Movie Review: The Brutalist
I first saw Brady Corbet’s historical epic The Brutalist back in October at the Chicago International Film Festival and I still haven’t been able to fully wrap my head around what I watched. It’s a stunning miracle of a film whose craft is only matched by its ambition.
The Brutalist follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody) a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to the United States in 1947. He gets a job working for his cousin (Alessandro Nivola) at his furniture store, but eventually catches the eye of Harrison (Guy Pearce) an eccentric businessman who hires László to create a community center in honor of his late mother featuring a library, theater, gymnasium, and a chapel. While it seems László has finally found a home and a career, the project and his life slowly begin to crumble under the pressure of the project, greed, arrogance, and a struggle for control.
While watching The Brutalist, I couldn’t believe that it was real. It reminded me of classic American epics like Once Upon a Time in America and There Will Be Blood while also being a completely original story. It was shot using VistaVision cameras and 35mm film, has a runtime of nearly three-and-a-half hours, and features impeccable craftsmanship. And, most astonishingly, it was made with a reported budget of $10 million. There are movies with twenty times that budget that don’t look this good or are this impressively made.
The Brutalist is a sprawling, decades-spanning story about the immigrant experience and the dark side of the American Dream while also touching on other elements like Zionism, the opioid crises, capitalism, American greed, and brutalist architecture. While not based on a singular person, Corbet, who co-wrote the film with Mona Fastvold, based it on the experiences of multiple Jewish architects who survived the Holocaust and immigrated to the United States after World War II. The story is captivating and the world Corbet builds is truly remarkable. And at the center of it all is Adrien Brody, giving the performance of a lifetime as László. Brody disappears into the role of a man trying to make it in America for him and his family and you feel every ounce of emotion Brody exudes. It’s a lived-in, honest performance and one of the finest you’ll see this year and this decade.
One viewing is simply not enough to break down everything Corbet is doing in The Brutalist and the only trouble with wanting to view the film additional times is the 215-minute runtime. I don’t mind longer movies and while the time is used properly and efficiently and the pacing helps the film fly by, I simply have not had the time to watch the film again. I will get to it in due time, but after one viewing, I can tell you with certainty that The Brutalist is a masterfully crafted American epic and one of the most impressive movies of 2024.
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