very much at odds with most of the rest of the dialogue, although there are occasional slips and anachronisms (one character bemoans a “lack of transparency” in business dealings).
The film also suffers from changes of tone throughout. At first it is unlike anything else I’ve seen. Then it morphs into a kind of There Will be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson) of the postwar period. Then it begins to resemble The Fountainhead (1949, King Vidor). Then it almost turns into melodrama – sub-sub-Almodovar – and finally it resembles The New Look (2024, Helen Shaver plus others) in that series’ framing device for the career of designer Christian Dior.
Moreover, a rape scene that should have been traumatic struck me as a metaphor hitting me over the head, so violently that I almost laughed when I should have gasped. A sub-plot involving drug-addiction seemed to go nowhere. Again, problems with deciding on tone.
The Brutalist almost redeemed itself with the description, in a ceremony, of Toth’s masterwork. This involved a rather moving interpretation of the meaning behind the building. (In fact, all of the architecture featured in the film is wonderful.) But even that did not disabuse me of the lingering impression that I had been given a kind of “Cliff Notes” precis of Brutalist Architecture. I recognise that the film does not need to make us into connoisseurs of architecture, but I think the filmmakers were shooting for more than what emerged for me. I understand that they wanted to use the failure of some to accept the beauty of Brutalism, as a metaphor for the rejection of immigrants in the United States. But the connection was initially obvious and then, somehow, nebulous. What began promising the profound did not ultimately reach those heights, despite the best efforts of all involved. In other words, for me, The Brutalist is not quite the film it aspires to be – perhaps just because its aspirations are so high.