You could programme a tiny festival with films that act as perfect metaphors for themselves. The astonishing third film from Brady Corbet, following the efforts of a Hungarian emigrant to build an impossible structure in subrural Pennsylvania, has been often so described since its triumphant premiere at Venice Internatioal Film Festival, five months ago.
It is, of course, about much more than that. Adrien Brody plays László Tóth, a Jewish refugee from the Holocaust arriving happily in New York as the second World War comes to an end. Over the next few decades he will mud-wrestle American capitalism as he struggles to find comfort within a nation inclined to assimilation. There is something here about the tyranny of the headstrong artist and, in particular, of the headstrong architect. He’s an awful pill, but he’s right about the work. The near-opening shot of an inverted Statue of Liberty, as Daniel Blumberg’s score honks greetings, speaks to the chaos of disembarkation, but there is also a pointer to larger inversions: the postwar complacency is not what it pretends to be. And so on. If The Brutalist were not so wedded to audiovisual effect, it might play like a lost Great American Novel.
One cannot, however, escape from the film’s comment on its own coming into being. Made for less than $10 million – the recent simian Robbie Williams biopic cost 10 times that – The Brutalist has taken seven years to complete. The barriers in Corbet’s way have been scarcely more formidable than those faced by Tóth. He has been just as determined in his uncompromising approach. The film, shot on 35mm stock using the obsolete VistaVision process, has ended up running more than 3½ hours with a built-in interval. As it arrives in the week of Oscar nominations, two or three feeble whispering campaigns have been launched against it. Very László Tóth.
None of which should distract from the sweep of the thing. We follow Tóth as he first moves in with his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), and his wife, Audrey (Emma Laird), in Philadelphia. Attila, now a Catholic, runs a furniture business for which Tóth designs a few modernist, ultimately unwelcome pieces. Attila’s strategy is to give the United States what it already knows it wants. After various ups and downs, Tóth finds himself mentored by an initially sceptical, ultimately messianic industrialist named Harrison Lee Van Buren snr (Guy Pearce in impressive oily skin). The plan is for a utopian community on the outskirts of the city. Over his journey towards completion, Tóth encounters poverty, drug addiction and familial disharmony. His disabled wife (Felicity Jones) eventually joins him from Hungary with their fragile niece (Raffey Cassidy). So divided are they by accommodations with US hypocrisy that they consider migrating to the newly formed Israeli state.
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There is, even with a relatively untwisty plot, too much to even begin digesting in this small space. Who is the brutalist? Tóth practises that school of architecture, but Van Buren snr meets the description in his daily and professional life. This is a cold-eyed film that allows the possibilities of the United States while admitting the Faustian costs paid. Happily, so overpowering is the technique that it will, over the years, invite constant rewatches that will unveil endless nuances.
Lol Crawley’s camera finds a balance between starkness and elegance that honours Tóth’s own aesthetic. Corbet makes a virtue of the financial limitations as he ratchets up the tension of small groups in big rooms. A poignant footnote attaches to the score. Corbet dragged the great Scott Walker from his hermitage to compose the music for his first two films. Following his death, in 2019, Blumberg took over and honours the late genius with a score that equals and sometimes exceeds his epic sweep. This great film is dedicated to Walker – another uncompromising oddball.
The Brutalist is in cinemas from Friday, January 24th
