When I first saw The Brutalist, I spent some of the 215-minute film’s blessed intermission googling the name László Toth, sure that the architect at the center of Brady Corbet’s enthralling, vexing film must have been a real mid-century figure. But of course, like Lydia Tár before him, Toth (played by a never-better Adrien Brody) is a pure invention—sprung from Corbet’s mind as a representative of a school of thought, of an artistic tradition, of an entire era. His creation is credible enough to fool a gullible audience member like myself, a granular study of a man that seems to unearth the truth of something vast.
For its first half, anyway. The Brutalist (in select theaters on December 20) is divided into two parts, the first called “The Enigma of Arrival,” the second “The Hard Core of Beauty.” Corbet is a fan of adornments like that, doing everything he can to telegraph the mightiness of his project—its formidable, formal rigor. That is appreciated, to a point; why shouldn’t a young filmmaker teeming with ambition reach so audaciously for greatness? But I don’t know if The Brutalist would see it as reaching, exactly; the film’s confident swagger suggests it believes greatness has already been achieved.
That bluster is strangely charming, but some of its appeal wears off as “Beauty” lugubriously unfolds and confuses what had been the robust, purpose-driven story of a Hungarian concentration camp survivor’s life in post-WWII America. Corbet has built a Spruce Goose that’s difficult to land—its practicality is lost somewhere in the ornate construction.
“Arrival,” though, is a marvel, at once lurching and breakneck, sad and swirling. We watch as Toth arrives in America after a long ocean voyage, pulling into New York Harbor with all the ecstatic possibility of a birth. (Daniel Blumberg’s gorgeous score contributes tremendously to that feeling of giddy apprehension.) Weary but alert, Toth links up with a cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who owns a furniture store in Philadelphia, then begins to revive the architectural work he was doing to some success before the Nazis rose to power. Toth is clearly haunted by his time during the war—he looks harrowed, he uses heroin perhaps as a means of escape—but his drive and artistic principle seem undiminished.
These moments of dawning legacy are thrilling, Corbet crafting a chamber symphony of New World possibility stalked by darkness. Toth soon falls under the aegis of a wealthy industrialist, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who commissions Toth for a huge project that is ostensibly a community center but is really meant to stand as a monument to Van Buren’s magnanimous, master-of-the-universe grandeur. While we know enough about American history to suss out that a wealthy industrialist is not to be trusted, Van Buren’s interest in Toth’s work is nonetheless exciting. Here is the promise this nation is said to offer, that anyone from any downtrodden history can remake themselves here—can be discovered as special and ascend from their station into the golden light of a dream. But that is, of course, not actually how this place works, a fact that Corbet recognizes in increasingly dark fashion as his film unspools.
The Brutalist is about America, but is also about art and the compromises its creators are often forced to make at the demands of money. Corbet is arguing for a pure kind of art, one that can thrive and endure even underneath the cynical pressures of economy and the vanity of its benefactors. The film is a paean to the people who practice that sincere art, but also a lament for what Corbet might see as a vanishing tradition—in his industry, anyway. Here is his great American epic, made on the cheap in Europe without any studio backing. There’s a bit of preening in there, maybe—Corbet saying, “look what I can do without you.” Or it’s a nervy rebuke to a system that Corbet might see as beyond hope: The Brutalist is the torch light for others to follow as they navigate the fraught path toward making lasting, meaningful cinema.
It is a shame, then, that Corbet ultimately gets tangled up in his ideas. The second half of the film is laden with event. Toth is at long last reunited with his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) —herself terribly afflicted by her Holocaust experience—and his relationship with Van Buren horrifyingly curdles. Though plenty is happening, this portion of the film is listless, as if Corbet is either grasping for direction or stalling before he makes his final point. The film’s coda is lovely and moving but feels tacked on, a sort of deus ex machina that explains a hidden text Corbet has intentionally withheld from the audience. I’m all for a mysterious, discordant, surprising ending, but in this case an abrupt conclusion undermines much of what has come before. And a lot has come before.
What remains consistent throughout is the wonder of Brody’s performance, fiery and heartsick and bristling with intelligence. He is wholly convincing as a mercurial, soulful man so battered by the events of his grim era. It’s masterful work that’s beautifully matched by Pearce’s cold and calculating pompousness, deftly capturing a truly American predator who has wrapped himself up in a self-importance that is half Ayn Rand, half Calvinist. Brody and Pearce vividly manifest Corbet’s arguments about the clash between art and money, between the old world and the new. When they are blazing away on screen together, The Brutalist swells to epic size—two craftsmen prodigiously working to realize their architect’s flawed and awesome vision.
