In an early scene of Brady Corbet’s mammoth new film, The Brutalist, recent immigrant Laszlo (Adrien Brody) has just completed a small commission for a client to re-design the family’s library reading room. The bookshelves open out and angle to a degree, revealing depths of space and brilliant modernism in an otherwise rotund, circular room. He does a little dance and embraces his business partner and cousin Attila (Alessandro Noviola), full of joy at his creation. It’ll be one of the last times Laszlo appears to be happy in a film that sees his personal trajectory as an ‘American’ architect collide and bristle against the obtuse prejudices and predatory growth of the very nation he’s decided to call home. The Brutalist is a lot of things, but it’s mostly a corrosive portrait of the individual crushed by the insular ways of big money and big attitudes in a country that advertises freedom, but only gives it in sparse, controlling ways.
Beyond those grand statements, the film is also a triumphant exploration of the immigrant experience. Through a pulsating, brassy soundtrack by Corbet collaborator Daniel Blumberg, Corbet frames Laszlo’s introduction to America in a stunning opening that sees him (in one of the film’s numerous long takes) stumbling through darkened bodies to emerge onto the deck of a ship and celebrate when he sees the Statue of Liberty… albeit in a crooked, upside-down spinning camera shot that recalls the manic fervor of the closing shot in Corbet’s The Childhood of a Leader (2015). Laszlo has escaped the atrocities of World War II in Budapest, but his heart is only half full since his wife (Felicity Jones) was left behind. The letters he continually writes in the hopes of bringing her and her young cousin Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) to join him in American frame the first half of the film.
A successful architect back home, Laszlo first struggles to simply survive, waiting in food lines and living in the storage room of his cousin, Attila’s, furniture store. It’s only when a rich client (the very snobby but perfect Joe Alwyn) hires Attila and Laszlo to redecorate his father’s library that the creative sparks of Laszlo are awakened and he creates a dizzyingly beautiful space that’s, eventually, not appreciated by the father, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Their reward includes being thrown out on their ears, sans payment.
It’s only later that the elder Van Buren seeks out Laszlo when he learns of his renowned past in Eastern Europe and the modern buildings he once designed. He takes Laszlo in, gives him shelter, and thrusts a giant project onto his shoulders- the design and construction of a community center in the name of his late mother. From this moment on, The Brutalist centers most of its energy on the combustible relationship between Laszlo and money magnate Van Buren as art and creativity wrestle against the whims of institutionalized greed and canny WASP manners.
And then the intermission hits, and the second half of Corbet’s film is just as magnificent, complex, and awe-inspiring as the first half. A 215-minute exercise whose answers are never easy and the ideas come tumbling down amongst Corbet’s decision to film The Brutalist in 70MM Vista Vision, this is a film whose formalist beauty is matched at times by some cold sentimentality, yet never feels an inch of its length.
I must admit, upon leaving the screening, I was a bit baffled by parts of the film. Some moments are so well constructed and meaningful, but it feels a bit rushed in its conclusion and there are one or two truly baffling conceits, such as the quick cut to a character in the final moment that might re-align the entire point of the film.
But although I was perplexed by some choices, the film has lingered in my memory for days, growing in estimation and eventually settling in as something close to a full-fledged masterpiece, packed with ‘I-must-see-it-again’ wonderment. Perhaps the key to the entire film is that upside down Statue of Liberty- which has pretty much become the film’s iconic marketing image. Corbet’s small but impressive output often defies easy categorization, and The Brutalist seems to continue this streak, and this time, the land of freedom really has become an inverse of those ideals. The Brutalist, although hoary about Laszlo’s life here in America, at least gets a coda that’s fitting for a visionary artist who’s survived both the Holocaust and the prejudices and assaults of his New Land. The film, and inverse idea of freedom, reveals that America is a place where triumph and tragedy is doled out in equal measures.
The Brutalist opens in the Dallas/Fort Worth area on December 20th.
Dallas Film Now. 