The Brutalist is one of those films that will set up a permanent residence in your head: once seen, never forgotten. Here’s six reasons why you shouldn’t miss Brady Corbet’s epic Oscar-nominated period drama, which has “future classic” written all over it.
The Brutalist
1. Its vivid but enigmatic narrative
The story follows Adrien Brody’s László Tóth, a Hungarian architect and Holocaust survivor who emigrates to America in the 1940s, hoping, wishing, needing to start again. He rises from the bottom rungs, stepping out of scuzzy bathrooms where he shoots up heroin, eventually re-establishing himself professionally. Tóth gets a lucky break when he’s hired by Guy Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren, a rich industrialist who recognises his talent and commissions him to construct a massive community centre. But the needle never really comes out of Tóth’s arm: he can’t run away from himself, and while he returns to architectual prominence, the film doesn’t correlate this to happiness or redemption. It’s not that kind of narrative. There is an enigmatic flavour to it; a feeling of open-endedness and ambiguity.
2. That already iconic shot of the Statue of Liberty
What’s the opposite of liberty? What do you get when it’s inverted? Much has already been said about The Brutalist’s centerpiece image: an upside down shot of the Statue of Liberty displayed early in the runtime, when Tóth arrives in the so-called land of the free. Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley rotate this image, turning it around as if inspecting an old antique, trying to make sense of it. It’s a great example of visual storytelling—encouraging viewers to interpret or at least consider the subtext, without dictating meaning or coming across as an exercise of hoity-toity intellectualism. It’s clear this is an important image, speaking to the heart of the film. But like Corbet’s view of lady Liberty, we must roll it around in our minds.
3. The film’s strange, shifting energy
From the start there’s a faint but definite aura of something unusual in the air—something corrosive, poisoning the film from the inside. It’s hard to put your finger on what or how. The film reaches upwards, building an arc, trying to escape Liberty’s shadow. Corbet’s visual style embraces ambiguity. He likes holding the frame and lets visual beats linger, creating the pictorial equivalent of reverberating sounds. Every once in a while the director injects intentionally displacing bursts of motion and movement: for instance time lapses and POV shots from the front of vehicles. The air thickens and the energy’s pent-up, like some weird force within the frame is trying to get out.
4. The intermission
Even bolder than The Brutalist‘s 215 minute runtime is the decision to insert a 15 minute intermission, which might inspire other filmmakers to follow suit. I’m not sure that’s a good thing (do we really need longer films?) but I appreciated the novelty of being able to stretch my legs and empty my bladder without missing anything. It has an interesting effect tonally, offering a breather before—as many viewers will correctly assume—the stakes dramatically increase. The intermission is that proverbial line in the sand: the crossing of a threshold, signalling irreversible escalation.
5. Great acting
Adrien Brody delivers a completely embodied and utterly immersive performance for which labels such as “lived in” barely begin to cut it. He’s absorbing and transfixing, but not in a showy way. Guy Pearce is great too, in a role you could call villainous, though that label feels too rudimentary. Pearce brings out a sweltering ferocity as Van Buren, a man whose collar heats quickly and whose fuse is short. He’s a bastard, but Pearce doesn’t allow you to toss him in the bin marked “despicable.” Certain questions abound: is Van Buren what’s wrong with the system, or a byproduct of it? Felicity Jones also cuts a powerful presence as Tóth’s tough and shrewd wife Erzsébet—a crucial role in the film’s second half.
6. The Brutalist encourages us to think about art in a different way
Or at least, to think about a different kind of art. Architecture is rarely a central part of any film, one notable exception being Kogonada’s sublime drama Columbus. (which I wrote about here). For obvious reasons, architecture is a medium synonymous with great wealth and privilege, the stomping ground of the gods. Big buildings require big designs, big dreams, big egos, big buy in. Great architecture is often politically enabled and makes political statements. Like film, it’s an intensely collaborative medium, some names flood-lit and others minimised. The architecture of the film itself feels like one of Tóth’s buildings: it’s large, imposing, and coldly beautiful.
