On February 20, the epic historical drama «The Brutalist» by Brady Corbet, which has already won three awards at «Golden Globe»including for Best Drama, and has 10 nominations for «Oscar». Adrien Brody’s performance in this film could bring him the second Academy Award in his career after Roman Polanski’s triumphant «The Pianist» (2002). In the review below, we analyze how this almost 3.5-hour-long favorite of the current «awards season turned out.
Pluses:
A monumental, ambitious and high-quality film work that everyone who considers themselves a die-hard moviegoer should see; excellent acting performances by local stars; outstanding cinematography;
Minuses:
the long running time risks scaring off or even angering some viewers; the obvious pretentiousness is not helpful; in terms of interpretation, the story is hardly a revelation;
«The Brutalist»
Genre epic historical drama
Director Brady Corbet
Starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Stacy Martin, Alessandro Nivola, Isaac de Bankole, Michael Epp, Raffi Cassidy, Jonathan Hyde, Emma Laird, Peter Polycarpou
Premiere movie theaters
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb, official website
László Tóth was a talented Hungarian-Jewish architect, a graduate of the Bauhaus, a Holocaust survivor who immigrated to the United States in 1947. Due to difficult circumstances, his wife Erzsébet and niece Zofia remained in Europe and are unable to leave the Old World.
In the United States, the protagonist joins his cousin Attila’s furniture business (actor Alessandro Nivola, who played this role, managed to star in one of the best and one of the worst films of the past year — «The Brutalists» and «Kraven the Hunter» respectively), who had immigrated to America before the war and had already managed to settle down well here and even marry the beautiful Catholic Audrey. The turning point in Toth’s life is his acquaintance with the influential and incredibly wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren, who offers Laszlo to realize an extremely ambitious architectural project.
The same can be said about the third feature film by former American actor Brady Corbet, who gave up acting more than a decade ago and subsequently decided to take the other side of the camera.
«The Brutalist» — is an immensely ambitious and monumental film that depicts the unvarnished life of the immigrant and the notorious American dream. It is inspired by the great films of great filmmakers such as Orson Welles and his «Citizen Kane» (1941) or Paul Thomas Anderson and his «There Will Be Blood» (2007).
If Jesse Eisenberg’s «A Real Pain», which can now be seen literally in the next cinema hall (provided that both films are shown in your city), was about the third generation of Jewish immigrants, then «The Brutalist» is about the first. Adrien Brody’s character could easily be the grandfather of Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin’s characters. It was this generation that suffered the worst of it-not only the hell of the concentration camps, but also, if they managed to survive and escape, assimilation into American society. This society, according to Brody’s character, did not welcome uninvited guests with open arms.
Already at the very beginning, upon Laszlo Tóth’s arrival in New York, he will see the symbolic Statue of Liberty, but it seems to be turned upside down — this crude visual device will inform him that, despite the protagonist’s great joy, his newly gained independence will be a sham and nothing more. As a hostage of ruthless Nazism in Europe, he will become a prisoner of all-consuming capitalism in America.
No one idealizes the character here: despite his difficult fate, bright dreams, good deeds, and undeniable talent, he is a reckless alcoholic and a complete drug addict. In short, a man with a difficult past and the consequences that follow.
In this context, Laszlo Tóth seems like a very real character, as if he really existed, and echoes another fictional architect mired in drug trips — Cesar Katalina from another surprisingly ambitious long-term construction project — «Megalopolis» Francis Ford Coppola. At the same time, actor Brody in a certain sense complements his famous role of the Polish Jew Wladyslaw Szpilman in «The Pianist», for which he rightly received «Oscar», and this time he gives a performance that is at least as outstanding.
Corbet’s film has an impressive running time of almost 3.5 hours, and it took him 7 years to complete. Structurally, it consists of a short introduction, designated as «overture», two acts, with an intermission between them, and an epilogue. The film was shot on 70mm film in VistaVision format, which, according to the director, better suited the spirit of the era. In addition, the cinematographer Lol Crowley did not shy away from using bizarre angles, such as the one when the Statue of Liberty was captured.
As for the length of the movie, Corbett is absolutely merciless to the viewer, as, for example, Nolan in «Oppenheimer» or Scorsese in «Killers of the Flower Moon». But the banal fatigue of watching, which is unlikely to be avoided, will not prevent you from enjoying the movie, from feeling the quality cinematic experience that is so sorely lacking today.
Even taking into account conversations about the creators’ use of artificial intelligence in post-production by the Ukrainian developer Respeecher, «The Brutalist» can hardly be accused of being artificial. This is an absolutely lively story about a broken man, but also about the power of art, which cannot be destroyed by bombs or strangled by toxic capitalism.
Even though the narrative requires a certain amount of commitment from the viewer and is full of pretentiousness, it is able to evoke a sincere response. The only unmoved elements within the frame are the concrete structures or the white marble deposits in Carrara, which are indifferent to everything around them.
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