‘Brutalist’ constructs its own fascinating rumination on reality
What realities do we create to cope with the reality of what is?
There is a shocking moment roughly three hours into “The Brutalist’s” near-four-hour runtime that, for me, crystalized the theme of this beautiful, unrelenting cinematic experience. The film, populated by haggard characters seeking solace in new worlds, turned on its head as I watched a man seemingly decimate a dream – invading a space that had seemed friendly, and piercing it with corruption and ugliness. To expand on this scene further would spoil the jolt, and – uncomfortable though it may be – I believe that it is on the viewer to watch and interpret.
I mention it off the bat because most ruminations I’ve read about the movie have hinged on this plot twist – as brutal as its title foreshadows. On the surface, this title describes an architectural style. Beneath both that style and the character with which it is associated lie darker layers.
“The Brutalist” follows László Tóth (Adrian Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor who immigrates to America following World War II. He finds work with his furniture-building cousin, a man who through accent and marriage has assimilated with American culture. Tóth was a celebrated architect in Budapest, and when the cousin is hired to refurbish a library for a rich family, Tóth transforms the space into a mid-century modern showpiece. The owner, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), isn’t a fan – at first – and the cousin fires Tóth, leaving him to find lowly work in construction. After a magazine features Van Buren’s library, he has a change of heart and taps Tóth to construct a mammoth community center overlooking the Pennsylvania hamlet he calls home. Later, Tóth’s wife and niece follow him to America.
A movie about an architect may not seem like a great subject for an epic, complete with an intermission, but “The Brutalist” is, to say the very least, an astounding work of art. The opening, which showcases Tóth’s arrival at Ellis Island and the startling image of an upside-down Statue of Liberty, thrusts the audience into an immigrant’s mind. The promise of America is swiftly contrasted with the abject conditions afforded to the displaced Europeans, but Brody infuses steady, yet manic, charcter with a steely drive. The man is a creator, and he must create.
In Van Buren, Tóth meets his match. Overconfident and laughably insincere, the rich buffoon simultaneously admires and covets Tóth’s talent. The intensity in their exchanges, often unremarkable in content, drip in subtext – a rich man fascinated and deeply concerned by what shifts the post-war landscape might bring, and a poor man – secretly addicted to heroin – keeping his chin up while grappling with the bare canvas of a radically different society.
Even in the film’s second half, when Tóth’s wife Erzsébet, played by a forceful Felicity Jones, arrives, the energy in the rich man/poor man relationship drives the film – their inequity and their unspoken conflict.
No character in the film is satisfied with their station in life. Each suffers from a dissatisfaction in their reality. Where Van Buren seeks to buy his way out of a bastard upbringing and the death of his mother, Tóth wishes to literally construct new realities that – perhaps consciously, perhaps unconsciously – are hopelessly informed by the past in a seemingly bold push toward the future.
Each character, too, self-destructs when their false realities show cracks. When the community center’s future is threatened, Van Buren wants to rip up the plan entirely – the perfection he imagined is not the reality. When Tóth’s wife arrives in America physically changed, he is disgusted and tempted to turn away from her entirely – the woman he idealized is not the reality his brain had conjured.
And in the shocking moment on which, I believe, the entire film hinges, one of these people goes to a point of no return, as if it is the only way they can grasp control of their false reality. And still later, another character uses this twist as a way to regain control of their own false reality.
In the epilogue, well over three hours into the film and taking place many years in the future, the look on Tóth’s aged face expresses dissatisfaction, though the scene itself suggests he has no reason to be anything but elated.
His mantra is summed up as “it’s not about the journey, but the destination.” But the movie’s thesis is the opposite. It is only in the few moments that Tóth allows himself to feel the awe of the journey that he seems to find happiness. As he, and the rest of the characters, constantly pursue the creation of a destination, they consistently ignore the delights of the journey. When Erzsébet is first introduced, she seems almost desperate to enjoy life as it is, but even she becomes caught up in the malaise of discontent.
And so, they all – like architects – work to build something else. And it’s never enough – it never buys or creates happiness. The movie, at once a tale of immigration, addiction, obsession, architecture, racism and love, may take a few hours to arrive at this destination, but its own journey challenges you to revel in the elements: the sweeping Daniel Blumberg score, the astounding VistaVision cinematography by Lol Crawley, the wit of Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s dialogue, the crisp direction by Corbet.
Is it a masterpiece? Is it flawless? Only time will tell how this piece of intricate construction might be judged. At intermission, I heard praise and division amongst my fellow theater patrons. But seeing it in its 70 mm glory, its majesty was clear – in all the inevitable debate that will accompany its newfound position as an Oscar frontrunner, this nostalgia-soaked, daringly progressive behemouth is a movie with a capital M.
And for my money, it’s the best Movie of the year.