The Brutalist

In my decades of covering film, I have found that the surest indicator of an upcoming project’s quality is the name of the director at the helm. Sure, the synopsized premise and source material (if any) is a factor. Key crew and on-camera talent attached make a difference. You can draw certain assumptions from the distributor or production companies involved, as well as the timing and width of release. But ultimately, the final product largely depends on the individual or duo making it. That director can be judged by their prior work and how often and recently it has moved you.

Sometimes, this system can prove to be an utter failure. A good director can drop the ball at any time and they can also find their instincts failing to evolve with the medium. Sometimes, the surprise comes in the opposite direction. A filmmaker with a lousy track record disarms with something beautiful. That’s how I can best describe The Brutalist. My introduction to Brady Corbet’s filmmaking was Vox Lux, an utterly underwhelming and inauthentic Natalie Portman vehicle that ranked among the worst films of 2018 that I saw. Since then, Corbet worked on a couple of television series (“Homemade”, “The Crowded Room”) that I haven’t seen.

With The Brutalist, his third feature film as writer-director, Corbet demonstrates mercurial growth as a storyteller. This composed, ambitious, epic drama — one of 2024’s most original and spellbinding works — seems to bear no resemblance whatsoever to Corbet’s previous fumble. If you saw this coming on paper, prior to the film’s debut at the Venice International Film Festival, you may have remarkable gifts of clairvoyancy worth exploring.

Co-written by Corbet’s longtime romantic and creative partner Mona Fastvold, Brutalist tells the story of László Tóth. No, not László Tóth the geologist of the same name who passed away in 2012. Played by Adrien Brody, this film’s Tóth is an Hungarian Jew who survives the Holocaust and journeys to America. In Philadelphia, Tóth gets a modest room in the back of a furniture shop owned by his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola). Tóth’s life in Europe as a respected and accomplished architect seems to mean nothing in America and after a fallout with Attila, he is shoveling coal and, to put it mildly, struggling.

All that changes when Tóth gets tracked down by Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), the wealthy businessman whose son hired Tóth and Atila years earlier to renovate Van Buren’s study and library. That surprise gift that was not at all well-received by Van Buren, a racist hothead who immediately nixed the project and refused to pay. But Van Buren is a complex villain, who, having familiarized himself with Tóth’s European architecture, invites the immigrant to his Christmas party. Soon, the magnate extends offers of open-ended residency and long-term employment, tasking Tóth with conceiving a community center in honor of Van Buren’s late mother. On top of this, Van Buren also gets his personal lawyer to expedite the immigration of Tóth’s estranged wife (Felicity Jones) and niece (Raffey Cassidy) to America.

As Tóth immerses himself in the construction project, we too are immersed in this rich, character study, in which passion, creativity, ambition, ego, prejudice, and desire make for clashes that play out over a number of years.

Synopsis does The Brutalist few favors, because how many moviegoers are drawn to the subject of architecture? For that matter, how many moviegoers are drawn to 3½-hour period epics that are not based on a book or have the word “Godfather” in their title? Entering this film, which includes a fifteen-minute intermission about 60% into its runtime, with little expectation and some Vox Lux-inspired skepticism yielded one of my most rewarding and surprising experiences of 2024. Part of me wants to let you have that experience, going in cold with an open mind. If you’ve gotten this far, you already know more than I did coming in. But if you’ve gotten this far, I also owe it to you and to this great film to explain how and why it proves to be so engaging and profound, an instant landmark of cinema.

Corbet and Fastvold have constructed a mature and intelligent universe from top to bottom. The Brutalist is rich with history, art, and the themes of grand literature. There is so much detail and specificity to the proceedings that you are likely to do what I did after the movie finished, which is to look up how much of this is a true story. The answer: it’s pretty much all invention. I’d be slightly embarrassed by that web search if I wasn’t certain others will be similarly inspired. In fact, Google is already trying to auto-complete “Is The Brutalist a true story?” by the time you get to that first “u.”

While the film is not based on a real person, it is approached with respect, care, and research like it was. Stories of immigration and The American Dream feature prominently in many of the 20th century’s great artistic achievements and The Brutalist earns 21st century admission to that tradition with its practically tactile execution. It is stunning what Corbet has achieved here on a reported budget of just $6-10 million. While other studios are paying forty times that to employ Dwayne Johnson and his entourage on some CG-bloated disposable spectacle, Corbet and company have crafted something resonant and meaningful that should be treasured for decades to come.

Deserving particular notice here is cinematographer Lol Crowley, reuniting with Corbet for the third time. Their compositions here are often staggering. They employ the VistaVision process that was introduced by Paramount in 1954. The format has more or less been retired since the 1950s, getting sporadically employed in Japan in the ’60s through ’90s and on special effects shots since the ’70s. The Brutalist reminds us of the beauty of genuine film. At my mid-November screening, the 1.66:1 presentation was no less than consistently breathtaking in what appeared to be a 70mm print exhibited on a large AMC screen. At a time when many have determined that moviegoing is strictly for effects-laden spectacles, the bold and beautiful Brutalist begs to be seen projected on the biggest screen you can find.

The award-worthy cinematography and grand-scale storytelling makes this feel as big as any this year has given us. Somehow, the film was shot in just 34 days in Budapest and Carrara, Italy, a fact that invites acknowledgement and awe for the production’s location scouts.

In the impossible event that the film does not stir you with its cinematic splendor, it should still impress you with good old-fashioned acting. Brody famously became the youngest winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor when he won for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002). Since then, there’s been a lot of downs and only a few ups for the actor, many of the latter stemming from his frequent collaboration with Wes Anderson. Given another opportunity to sink his teeth into a role of rare substance, Brody instantly makes you forget all the bad movies he’s made over the past twenty years. It is he who provides the beating heart of this film.

Across from him, Pearce brings compelling fire to the mix. In what is his easily his best work since starring in Christopher Nolan’s breakout indie hit Memento nearly a quarter-century ago, Pearce keeps us all on our toes with his believable mix of mannered affectations and volcanic rage. Both performances are tremendously worthy of recognition, but I am more invested in the awards prospects of Pearce, who has never before been nominated for an Oscar. I do hope this dynamic drama is seen by enough people to revive both actors’ long-limping careers.

Also deserving to be in the awards conversation for her supporting turn is Felicity Jones, who did not impress me all that much in the blandly serviceable Steven Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything (for which she was Oscar-nominated) or the quickly forgotten Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex. The actress is much better here, pulling off one of the film’s more difficult roles and climactic scenes with nary a concern.

Truly, The Brutalist inspires few concerns. There is an epilogue set in 1980s Italy that feels superfluous and kind of bizarre. And there’s a touch of pretension that would have bothered me more in the past. I do not hesitate to rank this among the top crop of films we’ve gotten in this soon concluding half-decade. That dramatic turnaround puts Corbet’s unexpected ascendency on the order of when James Cameron went from Piranha II: The Spawning to The Terminator in just two years.