The Brutalist was released in December to qualify for award season consideration, and it’s already won its fair share. It won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice International Film Festival for its director/co-writer, Brady Corbet, and it recently walked away with the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture.
Now, it’s been nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture. Having seen it myself, it deserves all 10 nominations in spades. This is a rich, sprawling epic saga that celebrates the possibilities of how immigrants long ago came to America to seek out a new life and displays that in a way that serves as a reminder of their contributions as well as an absorbing tragedy.
Adrian Brody stars as Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian architect forced to separate from his wife and niece and immigrate to America. They are still enduring the atrocities of Dachau. When Laszlo reaches America, he lands in Philadelphia to work with his cousin’s furniture business.
Their first job together is to refurbish the residence of an industrialist named Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Van Buren wants Laszlo to build a community center to honor his mother.
Felicity Jones plays Laszlo’s wife, Erzsebet, and Raffey Cassidy plays his niece, Zsofia, who arrives in America with the help of Van Buren. However, the happy reunion is short-lived due to Erzsebet being wheelchair-bound due to osteoporosis. Laszlo himself is also battling a drug addiction that threatens his prosperity.
One of the great pleasures of Corbet’s screenplay and the way that he directs this movie is that we get to experience Laszlo’s journey over decades. The movie begins in 1947 and ends in 1980. During these periods, we get to see the highs and lows of these immigrant characters who endure bigotry due to their Jewish heritage. Their hopes of living the American Dream can be eradicated because others are cognizant of their ethnicity.
Adrian Brody is the centerpiece as a man who starts out idealistic and hopeful, but each achievement is a potential Achilles’ heel. The people he surrounds himself with acknowledge his talent while secretly brandishing him with prejudice until it explodes with devastating consequences. Brody has been nominated for Best Actor, and he gives his career-best work here.
On a technical level, this is a sumptuous movie that draws us in. Lol Crawley’s cinematography is one that makes the various locations dazzle with a sense of watching these events with real clarity and beauty. Daniel Blumberg’s score is astonishing, and the production design by Judy Becker showcases authentic-looking buildings that represent a quality of how they must’ve looked and felt to immigrants of that time. As we watch, we realize we’re the immigrants in this world.
Jones, Pearce, and Joe Alywn deliver outstanding work and play key roles in Laszlo’s prominence or demise—sometimes both. There isn’t a performance in the film that doesn’t keep us invested.
The movie is three hours and 35 minutes long, but it’s so rewarding. It makes a statement about immigrants and prejudice and makes a strong case for how today’s generation might take the ones who came before them for granted.
The Brutalist is brilliantly immersive, powerfully acted, and directed, and it never hits a false note.
Grade: A
(Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, rape, drug use and some language.)
