The endless potential of ‘The Brutalist’

What did and didn’t work in Brady Corbet’s critically acclaimed film.

Official trailer retrieved from A24

This review contains spoilers.

I had high expectations for The Brutalist, which appeared in UK cinemas from the 24th of January this year. Since its earlier US release, it has earned a slew of prestigious nominations and awards; critics cannot stop raving about it. I walked in thinking it would become one of my favourite films, that I would be enraptured like all these critics. The trailer holds great promise, indicating an epic immigration narrative that probes at the post-war Jewish experience in America. However, since watching the film and returning to the trailers from A24, I can’t help but feel that the trailer fails to fully capture the tone and meat of the film.

In simple terms, The Brutalist is a tale about immigration, following the fictional Hungarian-Jewish protagonist, László Tóth, played by Adrien Brody. Once a renowned architect, László opens the film struggling to find work in the US, forced to work odd-jobs as he waits desperately for any sign of life from his wife and niece, from whom he was separated. Here, the film delves into its first piece of tension and intricate characterisation. László misses his wife dearly. He also cheats on her, fairly regularly. He is depicted in a pretty explicit scene very early on in the film, and we learn that he is unaware whether or not his wife is even alive. Although László is in the dark, the audience has already heard from his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), as she narrates a letter to him over the opening scenes. After his excursion, László travels to stay with his culturally assimilated cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and his wife. Upon meeting, Attila informs him that there is word from Erzsébet, and László collapses in relief, sobbing uncontrollably. Brody’s performance is heart-wrenchingly believable, as he presents a fully understandable picture of a deeply damaged and fearful man. His infidelity can be construed as his missing Erzsébet, his fear that she is dead, his primal fear of loss and isolation. The tension between László’s infidelity and his clear love for his wife is intriguingly complex but, unfortunately, it falls flat in several places.

When they are finally in bed together after so terrifying a time apart, Erzsébet is keen to have sex, despite László’s awkwardness and melancholy. Watching his reluctance as she touches him, she broaches his infidelity, claiming to have had dreams in which she witnessed him with other women, claiming that she was present all along, right there with him, thereby excusing his actions. He sobs, exclaiming in exhaustion, ‘I don’t think I can stand anymore’. We begin to understand that László is experiencing intense psycho-sexual issues that relate to trauma, loss, and dehumanisation; through sexual activity or voyeurism, he attempts to reclaim the body and indulge in its very existence. László yearns for physical catharsis, trying to attack negative and positive emotions through the body. Ultimately, the film has him lose control over his body, through gradually worsening addictions, escalating the violence inflicted on him until the brutal sexual assault near the end. Clearly, the film is grappling with the body as a vessel for trauma and expression. Sometimes, it hits the mark perfectly. László and Erzsébet’s reunion in bed presents a wonderful array of emotions - anger, love, dismay, a brutally drawn-out catharsis. At other points, however, I felt the film overdid it with oddly timed, unnecessary, mostly-female nudity. Such explicit scenes seem to pop up just to provide a jarring juxtaposition to the previous ones. Nudity in cinema is tricky to execute well without teetering into shock-factor and feeling simultaneously cheap and pretentious.

At various points in The Brutalist, I wondered if its potential weren’t being squandered. With a strong cast, complex characterisation, and difficult dynamics between interdependent relationships, such as those between husband-wife, patron-artist, upper- and working- classes, the film has a lot to juggle. It doesn’t end here, as it is also keen to touch on the nuances of the ‘immigrant experience’, how it varies depending on race, religion, and prior wealth or status. Suffice to say, the film’s potential is endless. This may well be its problem, as we are left with a long, overdrawn product with several scenes that could have been shortened, or even cut, and a trailer that fails to encapsulate the film’s multi-faceted, somewhat ambiguous nature. Really, the trailer alludes to it being a tale of striving in the face of discrimination, working tirelessly to create great art in the face of tyranny against your very being. All that is about half of this film. The Brutalist loses a sense of its narrative as it meanders through its runtime. Some of the more superfluous scenes could be defended as aiding the film’s atmosphere and spatialisation, or perhaps they are simply reflecting the long, meandering nature of life and striving to achieve something. Still, I fear the film suffers from a bit of intellectual masturbuation, wherein several scenes feel indulgent, weirdly timed, and unnecessarily drawn out. The narrative suffers for the sake of hitting as many Big Points as possible.

