Note for locals: portions of The Brutalist are Hungarian and Italian, but were subtitled in both English and Czech at a recent press screening in Prague.
A Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor struggles to survive in 1940s Pennsylvania before a chance encounter with a wealthy benefactor in The Brutalist, which won Brady Corbet Best Director at last year’s Venice Film Festival and opens in Prague cinemas this weekend. The film has also scored 10 nominations at this year’s Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
The boilerplate description is only the start to this sprawling, authentic-feeling (but entirely fictionalized) epic that clocks in at more than 3.5 hours, including a 15-minute intermission built into the print of the movie. While the prospect of watching The Brutalist in the cinema may seem oppressive, this is one awards season movie that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible.
Adrien Brody, nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars, stars as László Tóth, the architect who escaped the horrors of WWII-era Europe but left behind his wife and niece. As The Brutalist opens, Tóth is awoken on a boat approaching the towering Statue of Liberty in an already-iconic opening sequence that beautifully captures the sensory chaos and symbolic hope experienced by immigrants approaching Ellis Island.
Exactly what Tóth experienced is left unsaid—and we won’t even meet wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) until the second half of the movie—but despite his exuberant entrance to America, it’s clear he is a broken man. Brody is so captivating as Tóth it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in this role; despite grumblings of AI-assisted tweaks to nail his Hungarian accent, it’s a career-best performance that carries the film and eclipses his Oscar-winning turn in The Pianist.
Tóth travels from New York City to small-town Pennsylvania—all played by locations in Budapest—to stay with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who emigrated some years before, married a gentile, and converted to Christianity. Nivola is superb here (following his scene-stealing work in The Room Next Door and Kraven the Hunter) as Attila, who must balance genuine love for his cousin with newfound commitments, but his character disappears from the movie after wife Audrey (Emma Laird) accuses László of making a pass at her.
Living in a group shelter and shoveling coal in a Pennsylvania port, Tóth is ‘discovered’ by local benefactor Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce, also Oscar-nominated), who scathingly dismissed László and Attila after they renovated his personal library. Following effusive praise for the new design, Harrison looks into the background of the architect behind it and learns of his vast accomplishments in Europe.
Harrison hires László to build a unique cultural center on his rural property, and the bulk of the movie charts its progression from concept to realization. But the real story in The Brutalist is the contrast between these two characters—the struggling artist who is destined to leave a legacy, and the man of legacy who is destined to be forgotten.
“Don’t let anyone fool you,” an adult Zsófia (Ariane Labed) says at the end of The Brutalist, encapsulating its central theme. “No matter what the others try to sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.” Whether or not one agrees with its central message, it’s undeniable that the film argues it with memorable impact.
During the 3.5-hour narrative, there’s only one small misstep in The Brutalist‘s script. It comes during the climax, which turns implicit underlying thematic material into an explicit on-screen drama, as if Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold didn’t trust their audience to reach the right conclusions about their characters. Still, it doesn’t detract from the overall experience.
Daniel Blumberg’s rich, evocative soundtrack moves seamlessly between foreboding horror and majestic triumph, and even seems to nod to Randy Newman’s iconic work on The Natural. It’s the perfect backing for Tóth’s tortured soul that aspires to leave an enduring impact, and beautifully integrated into the story, often serving as the emotional context for dialogue left unsaid or story beats unseen.
Like the architectural style it borrows its name from, this movie may seem cold in tone, its length oppressive; the functionalist design of its narrative deprives the audience of the flashy, surface-level entertainment seen in other films nominated for Best Picture. But peel back those layers of concrete, and it’s a deeply rewarding depiction of the souls embedded within. The Brutalist lives up to its monumental aspirations: this is easily one of the best films of 2024, and one destined to leave its own lasting legacy.
