The Brutalist is my favorite film of the year, hands down! It’s a big film. A commanding film. Yes, it’s long (3h 35m), but unlike so many of the long films of the past several years that I have railed against, I don’t feel like it should have/could have been cut down and would have been the same or better. It needs to be the length it is. It does have an intermission. And frankly, it doesn’t feel overly long. It’s epic filmmaking at its best. It tells the story of Lázsló Tóth, a Jewish immigrant, arriving in the United States just after WWII, hoping for that promise of the American dream and finding it just out of reach again and again. Adrien Brody is at his all-time best as a man who has lived through hell, surviving the camps, and has a long way to go to come back to the living.
The first stop on his American odyssey is with his cousin Atilla (Alessandro Nivola) who’s assimilated to the point of changing his name to Miller and marrying a blonde who is uncomfortable with having a Jew living in the storage room of their furniture store. It’s far from ideal, but it is a roof over his head. Back in Hungary before the war Tóth was a respected Bauhaus trained architect, and he uses that skill to land a commission through his cousin to redesign a library for wealthy industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). It is planned as a surprise by his son but turns out to be a disaster when his father freaks out upon seeing it and throws everyone out without payment. And at the same time Tóth gets the boot from his cousin’s house thanks to the wife. But when Look Magazine publishes a glowing spread on the library, Van Buren has a change of heart and searches out Tóth, and the two men begin a fraught relationship that is the meat of the movie.
Van Buren hires Tóth to design a massive community center in honor of his late mother on a hill overlooking the Pennsylvania town where he lives. The job allows Tóth to finally bring his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and his niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) to America from Hungary where they have been found alive and are waiting. It also gives him the creative outlet he craves, but with enormous strings attached firmly to Van Buren who enjoys wielding his power over him. And as the brutalist design building is planned and constructed, as city planners and bureaucrats fight over ceiling heights and minutia with Tóth, and construction is put on hold and then resumed, the two men continue their dance.
Van Buren is a wonderfully complex villain, the titan of industry so sure of himself and his divine right to treat everyone as he sees fit. A brutal anti-semite, but also strangely charismatic at times, he keeps Tóth coming back, until he finally crosses the line. Tóth is led by his ambition as well as a drug addiction and Van Buren takes advantage of his every weakness. Tóth’s wife Erzsébet is not a major character, but her influence is key to his salvation.
Adrien Brody deserves all the accolades he’s getting for this role. So does Guy Pierce. And writer/director Brady Corbet has made one hell of a film. Great characters. Great score, great cinematography, great ensemble. Can you tell I really liked this one? Probably won’t be everyone’s fave, but then, what is? Be prepared to sit for a long time. But I think it is worth it. Really.
In theaters now.