THE BRUTALIST
(The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5-15 and HtN has you covered once again. Check out Matt Delman’s The Brutalist movie review. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
The third feature from director Brady Corbet, The Brutalist, stands as a monument to grand epic cinema, and to the immigrant experience–much like the Statue of Liberty, which graces its opening scene. Escaping the nazi invasion of his home of Budapest, Hungary, László Toth (Adrien Brody) gently captures our hearts as a gifted architect separated from his family. The ensemble cast enriches the material, no one moreso than Felicity Jones who is completely believable as a wheelchair bound concentration camp survivor. The starvation has caused her bones to prematurely deteriorate from osteoporosis. While physically frail, her performance may be the strongest of the entire phenomenal cast.
Guy Pearce plays the villain, a wealthy businessman named Harrison Lee Van Buren, who does more than just ‘hire’ László for a project. No, Van Buren offers him a deal with the devil. He uses his considerable influence to rescue László’s wife and niece and bring them to all live with them on their property. Van Buren finds his conversations with László ‘intellectually stimulating’ and it’s clear that their partnership will quickly devolve into obsession and madness. Meanwhile László’s wife Erzsébet (Jones) is his best and only advocate. She provides Corbet’s film with a heart and a soul, at times reminding me of my own Hungarian grandmother who came through Ellis Island at the age of nineteen. Both actors had to learn Hungarian, and completely inhabit these characters, showing tremendous strength in the face of persecution.
Their emotionally taxing journey eventually takes László back to Europe, to reconnect with an old friend who runs a marble mine in Carrara, Italy. Van Buren comes along to see it for himself, straight from the source. These scenes carry a ghostly ambience, evoked through gorgeous 70mm cinematography by frequent collaborator Lol Crowley, a master of shadows. Here Corbet’s film reaches a climax of sorts which László and viewers may never recover from. At first I was shocked by the ‘twist’, but the more I think about it, I come to realize everything had been leading up to that point and it was almost inevitable.
Architecture remains at the forefront throughout, even when we’re not getting a full update on the scope of the project. Production designer Judy Becker (Carol) tackled the seemingly impossible task of designing both the sets and the buildings seen in the film. The creative team consulted architectural scholar Jean-Louis Cohen to perfect the Brutalist stylings. While visually stunning, the sound elements should not be discounted. Composer Daniel Blumberb, incorporates many catchy time-stamped 1950s songs, while the Epilogue switches to 80s synth to match the jump in time. The film is dedicated to the late Scott Walker, who created the thunderous score of Corbet’s first two films.
While there has been much talk about the three-and-a-half hour runtime, nobody in my theater seemed to get restless at any point. The pacing and editing (by David Jancso) keeps the viewer rapt as obstacles to progress on the project mount and László’s heroin addiction worsens. The massive architectural undertaking–four buildings in one–mirrors the massive filmmaking undertaking that Corbet and his collaborators have impressively delivered on. The Brutalist, which just won the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice, is being hailed as a masterpiece and though we don’t like to throw that word around too often, it’s hard to argue that any other film this year is as deserving of the acclaim.
– Matt Delman (@ItstheRealDel)
Toronto International Film Festival; The Brutalist; Brady Corbet
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