Collaboration and exploitation are two sides of the same coin in this ambitious epic-cum-morality tale about the promise and rottenness of the American Dream, from the perspective of a Hungarian-Jewish architect who tries to build a life of dignity in the States.

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Seems like a thing for audiences of The Brutalist to take a picture of the ‘Intermission’ title card during the mid-movie break, well, because it is so rare in today’s filmmaking. 

Together with a Prologue and Epilogue, Brady Corbet’s work harkens back to the grand old days of Hollywood when films like Ben-Hur (1959) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) were fixtures in the moviegoing calendar. 

As his 3h 35min piece (made with a budget of only US$9.6 million) rumbles on, albeit sometimes unwieldily, we begin to marvel at what a mammoth work it is, an anomaly—and perhaps an anachronism—in this era. 

Headlined by Adrien Brody in a towering performance as Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian Jew who flees postwar Europe to the States, The Brutalist charts his journey of struggle as he tries to find his footing on American soil. 

A remarkable architect, Laszlo’s life changes dramatically when a wealthy client (Guy Pearce in an imposing role) commissions him to design and build a cultural centre in his town. 

“This place is rotten. The landscape, the food we eat. This whole country is rotten.”

The unorthodox opening titles (and the much more peculiar end credits) are indicators that this will be an unconventional picture.  And so is the film’s idiosyncratic original score by Daniel Blumberg—with its grand overtures, percussive (off)beats, lullaby-ish piano pieces and psychedelic jazz. 

While I daresay Corbet’s work could be the closest any American filmmaker has come to channelling the spirit of my favourite film of the 2000s decade, P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007), The Brutalist is perhaps best seen as a morality tale about the promise and rottenness of the American Dream from the perspective of the immigrant. 

Collaboration and exploitation are two sides of the same coin in the relentless pursuit of success, but the structures that Laszlo would erect are not merely places for shelter and activity; they are hauntological, imbued with the spectres of traumatic history. 

Certainly superior to Corbet’s abysmal Vox Lux (2018), The Brutalist comes punctuated occasionally by geopolitical news commentary that locates temporally the film’s different segments. 

As Laszlo designs and builds, other parts of the world and its peoples are strategically ravaged in the name of political ideology, be it the unjust displacement of Palestinians in the formation of the State of Israel in the late ‘40s, the tragedy of the Korean War in the early ‘50s, or more in the times to come.    

Grade: A-

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Trailer:

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