It’s rare that very long films intelligibly maintain whatever thesis they postured in the beginning. The Brutalist is not one of those rarities.
To clarify, The Brutalist has a strong start. It opens on a terrified Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) being interrogated by Hungarian border patrol. Between her startled gasps for air, we see her uncle, rugged architect Lazlo Toth (Adrien Brody) emerging in the United States after being forcibly and tumultuously separated from her and his wife Erzsébet (stunningly played by Felicity Jones). As Lazlo pulls into the New York Harbor, director Brady Corbet shows the Statue of Liberty upside down, then splayed horizontally—-a heavy-handed harbinger of the corrupted, perverse American Dream that lies ahead. The score, composed by Daniel Blumberg, oscillates between a militant beat and grand explosions, as if the world is ticking and suddenly erupting. In this sense, the music does a lot to emotionally relay the feeling of immigrating to the United States from a Nazi compound—overwhelming, audacious, exorbitant, devastating, one recognizes it is much too big a sound for a sole, scrawny Lazlo Toth.
Through his American-assimilated cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), Lazlo meets Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a wealthy, coiffed, and calculated man who recognizes (a little latently) Lazlo’s unique talent for brutalist architecture as the next auspicious frontier for American design. Harrison excitedly employs Lazlo, making the whole ordeal into a grand spectacle in front of colleagues and family members. From Lazlo he expects an enormous community center featuring a library, a chapel, and virtually everything but a swimming pool—Harrison can’t swim.
The film concerns itself with Lazlo’s professional pursuits—for the most part. Lazlo is a humble and hardworking visionary who uses heroin and sleeps with prostitutes from time to time. The film’s structure, given the nearly infinite amount of hours it’s taken for its story, covers quite a bit from here: Zsofia and Erzsébet are brought to the U.S, and it’s revealed that Erzsébet is handicapped due to famine-induced osteoporosis. The building project involves major setbacks. Zsofia moves to Occupied Palestine. Harrison rapes Lazlo. Erzsébet announces this at a dinner party held in the Van Buren estate. Harrison then disappears. Erzsébet is suddenly gone. Fast forward to 1980 and Lazlo’s in a wheelchair with an older Zsofia (Ariane Labed) discussing his architectural accomplishments. She reveals that his compound was based on the Nazi prison he was held in. She ends the film with something to the effect of “it really isn’t about the journey, but the destination”.
I just don’t even know how to qualify the second half of this movie. To me, it was a completely wasted opportunity from director Corbet to make something focused and enjoyable. I found myself asking quite a few times throughout the film: what is the relevance of this plotpoint? Why do we see this detail? For example, why do we see Erzsébet overdose on heroin? Why does Harrison’s son show a perverse interest in a silent Zsofia? Why does the teenage son of Lazlo’s friend and co worker Gordon defiantly claim he remembers his deceased mother from when he was 2? Really? Why this tableside awkwardness? In fact, why do we see Harrison rape Lazlo? What is the story there? That he takes whatever he wants? That he desires Lazlo? That he is repressed? That he is simply evil? As he rapes Lazlo, Harrison says lines that touch on ALL these motives. When you pack a film with every possible thing that can happen, you lose the engine of the story. What starts as an epic about the hardship of immigration ends as an ode to...finishing a work of art? Was this film about the cost and obsession that goes into making a work of art? Or was this a once in a lifetime opportunity for Corbet to film everything under the sun?
I’m not saying the film ended terribly, but I am saying that MOST of the people who emerged from the theater with me were, in fact, complaining about the end. I was shocked to discover that this film was not based on a true story since it felt like an inspired piece struggling to keep up with the many events in one extraordinary man’s life. But, as it turns out, Corbet fantasized these wide array of events, most of which fell under no particular theme. I’m asking the question and receiving astounding silence---why do these things happen in the movie? Why must we see these things?
I have a diagnosis for the director. It’s a diagnosis to which many directors fall victim: self-indulgence. Sometimes, directors get ideas in their heads and they just want to film and film and film. Who suffers most? The actors? The production studios? The PA’s? I’d say it’s the audience. The audience who is paying to see a quality A24 film, and is so lost by the end, that they leave the theater bursting with confusion and disappointment.
If I seem emphatic, that’s because I am. We live in a world where it’s a crime to make an entertaining film. It’s easy to fill up an essay with a word count of a billion–you just rant your little head off. What’s harder is tightening up a narrative, cutting the fat, and keeping your audience from jumping ship.
back home