Directed by Brady Corbet. Written by Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet
The artist’s relationship to the world is complicated. Balancing your convictions with the demands of outside influences, of which there are many, makes for a life of constant justification, constant fight for your opinion to count.
The persecuted person’s relationship to the world is also complicated. Claiming your right to exist when a great many would rather you didn’t makes for a life of constant justification, constant fight to not deny yourself as you struggle to survive.
The husband’s relationship with his wife is complicated as well. It’s an almost daily struggle of choosing each other amidst all the shit life holds, balancing common wants with individual ambition.
These three relationships form a Gordian knot in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, the epic story of a Hungarian immigrant who lands in post-war America and tries to make it as a visionary architect, juggling familial relationships fraying with economic stress, a wife still stuck in Europe, and a precarious relationship with a temperamental patron.
In this story of bold structures and bold men, Adrien Brody plays László Tóth and the stark lines of his face make for a bit of stellar casting. The jagged shapes of his face suggest the horrors Tóth experienced in the concentration camps, his wiry physique speaks of resilience, and his eyes see beautiful structures out of thin air. Brody is the constant during the 210 minutes of The Brutalist and he offers mystery, fire, and sensitivity.
The Brutalist is bold and daring in its expression, weaving government info reels and near-abstract expressionism together to describe the zeitgeist and inner worlds. László’s designs are radical, and so is Corbet’s visual direction. The Brutalist is almost at its most powerful when it hands itself over to the violent and striking interplay of Lol Crawley’s cinematography and Daniel Blumberg’s score.
The movie either looks up in awe, skywards, or barrels along roads or tracks, the ground going blurry in the heady onrush. This reverence, this momentum together define The Brutalist and its twin tales of artistic aspiration within economic development. László’s story retains a clear-eyed view of the exploitative nature of capitalism, but it remains devoted to lionizing the visionaries that shaped the country into what it is.
Its thematic treatment makes for a beautiful experience above all else, much more of a pull than the central story of artistic endeavour, which frankly doesn’t feel revolutionary. The pure vision of the struggling artist, the base necessity of money, and the nefarious influence of those who act as gatekeepers by virtue of that money, is a story as old as capitalism itself. The Brutalist is merely a good execution of these tropes.
But, the tropes and treatment combine for a staggering portrait of what the U.S. likes to mythologize about itself: the immigrant story about a person who, driven by ambition, comes ashore and with their vision, grit, and ability propels existence forward. The Brutalist is not naive, showing us the fallibility of great men and the insidious nature of business, but it’s above all a trumpet call to counter the vilification of immigrants, which has become the shameful raison d’être of politicians worldwide.
Mikkel Frederiksen 