The Brutalist is a towering achievement in epic visual storytelling
Ten thousand words could be written about the surreal, dizzying shot of an upside-down Statue of Liberty in The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s epic tale of a Hungarian immigrant’s experience in America. The Statue of Liberty sequence lasts no more than twenty seconds, yet a skewed opinion of a burgeoning nation’s dreams, hopes, and promises lie within its symbolism. The Brutalist is filled with amazing imagery like the Statue of Liberty shot, and monumental performances to match them. With The Brutalist, from its musical score to its costuming, Corbet has assembled a modern masterpiece, a staggering filmmaking achievement that weaves together the majesty and tragedy of the American Dream into a captivating and intimate story.
The Brutalist is divided into three sections (Part I, Part 2, and an Epilogue) and follows a successful Hungarian-Jewish architect, László Tóth (Adrien Brody), who after surviving time in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, flees to America in 1947, ultimately making his way to Pennsylvania. Despite initially struggling to find economic prosperity, his brutalist architectural style is noticed by a rich industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). With a wealthy sponsor commissioning a large build, László uses his newfound connections to bring his wife and niece, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), over to America to begin rebuilding their lives. Over the course of many years and creative successes, László faces the harsh realities of the immigrant experience and the false promises of freedom amid a capitalist, hierarchical society.
The relationship between artistry and capitalism is at the heart of The Brutalist. László’s challenging assimilation into American culture, and his constant artistic clashes with wealthy American norms and ideals, lies across the surface of the film’s narrative structure. Beneath the money and artistry, however, there’s something more sinister. Thematically and visually, Corbet pulls inspiration from the works of P.T. Anderson (There Will Be Blood and The Master). Corbet’s script does an excellent job of depicting how power and creativity can have opposing approaches to confronting trauma and moral divisiveness. Under the canopy of the American immigrant experience in the aftermath of Jewish persecution during World War II, The Brutalist manages to illuminate global issues by focusing its epic drama on just a handful of individuals.
Those individuals are imbued with immense depth through incredible performances. Brody and Pearce are simply brilliant, capturing within their respective performances the subtle cracks in a facade of pride and legacy-building that both characters yearn for. Felicity Jones gives a brave and powerful performance, adding emotional resonance to generic wife-of-an-important-man scenes. All three actors could (and should) be nominated for their roles. Brody won for a somewhat-similar role in The Pianist, but in The Brutalist he taps into a character with a deeply-seeded ambition, a soulful yearning for perfection and meaning in his work, even at heavy personal costs. With Pearce, the time to award the Australian actor may be nigh, since his performance as Van Buren is filled with grotesque charm, combative emotional swaying, and a slipping grasp of his own powerful position.
The Brutalist reportedly was made on a bafflingly modest sub-$10 million budget. Becoming swept up in the epic majesty of the story is easy, and, only afterwards, do we realize how deftly the filmmakers crafted scenes that are simultaneously contained and grandiose. Through careful set design, camera angles, and overwhelmingly powerful exterior locations, Corbet and his team, including cinematographer Lol Crawley (Vox Lux) and editor Dávid Jancsó (Monkey Man), keep the technical filmmaking lean while enabling a wider-reaching story. Give the team of location scouts a lot of credit, since they found a handful of awe-inspiring locales where the Art Department and Production Design teams could play. Perhaps it’s time for an Achievement in Location Scouting Oscar! Expect many deserving awards to come The Brutalist’s way. Corbet’s previous few, divisive directorial efforts were modest by comparison, so The Brutalist marks a triumphant emergence of his directorial skills, resulting in a film sure to be included among the finest filmmaking achievements of the past few decades. The Brutalist is an instant classic.
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The Brutalist opens in limited theaters on Friday, Dec. 20th and wider release on Thursday, Jan. 9th.
