When The Brutalist premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival last September, the reactions couldn’t have loomed any larger for a film that had a soft opening four months later. Issued to New York and Los Angeles first (as all award contenders do), a meager 68 screens gracing the titanic runtime of three-and-a-half hours can finally contextualize the big, bold letters we’d been hearing about for months. No, not the title, but the quoted “MONUMENTAL” positioned on every ad, poster, and trailer. A single-word statement with this much bravura to match Daniel Blumberg’s brass-infused score is sure to draw attention to a movie that has earned a quote as big as the title itself. Yet, despite the curiosities lauded by the lucky many that have sat with Brady Corbet’s dense American epic for weeks now; What defines the perceived monument penned and filmed by Corbet? Is The Brutalist monumental for glorious artistic merit, or more quantifiable measurements in scale, the scope of VistaVision, the film’s weight, or runtime?
The concerns over The Brutalist positioning itself as a big, meaningful, important movie because of those metrics are valid. Although it appears like more and more people are interested in objecting to the status of a film before seeing how the parts complement the whole, Brady Corbet evades pretension by measuring the magnitude of his work through the subjective qualities of artistic perception. The Brutalist postured as a “monumental”, “cinematic language evolving work” has to do with how the movie is being talked about more than the thematic gestures of the film. Is The Brutalist monumental? Sure. Does it create a new cinematic language? Now that’s what I call pretentious. What lies within the film is far more complex and difficult to navigate than any sub-heading or glamorized remark could possibly capture. Those terms may sell the film, but buzzy reactions miss out on expressing how Corbet floods the shaded heart of his story with toxic patronage within an intoxicating visual style that constructs the visions of an artist forcefully shaped by material wealth.
There couldn’t be a more succinct description of a film this size when Brady Corbet said,’ This film is about an immigrant that escapes fascism to discover capitalism.” The story of fictitious architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) – a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, who finds himself entangled with a wealthy, book-smart Harrison Lee Van Buren (a never better Guy Pearce) in Pennsylvania. Later employed by Van Buren as the chief architect of a monument to his late mother, László gets a taste of the American Dream he sought when he fled Europe. Tóth can continue his great work as a revered European architect in the Americas as the wealthy patronage of the Van Burens provides László a home, food, and building materials as he awaits the arrival of his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy). Corbet and partner Mona Fastvold buckle down and capture the traditional qualities we’re used to seeing in dense period-specific epics through the first quarter of the film. Sprinkled with all the anecdotes of László’s compulsions, strengths, and transpiring relationships, the montage-like quality of the film’s life in New York is exercised with a glorious exertion of the freedom László sought. The film appears to operate without restraint or hesitation, a certainty that an elliptical summation of experience and character are necessary building blocks to the towering infrastructure that will be built atop it.
When a film asks a viewer for nearly four hours of their time, reeling them in with a snappier presentation will make it easier to accept when the film decelerates. We don’t have to look back much further than The Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) to see how Martin Scorsese adopts the same technique in the first 10 minutes of his 3.5-hour film. What Corbet installs despite the musicality of the 1950s is a dream-like projection that could be surmised in a relative ‘incomplete-ness’ of events. As in a pivotal moment early on when the wife of László’s cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) proclaims László “made a pass at her”. This results in Attila asking László to find somewhere else to live and work if he’s going to infringe on their relationship. The dramatic insinuations appear “incomplete”, and in the larger scope of the film, attempting to recall specifics is how the film works to keep us in conversation with it. We’re expected to waft through billowing cigarette smoke that coats the images with a mirage-like quality to the period-specific production design shot in the spirit of Gordon Willis’s low contrast, heavily shadowed cinematography. Off-setting realism through an illusory look at the principles and constructs of mid-century America makes the idyllic initiation of the upside-down gaze at the Statue of Liberty a gateway to a nation as coarse and cruel as the country László fled.
The United States of America posturing itself as a country enshrined by monuments to their own glory is a statement of vanity true to the illusory wall the nation perpetuates. An immigrant’s first view as they approach the country is a figurine meant to be recognized as a symbol of freedom and democracy. Laszlo explodes with joy at the sight - he’s made it and he’ll be free from the imprisonment of a continent spoiled by war. On the other side of the nation is the Golden Gate Bridge. Another equally as brilliant and inconceivable gateway to “freedom”. Bookended by brilliant architectural objects erected as welcome mats for immigrants, it doesn’t take long to realize that the breathtaking sight isn’t necessarily awe-inspiring. As it is the first instance of America’s ornamentation applying enough pressure to their constituents as the final breaths are drawn before suffocation.
Corbet is clever in his presentation of the Statue of Liberty as a brief, towering, symbolic image of greater feelings. It is the only instance where we feel it as such before László experiences the difficulties assimilating to life in the States. There is no attempt to really study the Statue or look at its stature to better define what it represents. It is glory and freedom, prestige and promise, symbolic and superficial. And for a film about the artistic expression of architecture, to not even grant László a chance to admire its definitions is a scathing remark on Corbet’s end. From this point forward, New York looks and feels no different from what we understand war-torn Europe looks like. Lengthy lines to get a good meal, lamplights running low on power, worn down buildings on the outside, and faded wallpaper on the inside. There is a visible lack of energy and enthusiasm in a world that looks as if life has been drained from the citizens who inhabit these spaces. Everyone is working, or trying to, and yet they’re framed in a sharply defined corner they can’t seem to get out of. Perhaps capitalism doesn’t feel or look so different from fascism despite the insistence that they share no likenesses.
