Few filmmakers -- Paul Thomas Anderson may be one -- make movies that seem to live and breathe in worlds of their own. The Brutalist, director Brady Corbet's three-hour and 15-minute foray into the life of a fictional Jewish Hungarian architect qualifies as such a movie. Like the architectural style for which it's named, The Brutalist can be raw and abrasive, a story blanched of sentiment.
A movie as ambitious as The Brutalist puts a tremendous burden on the actor (Adrien Brody) who'll play architect László Toth, a refugee who arrives in the US in 1947 after being separated from his wife (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece (Raffey Cassidy).
Stuck in an immigration limbo, Toth's wife and niece still languish in Europe, but Toth perseveres in the face of a displacement the movie makes clear with his arrival in New York City. A cockeyed shot of the Statue of Liberty signals that neither Toth nor we have reached a mythic land of liberty and justice.
But Toth’s not arriving in the America of historical realism, either. He lands in the world Corbet and his co-writer, Mona Fastvoid, create, a world full of striving and duplicity, as well as opportunities for reinvention.
The movie, which shows with a 15-minute intermission, divides into two acts and an epilogue that allow Corbet steadily to open thematic doors. Among them: capitalism’s inevitable perversion of art, the fierce individuality needed to protect artistic integrity, and the abiding agony of surviving events that never can be left behind.
Early on, Toth moves in with a cousin (Alessandro Nivola) who lives in Pennsylvania with his American wife (Emma Laird). Nivola's Attila seems to have shed his Old Country past, even converting to Catholicism. Toth designs furniture for the shop Attila owns, a dim connection to his previous life but still a creative endeavor.
The story shifts gears when the cheerfully opportunistic Attila puts Laszlo in touch with Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), the son of a wealthy tycoon (Guy Pearce). Harry wants to surprise his father by renovating the library where Dad houses his rare book collection.
Laszlo makes the library into a design-oriented space that takes the rarity of the books into account. He designs shelves that turn to shield the books from the sun.
When he arrives home, Pearce's character -- an infuriated Harrison Lee Van Buren — tosses Laszlo and Attila out of his home. He hates the library, which, for him, has one only purpose: to display his taste and purported erudition.
A reporter for Look magazine discovers the library and proclaims it as the masterwork of a genius whose career was disrupted by war and the Holocaust. Van Buren recants. He pays Laszlo for his work, and invites him to design a community-oriented art and spiritual center for the suburban town of Doylestown, Pa.
The plot's density increases. Laszlo moves into quarters on Van Buren's estate. His wife and niece return to him. He continues a heroin addiction that began as a way to cope with an injury, and his relationship with Van Buren wobbles, leading to a jarring and metaphorically strained act of sexual violence during a trip the men make to Carrara to select marble for the chapel's altar.
I’m not sure that The Brutalist makes groundbreaking statements about art, America, or the incorporation of new populations into the American tapestry. Toth’s Judaism remains, but isn't deeply explored. Corbet introduces a Black character (Isaach De Bankole) who becomes part of Toth's orbit, but whose story proves minimal.
Limitations aside, Corbet's characters are among the year's most vividly realized and distinctive, offering Brody, Pearce, and Jones opportunities for major performances. Together, director and cast create moments that prove provocative, fresh, and artfully imagined.
You may remember the movie as if it were dream, not entirely graspable but notable for its lingering power.
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