The film shines in its grisly, tenuous partnership between patron and artist. László’s artistic clarity and hubris force him into a difficult, exploitative relationship with wealthy industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Harrison, like all the characters, is contradictory, sometimes flying into a bitter rage, other times providing strong encouragement and support. The tussle between his contradictions is settled in the second part of the film through his brutalisation of László’s body, a culmination of his exertion of control over László’s art and personhood. As he assaults him, he derides László’s artistic integrity and pride, and his being Jewish. The power of this film is in its interrogation of acceptance as opposed to tolerance. When László first arrives in America, we see through his eyes the Statue of Liberty upside down. A flicker of hope, a desperate attempt to create a home, to be welcomed, to be respected. Much of this crosses over into later discussions of Israel and Zionism. László’s niece, Zsófia, (Raffey Cassidy), is unable to speak when she arrives in the US, presumably due to trauma. She regains her voice in the second half of the film, speaking for the first time on screen in order to inform her aunt and uncle that she will be leaving for Israel with her husband. In fact, she is the final character to speak in the film’s epilogue, where she exerts her narrative control over László, who is now much older and unable to speak. She declares that László’s work is a reflection of the despicable acts of violence committed against Jewish people, and the film ends with her assertion that ‘It is the destination, not the journey’. Whether her words are accurate to László’s character and his artistic vision are left to the viewer to decide.

I felt the film was only half interested in exploring the differences between different immigrants. It attempts to use Gordon, an African-American man struggling to single-handedly raise his son, as contrast for László. Although Gordon’s initial scenes are very interesting, the film seems to forget about him for a bit, before bringing him back and having Erzsébet declare that László couldn’t have worked on his huge architectural project without Gordon. This feels insincere, since Gordon has been absent or secondary for a while at this point, portrayed as following László’s direction, working on it with no discernable interest than any other worker. We are told they are close, but rarely feel it. Gordon’s quiet dignity and flickering presence feels like he was used whenever there was a need to make a point. His is a disappointingly half-hearted arc, as it does work when employed well. We see how disparagingly others perceive him, how quick Harrison is to use slurs about him, how dismissive he, and even László sometimes, is about him. Perhaps this is why Gordon feels so secondary in the film; László only half cares about him.

I can’t say I enjoyed The Brutalist. It felt too long, many scenes were, to put it simply, boring, and it felt like it had bitten off more than it could chew. I expected something quite different to what I got, which was a more tragic than encouraging tale of immigration that sometimes revels in its dramatisation of pain. At times, the film feels pretentious and faux artistic, like very overt oscar-bait, designed for a Hollywood audience to watch and feel very special and clever about liking. Most damningly, it doesn’t manage to capture the artistry of architecture, just motions towards it in broad strokes. We are told what is brilliant about this architecture, we are told that László loves what he does, but we aren’t given the space to feel his intense devotion and love for his art. Instead, the film alludes to his need for control as an extension of his suppression and identity. While interesting and valuable in its own right, it misses out on the trailer’s promise of delivering a story about the artistry of architecture. The onus of deciding if that matters is on the viewer, since you might instead appreciate the film’s focus on identity politics and the capitalisation of art. It makes sense that a film with so many complex subplots and heavy concepts needed so much runtime to flesh (some of) them out. However, this interferes with the pacing of the film, which really drags in the middle, only to give you whiplash with the intensity of the scenes near the end.

All that being said, there is plenty good about The Brutalist. I appreciate a film that gives people something to talk about. The acting was strong throughout, with performances that cut deep in moments of grief and pure anger, offset by meticulous and elegant cinematography. The film’s central themes are complex and difficult to broach. Sometimes, it hits gold.