Recently nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” touches the rise and drastic downfall of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian Jew architect who left his country in search of a promising life in post-World War II America.
Working job to job and living home to home, László was hired by wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) to design a community center building. Driven by artistic hunger to be better and societal pressures, László will soon realize that his greatest architectural work may cost him far more than he realizes.
Looking into this premise alone, “The Brutalist” feels very reminiscent of the Hollywood epics that are fixated on the sprawling nature of a single man. There’s precision on what to include and omit in telling the story of László Tóth, to the point where he felt like a real person with Adrien Brody pulling off a convincing impersonation. This is a film about the merits of ambition through the lens of the immigrant experience, which writer-director Corbet complements with the use of VistaVision film format to shoot it, and the inclusion of old Hollywood trademarks like overture and intermission (complete with its ticking timer).
Regardless of how you feel about this film, there’s a specific charm in “The Brutalist” that has been absent in a lot of films over the years. It’s the kind of charm that is jolted by excitement to tinker and take its time to evoke both small and big emotions. A wife quietly longing for the intimacy of her husband becomes as cathartic as the long-awaited reunion in a train station.
“The Brutalist” operates on all aspects in near-perfection, but the ensemble is its strongest asset. Everyone delivered the best performance of their respective careers, led by Adrien Brody with Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn, and Alessandro Nivola. Much deserved praise has already been said for the first three actors, but I feel the scene stealers are Alwyn and Nivola, who both a significant impressions in their limited screen time.
“The Brutalist” can be divisive because of its running time, but it’s a worthwhile experience in the cinema nonetheless. It is certainly one of the best films that have been released in recent years, with a very singular approach that relies on the ambitiousness to be creative and daring in the art of filmmaking.
“The
Brutalist” is now showing in New Zealand cinemas from Universal Pictures.
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photos courtesy of Universal Pictures.
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