This is where Corbet makes an ingenious transition to Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth state, home to industrializing goods and services aplenty to the nation is suddenly the foundation for László’s next achievement. What starts as a project to establish a larger sense of community for the Van Burens and their network of friends and family, is reduced to a single monolithic building in the eyes of László Tóth. Including spires in the shape of a cross that takes on the eerie shape of a smokestack you would see on a factory building. The shape of the building is fussed over by the Van Burens, money and lawsuits are of the utmost importance even if they infringe on the vision they asked László to imagine. Despite the patronage provided by the Van Burens at every stage of the production, there is an attempt to make this dedicated hallmark into something else outside the vision of the primary architect. For Harrison, this project is just as much an embellishment in his image. Which is precisely the same category of self-righteous vanity the nation prides itself on when it comes to the value of capital wealth.
To transform the Commonwealth into a battleground for ideological temperaments between an artist and his patron illuminates the symbiotic relationship between the parties that have transpired throughout history. Who is a financier without a great artist to help them achieve glory? How is an artist limited by someone who isn’t imaginative enough to see the world outside the financial margins? The point of contention isn’t new, but Corbet and Fastvold refresh it with a dose of timeliness and hindsight to incorporate a breath of nationalism and cultural diaspora to probe the relationship further. Corbet creates friction between individualism and László’s attempts to assimilate as the culture of a higher class attempts to anchor his Jewish identity with the weight of practical materials. Gold earrings, sequin outfits glimmering as they catch the right light, and boisterous cadences are expressions by the Van Buren network to try and connect with László despite wedging the gap between their privilege and his experiences even further apart. The Van Burens cannot see the value in experience and the significance of expression unless it is associated with material gains that can embroider or decorate their lives. So, when we see how Harrison hides information from László to cut into his blueprints, this is an attempt to diminish experiential influence because he can’t see how the final build is emblematic of impassioned strokes of artistry that attempts to materialize generational pain across the abrasive surfaces of chilled concrete.
This structure, as monolithic and profound as it is supposed to be, is really an embodiment of the corridors and passages László has passed through to arrive at this moment. Considering The Brutalist’s Pennsylvania appears to lack the congestion of New York, the hillside where László’s project will take shape is the foundation for the change and development he sought when he arrived in America. Widened by VistaVision, the rolling hills beam with clarity for László to draw upon this canvas by implanting a structure that reflects the physiognomy that defines the features we see on László’s face or body. His body is lean and chiseled, bold and sturdy. His face stamped with an arched nose and wild Eraserhead hairstyle to appear as if thoughts were constantly overflowing from the crown of his head. The metrics of László’s shape represents the style of architecture he realizes, and yet, it is the congested passages of his project that display how his most internal self is repeatedly bore down upon by more controlled external forces. In a stunning moment, László’s nose is referred to as something that could be “fixed with money” as Harrison attempts to do with the project. The Van Buren class views the visages of László and the faces of his art as appearances that don’t particularly conform to an ethnic standard their Victorian-style home also perpetuates.
Corbet denotes these physical signifiers as an attempt to show us how history, time, and ultranationalism excavates the spirit of creative expression. For a brutalist like László to turn natural material into something worth exerting into a functional representation of experiences that can’t be simply defined marks a divide between the artist, the patron, and inevitably, the viewer. As art passes throughout generations, projections will be made to maintain a sense of timelessness under new contexts and redefined social parameters. Does this have to do with the work audiences do to keep a film’s significance afloat across time, or is it something that has always been within the art as the artist foresaw it upon conception? Really, truly, it is the artist’s work that should do the talking for them, but the visual style of The Brutalist implies László is operating with visions of a future where the meaning of his work is vocalized for him as well. If you look at his body of work throughout Europe, into the States, and the graces of hindsight in the future, his work is recalled without acknowledging the individual earmarks of character that supported his journey through fascist control, mid-century nationalism, and the unnerving emergence of Zionism as we understand it today in his most celebratory moment.
Cinematographer Lol Crawley connotes his images with mindful considerations cast upon the viewer is one of the highest forms of trust a film can earn. Corbet neither engages with nor denies the significance of Zionism’s evolution since the mid-20th century. Still, he implicates László’s bloodline for echoing the Van Buren’s Victorian-era prestige with their misinterpretation of László’s artistry with sweeping and modern generalizations about timeless art. In an epilogue infused with a tech rendition of Daniel Blumberg’s score and colorful fluorescents that look nothing like the rest of the film, Corbet pulls the pin on irony and lets it explode at our feet. Situated in a wheelchair, non-verbal, aged, and without Erzsébet by his side, László’s experiences are diluted into a ridiculously humorous remark for anyone with a mild appreciation for art. “It’s about the destination, not the journey” (abridged), is a verbal statement as scathing as László practically ignoring the architecture of the Statue of Liberty. These inverted bookends of the film adequately chronicle the story of an artist suffocated by the weight of political intervention that lays the groundwork for great art to protrude from the mind despite generational wealth and ultranationalism funding a genocide they hope will kill the next artist that could object to their tyranny.
Comments