Film Review - The Brutalist
Images courtesy of Universal Pictures.
In the regional town of Nambour, QLD, a locomotive is to be built upon the disused tramway tracks in town, a new million dollar project helmed by an entrepreneur with little-to-no knowledge of heritage rail nor the artistic value of the project. While on holiday, I attended an archaic town hall meeting in which the entrepreneur frequently talked up the esoteric approach of the sculptural artist–whose concept for the tram looks like a ridiculous steampunk machine (1) –a front for his complete lack of his own integrity or conviction on the project beyond the novel idea and prestige attributed to such a project. I saw in The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet, 2024) a parallel between the Nambour Tram Company and the examination of the art patronage relationship between Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) and László Tóth (Adrien Brody), each of whom almost fulfill the roles of this ludicrous tram project, roles also banally fulfilled by Corbet himself.
The Brutalist follows László, a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor, who immigrates to the United States following World War II. László, a renowned brutalist architect in Europe, struggles with American assimilation and a heroin addiction amidst repeated obstacles and opportunities that test his architectural passion, Jewish identity, and relationship with his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), who momentarily remain stuck in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe. Amidst this chaos, he is hired by a wealthy industrialist (Pearce) to design and oversee construction of a large multi-purpose community centre in the town of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. As much as the project undertaken by Pearce and Brody reminded me of the Nambour Tram Company’s “white elephant” of a tram, I earnestly feel this comparison also extends to Corbet himself, who rather passively plays the role of both artist and patron in his attempt to reverse-engineer the Great American Epic. The single worst consequence of this approach is that Corbet clearly has not gone into The Brutalist with either concrete answers or complex rumination on the immense amount of topics he covers (most of which I don’t have time to mention). Corbet, formerly an actor himself who has starred in films by Araki, Assayas, Von Trier, Haneke, Östlund, and more, is painfully aware of the perceived status of films like The Brutalist; prestigious, dramatic epics with influence from European auteur directors like those he worked with, a sentiment present in his previous films The Childhood of a Leader (2015) and Vox Lux (2018). This rears its head once again into The Brutalist, which instills itself with visions of epic grandeur without being able to meaningfully utilise or explore the plethora of subject matter it tackles.
The Brutalist explores anti-semitism, the U.S. immigrant experience, architecture as a concrete finality of artistic expression, and in what will surely be a growing talking point of the film as its release widens, Zionism. Yet, it navigates these topics with either stale responses or unproductive ambiguity, never managing to flourish on the blurry lines between the two. There is a scene in which Zsófia and her husband share an awkward conversation with László and Erzsébet in which they proclaim their desire to relocate to Israel. László and Erzsébet voice their reservations about this, particularly taking issue with the implication that they are not “real Jews” if they remain in America. Aside from this and the reasonable starting point of Israel acting as an exploitation of displaced Jewish people, the film has little meaningful to say about Zionism. Palestine and the genocide of its people are never mentioned, despite Corbet’s pro-Palestinian views (2), making this ‘interrogation’ ring rather hollow. But perhaps this is to be expected of a film that never once brings up communism, despite its intrinsic relationship with brutalist architecture, László’s own liberation from Axis-occupied Hungary, and the discrimination experienced under McCarthyism. His political examination is somehow both too vague and too concrete, often coming at the cost of emotional depth. In The Brutalist, these topics are not symptoms of the story Corbet wants to tell, they are the story, and him ticking them off like a checklist becomes its whole crux as the film cruises along at a steady, watchable pace.
Despite these vague allusions, Corbet also has a tendency to obviously signpost all of his intended messages throughout via the use of concise yet unimaginative imagery and performance. Adding to the superficial majesty of the film are hollow gestures that form the framework of what to expect in the plot of an epic; a grand score by Daniel Blumberg (3), and large scale sweeping shots of landscapes, buildings and structures. Corbet uses images of inverted, Western iconography as a recurring motif, including an image that is sure to enter the American film canon: a handheld upside-down shot of the Statue of Liberty as László arrives in New York early in the film. Clearly, Corbet’s aim with these shots is to ruminate on the true nature of the American Dream and showcases exceptionalism as a fascist pitfall; it’s an obvious but generally adequate way at exploring this topic, but is done so frequently throughout that it borders on laughable, especially a later shot featuring an upside-down(!) crucifix. There are select examples of effective imagery–there is a wide shot of a train derailment that I felt worked quite well– but Corbet’s mise en scène feels largely uninspired, often underutilising the space and devaluing effective staging and framing. Supplemented by these disappointing formal techniques is Brody’s performance, which consists of a static checklist of verbal and physical emotional beats, and whilst these are theoretically effective, they lack any substantial spontaneity, with the more earnest performances of Pearce and Joe Alwyn and their ramped-up depictions of shitheadary at least signalling greater awareness of the kind of film they’re in.
I wonder, then, what emotional narrative does Corbet actually communicate via The Brutalist? Obviously, László’s ongoing strife with immigrant disenfranchisement is the key focus, but the final line of the film, “It’s not the journey, it’s the destination” is perhaps the greatest summation of all. The Brutalist is not a journey of one’s emotional narrative, or even the process of architecture, but rather a complete, concrete end product defined by its finality. In a way, this rings true to how László regards architecture, in which he states “Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?”–architecture’s artistic meaning is its plain and simple function. Despite the promising formal approach to this in moments, Corbet waits until the very last scene of the film to reckon with László’s true approach to architecture–the use of brutalism as a way of coming to terms with his imprisonment in Europe, which ends up being too little too late. The Brutalist becoming defined by its structural finality ensures that the manner in which the narrative unfolds emotionally is ironically highly emotionless.
Nothing about The Brutalist is spontaneous, coasting through predictable narrative rhythms in a manner of which feels entirely expected, consequently voiding itself of any emotional or thematic intrigue, just like the Nambour Tram, which will (eventually) ostensibly do the job of a tram. I can say, with certainty, that I was never bored during The Brutalist. The 3 hour and 35 minute run time flies by, the clean-cut intermission (complete with 15 minute countdown) clinically does its job, and the plot is very easy to follow and narrative emotional arcs make logical sense. It all comes together like a movie should and is extremely easy to watch. Combined with its predetermined status as an Epic it’s no wonder this is going over so well with audiences. I have no doubt in my mind that I will be forced to hear Blumberg’s booming trombone score several times at the Academy Awards as Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold ascend the stage. Nothing in the film really ‘fails’, per se, and if there were a universal, objective checklist of things that make a Good Movie–there isn’t, by the way–The Brutalist meets them all. However, like the Nambour Tram’s lack of heritage, cultural or even practical value, I wonder what cinematic value The Brutalist has. To that end I ask, is it necessarily wrong for a 3+ hour film to feel long and substantial? Should an Epic not pose challenging questions for the audience, or leave them feeling perplexed or conflicted? Should we not expect a film that deals with such heavy subject matter in a dramatic and lengthy way to actually have something personal or interesting to add to the many years of conversation? Or is The Brutalist satisfied merely to artificially uphold itself as The Great American Film?
More information on the Nambour Tram Company for those interested here.
Corbet has pushed for the U.S. distribution of No Other Land (dirs. Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, 2024).
Blumberg replaces renowned musician Scott Walker, who scored Corbet’s previous films and passed away in 2019, The Brutalist is dedicated to him.
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The Brutalist is screening in cinemas now. For tickets and more info, click here.