The Brutalist Deconstructs Our American Myths
Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a film that announces itself as a film at every instance. It begins with an overture followed by a long single take with a bravura image that has fittingly become one of the film’s posters. It’s the brassiest score in years, arcing with grand and classical sensibility until it shatters in discordance. It has a three and a half hour runtime, with the added mercy of an intermission. Even the title cards and credits declare that this is a Film!
But it works! The Brutalist centers around a man who, amid all sorts of suffering and setbacks, is trying to create something. Specifically, he’s trying to create an object—a building. The film can be viewed in a similar manner. It’s rare to find a film that wants you to be aware of its own presence as a film rather than as a story or an experience to be lost in, but The Brutalist wants you to understand it for the object it is. You may be fascinated by it, or you may reject it; but Corbet wants you to grapple with this thing that is a film.
László Tóth (Adrien Brody) is the titular architect who has fled Budapest for the United States following World War II. Having been separated by the Nazis from his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), Tóth tries to start again in America. It doesn’t go so well: he’s driven away from extended family when he’s accused of making a pass at his cousin’s wife, and he settles into rhythms of menial labor and heroin addiction. He’s soon hired by Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), however, who has belatedly recognized his talents as an artist, offering Tóth a reclamation of his prestige and chance to create.
This is Tóth’s reintroduction to wealth, this time of a New World variety and for which Van Buren serves as a fitting ambassador. Van Buren is a man who recognizes the beauty of things only because others tell him they are beautiful. In his milieu there’s a vain envy of Europe’s glory—even its suffering. There’s also a cruelty that’s always accessible, always at hand. Tóth struggles to navigate these as well as the less cultivated prejudices of the local townspeople, who are disinclined to employ a Jewish architect to design a Christian chapel.
Corbet’s film arrives as if from a time capsule, though it’s unapologetically modern at the same time. It’s that score by Daniel Blumberg, alternating between triumphant and fragmented. It’s the narrative tendrils that slide in every direction and always with ambiguity: art vs. commerce, the elusiveness of home for a refugee, the death of the author, Zionism, anti-Semitism, the clash between low-brow taste and elitism, the shifting sympathies of American culture, and the sturdy myth of the self-made man. The Brutalist reminded me most of two recents works. In its approach to telling the arc of a singular artist, The Brutalist shares much in common with Todd Field’s Tár. Both consider what it means to be a great artist who’s often misunderstood, and they each undercut their figures by the insistence that those great artists may not be great people. In its concerns of mid-century American mythmaking, Corbet’s film also evokes Hernan Diaz’s 2022 novel, Trust. Both tell stories of men using their wealth to effect their particular visions of glory, while each reveal the hollowness of that selfsame wealth. The film is seasoned throughout with insert shots and montages of wealth which highlight the sensuality of money. It’s seductive, but that doesn’t make it substantial. Furthering the critique, the camera has a keen eye to who’s kept just off to the side, outside the frame.
What these three works have in common is that they bring a deconstructive posture to a staid narrative. None of these are angry, anarchic explosions. Rather, they use the material inherent to the great artist and self-made man mythologies to act as tools that break apart the naïveté and innocence such lore aims to endow on its subjects. The Brutalist isn’t interested in self-serving tales. In place of clarity, Corbet fills his story and characters with contradictions. This is a movie that will be debated and may equally be the subject of indignation and enthusiasm.
Whatever one may take the film to mean—though I suspect its ultimate meaning is too much of a shapeshifter to nail down—what remains is the object of the film. The score, Lol Crawley’s cinematography, the editing, the production design, and the performances are all aligned to make this movie what it is. Not a note is out of place: if a few are out of tune, they’re out of tune with our vision of America or with the characters’ own vision of themselves. Brody’s performance is impressive, on par with the best of his career. Pearce occasionally veers Van Buren toward caricature, overemphasizing certain phrases or speeches, but it doesn’t derail the character. Jones brings independent dreams and desires to Erzébet, making her more than a weak trope. Every person in this tale is willing to be bold, to be unapologetic, to challenge.
The Brutalist wants you to notice all of these facets, yet still feel the full impression of their totality. As a fleeting commenter observes about Tóth’s library design, it forces the perspective, directing the gaze to the object it contains. I’m skeptical that there’s a grand message to take from Corbet’s film, but the act of filmmaking involved has created a staggering object that deserves to be encountered.
