Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half hour epic, “The Brutalist,” wants very badly to be a masterpiece. I can’t blame it. It looks like a masterpiece, it’s long, and rises to enormous heights many times during its showing. You could say it’s like a piece of Brutalist architecture.
“The Brutalist” comes to theaters on December 20th. It has a lot of rave reviews simply for its existence. But it’s unclear how it will be received when actual people see it.
At this time of year, what you need to know first is that Adrien Brody will be nominated for an Oscar after waiting twenty years since he won for “The Pianist.” Brody plays a character named Lazlo Toth, who has nothing at all to do with the real person named Lazlo Toth. That man is a Hungarian born geologist who became infamous in 1972 for vandalizing Michelangelo’s Pietà statue in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. It was a cause celebre at the time. Toth was deported to Australia, where he lives today.
Who knows if Toth has been told that Corbet borrowed his name and nationality? But that’s where the comparisons stop. Corbet’s Toth arrives from Hungary in the US after surviving the Holocaust. He’s had to leave behind his wife (Felicity Jones, excellent) and battle scarred niece (Raffey Cassidy), but promises to reunite with them swiftly.
In the US Toth heads for Philadelphia where he has an American cousin named Attila who’s assimilated beautifully. He’s become Catholic and has a trophy wife. His furniture store business is booming. It’s an ugly name, Attila, and strange that he hasn’t Americanized it. Alessandro Nivola creates a whole world for this character that you wouldn’t mind finding more about. He’s a charming schemer.
Thanks to Attila’s networking, Lazlo meets a wealthy man named Harrison lee van Buren (Guy Pearce) from ugly Doylestown, PA who wants to build his own Rockefeller Center — a huge complex. He buys into Lazlo’s vision of a harsh, unwelcoming series of structures astronomically expensive and not really welcome in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Harrison’s son, played with sinister, slow building edginess by Joe Alwyn, is suspicious of the whole thing.
Lazlo’s success working for van Buren means he can send for the wife and niece. You’ve never been so happy to see Felicity Jones in your life. “The Brutalist” has a harsh look that isn’t made easier by the lack of females. But it’s not a joyous reunion between Lazlo and Erzsébet. You know trouble is coming.
And it does, after the 15 minute intermission, when Lazlo and Harrison journey to Italy to get just the right slab of marble for their project. Up to that point, “The Brutalist” seems to be unfolding in the direction of greatness. But when the film resumes, terrible things happen, the kind of things you might to warn friends about before they return to their seats. This is not a feel good movie, and Corbet wants to remind us with a mallet.
(In a movie this long, some things don’t make sense. When Erzsébet arrives, she’s in a wheelchair and can’t walk. But after the intermission she’s walking just fine and has made a complete recovery. The niece doesn’t speak for most of the film, but also post-intermission her PTSD has disappeared and she has a husband. But we’re so invested in the main story, there’s no time to dissect these nuances.)
There’s a lot of great filmmaking in “The Brutalist.” Sometimes it feels like Corbet is making a Terrence Malick film. In an era when there is little original material out there, Corbet can only be praised for creating this totally fictitious yet totally possible community. Even as it grows darker and darker, “The Brutalist” has a mesmerizing quality. And in the end, who is the Brutalist anyway? The architect with an unending vision? Or the millionaire who enables him?
Corbet swings for the fences, that’s for sure. Brody and Jones are outstanding. No one plays emotionally haunted like Brody. His trick is to get the audience on his side even though you’re not sure you agree with him. Pearce is disturbing. The rest of the cast is outstanding, although again I wish Attila had come back into the picture. Will you make it through the whole nearly four hours? Undoubtedly, although repeat viewing may be better served at home.
Special mentions to Daniel Blumberg for the powerful score, Lol Crawley for a kind of architectural cinematography, and whoever did the credits sequence. Saul Bass is in heaven, applauding.
