THE PREMISE:

"When visionary architect László Toth and his wife Erzsébet flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern America, their lives are changed forever by a mysterious and wealthy client." 

OUR MOVIE REVIEW:

Fresh off the boat, Hungarian architect, László Tóth, has to almost bend over backwards to get his first view of the Statue of liberty; though viewing it upside down, its sight and promise fill László with excitement.  Behind him is his homeland of Hungary that is picking up the pieces of the recent Nazi’s destruction of World War II, and his wife who stays behind to look after their niece whose parents perished in the holocaust. Arriving in New York, a new beginning awaits László - an Odyssey into the American Dream. However, what László doesn’t know, is the dark heart at the center waiting for him and it will make him pay a dire price to find his new place in America. 

Following his 2018’s Vox Lux - my personal favorite from that year - director Brady Corbet aims for a vision with a more epic scope packed with even more ideas. It certainly helps with how big of a movie The Brutalist really is. This film is a three and a half hour giant with an intermission splitting up two chapters within the film. The cast feels gargantuan with top shelf talent, such as Adrien Brody as László Tóth the Brutalist Architect the film follows, Guy Pearce as Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr., the banker who employs him to build his first project in America, and an ensemble of great supporting performances to back them up. Corbet takes yet another risky swing, however, The Brutalist succeeds in its thorough and significant emotional approach.

Corbet’s American epic feels like a response to films such as Citizen Kane, There Will Be Blood, or most recently, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. These films follow men with such massive grandeur and ego, but The Brutalist begs us to think about those affected by their exploits. Yet, that’s only one the surface of The Brutalist. Underneath, Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold, has packed layers of thought provoking themes and ideas, and it gets deep and dark, but also touching and beautiful. Themes about the sisyphean suffering an artist faces, the mystifying ways in how it is put into their work, and just what was put into it will live on forever; for better and for worse. It’s thorny, and difficult, but it’s such a propulsive and sweeping epic that feels so satisfying to see through and thorough.