At The Movies: The Brutalist is an epic tale of architecture meeting anguish

The Brutalist (R21)

215 minutes (with a 15-minute intermission), opens on Feb 20
★★★★☆

The story: In post-war America, Hungarian architect Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) seeks a fresh start while his ailing wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) remains trapped in Soviet-controlled Hungary. Through his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), Laszlo meets industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who commissions a community centre in his mother’s memory. Harrison provides the funds; Laszlo provides a design in the Modernist style known as Brutalism – a monument meant to last generations.

The United States’ rise to global dominance after World War II owes much to European talent fleeing conflict.

Oppenheimer (2023) showed how refugee scientists advanced the US’ nuclear programme; The Brutalist – which has earned 10 nominations at the upcoming Academy Awards – examines this transformation through a different lens.

But while scientists held strategic value, artists like Laszlo faced more precarious circumstances, subject to changing tastes and public whims. Here, the deepest wounds come from those controlling the money.

In the hands of American director-writer Brady Corbet and Norwegian co-writer Mona Fastvold, Laszlo is put through the wringer – nearly every insult, physical and mental, that can befall a sensitive intellectual is his to bear.

Where other films about tortured artists think small, Corbet matches his subject matter in scale and ambition. The architectural canvas allows grand ideas: massive construction projects that demand equally massive resolve.

Paired with the expansive cinematography of Lol Crawley from Corbet’s previous film, the pop star drama Vox Lux (2018), the film-maker’s ambition pays off. Laszlo’s excitement at explaining the significance of each architectural detail is thrillingly communicated. 

The building becomes both a monument and redemption for a man carrying the weight of 20th-century horrors. This burden makes his creation more profound, not less.

The casting of Brody as the fictional Jewish architect brings to mind the American actor’s Oscar-winning portrayal of real-life musician Wladyslaw Szpilman in the biopic The Pianist (2002). The parallels in the two films are many, not least in the fact that both use art as a means to transform pain into beauty. 

Without Brody’s electrifying ability to communicate longing, excitement and, in one instance, madness, the screenplay would have felt like a self-indulgent ode to the plight of the artist.

Hot take: Brody’s humanity anchors this monumental meditation on art, trauma and the cost of creation in post-war America.