Brutal - some thoughts on the Brutalist
“ I can’t swim”.
That’s the one line from Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” that I can’t seem to shake, even days later. It’s the ultimate metaphor for this absolute ocean of a film. I have some not-so-short thoughts on this very long affair. Thankfully, this movie is actually about Brutalism, if only thematically, but in this immigrant story we are instructed to look upon every angle of it. There’s so much to cover in the depths of joy and despair that come with fleeing a war. No wonder it’s three and a half bloody hours.
The Brutalist is not an ironic title. It tackles the immigrant story through the lens of one László Tóth - semi-fictional architect, survivor of the holocaust and harbinger of the pain caused by a nazi regime across Europe. He’s fled Budapest, and his family in the process, though without abandon, he intends to reunite, albeit maybe reluctantly. He see’s America as a land of promise - you know the drill. It’s made by Americans, you should watch the film knowing such.
László Tóth, is played by the inimitable Adrian Brody, famous for any holocaust story ending in -ist, arrogantly long acceptance speeches, and really the only man capable of performing to the depths of despair amid Hungarian revolution. His delivery of Tóth’s desire for more is palpable and all-encompassing. It’s the foundation for the many contradictions upon which this story is presented as Brody’s Jewish-Hungarian heritage helps him etch equal parts joy and suffering upon Tóth’s experience. He is showing us a soul war-torn, in great depth, and truly makes us believe that this character has fundamental belief in two things - legacy, and progress. A very well deserved academy award.
The story follows Tóth into America, he is greeted at Ellis Island where this cinematographically indulgent journey begins, lady liberty shown stilted, you’re disoriented, and this is how it is going to roll for the next 200 minutes (plus change) of your life. He finds shelter in the shadows of Philadelphia, after brief seance into the night in New York City. It’s all visually stunning as you watch on with vogue-tinted glasses, reckoning with the loneliness of being an immigrant, and Tóth endures, with his creative genius on his sleeve and pain etched on his heart. He begins to bring it all forth into his work, pouring his ideals of progress into his designs. He is in turn, designing his idea of legacy, his perspective of what it means to deliver truly great work, and you see glimpses of obsession. You’re watching a man in search of ego death, in more ways than one. Icarus ventures towards the sun.
But Tóth soon learns he is going to have to do this on his own. And while knowing his wife and niece are safe and healthy in Europe, he must venture on. And he does so fortuitously. Luckily, his cousin had made this journey before him, and has a furniture business. Tóth gets to work. But its not what was expected. Soon the relationship sours, and the brutality begins. Contradiction reigns supreme. Ugly versus beauty, pain versus joy, Tóth experiences the many great highs and lows in his journey.
The supporting cast in Philadelphia help him to both endure them both in equal measure, helping to bring to life Tóth’s work, allowing him to deliver his designs, first in furniture, then in a custom built library at the request of the painfully rich Joe Alwyn, who plays the son of multi-millionaire Harrison Lee van Buren Sr. with, quite frankly, frightful accuracy. It is in his work that you learn of Tóth’s fortunate timing. He is granted an opportunity to make a mark, and while he is initially ridiculed and thrown out by said millionaire father, the world comes to appreciate his academic architectural approach. On a few occasions Harrison Lee makes note of Tóth’s stimulating conversation. You wouldn’t see it at first.
Corbet delivers monumentality and naivety in equal parts. You’re taken by grand landscapes, stunning soundtracking, and an attention to detail that lets themes sink into the story in the facial expressions and moments of silence, a carefully crafted script letting you read between the lines on Corbet’s many contradictions. the fortunate versus the less-so. The former pulling the strings of the impeccable timing that drives the story forward, hand-in-hand the introduction of Guy Pearce’s Harrison Lee van Buren Sr.
While previously, László’s work had been deemed ugly, confusing, and “not what the American family would want”, Harrison Lee sees an academic quality, László’s work was lauded in many an architectural journal, his design philosophy quite new to America - Lee see’s an opportunity, on his part, to be an innovator. Tóth sees it differently, and the complexity of Brutalism as an architectural style is laid bare when Lee questions Tóth of his passion - “Let me ask you something. Why architecture?”. We get an insight into the minds of two, supposedly, great men. The catalyst for the movie drives us forward, into the great unknowns of a pissing contest between Lee and Tóth. You’re offered 15 minutes to breathe.
Opportunity is immediately afforded to Tóth at the hands of Lee, a major community project on the nearby hilltop, in which they both see a path toward their vision of progress. Manahola Dargis writes for the New York Times that two things are true of these characters - “László is an avatar of an ideal”, one in which we see a new wave of design, one which blatantly criticizes the modern American sensibility. And that “Harrison Lee sets out to play the role of the modern man with a vengeance.” He engages with László’s designs of the academic, though if not only to feed his ego. They both inch closer to the sun.
In part one, these themes are extraordinarily presented in plain sight for us to dissect within the quiet moments. The contradicting views of progress build the scaffolding of this great story, which comes to bear towards the end of part one. Mid project brief, Lee outlines the city councils desires to turn their project into a multi-purpose center. He gently explains his nostalgia for wrestling practice after school, and until suggestion of a public swimming pool, you relate with him. This great man, Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr., cares about his community.
Until he says he can’t swim.
The story goes to great depths to make you feel amid an ocean of confusion, I felt angry. I felt as if the rest of the story was to be about these two ‘great men’ grappling with their own ideals, sometimes in tandem, otherwise in conflict. And this plays out into brilliant chaos, as two great ego’s wrestle over their illusions of grandeur, their contradictions helping you see little glimpses into the realities of their shared god complex, and desires for enduring legacy. In flashes, you see how Corbet convinces us of a deeper sentiment, the nuance of the immigrant experience demonstrated in contrast to American family ideology with consistency. Moments like “Your English is very good” met with “Thank you, I studied English at Oxford”, delivered with aplomb by Felicity Jones, posit just how little the Americans see of the world. Themes of trust, competency, access to education, and any critical understanding of this experience that is still wrought across the United States today, are played out in the little moments of this film. You’re forced to consider the true isolation of the United States of America, their everyday attitude to conflict around the world, playground perceptions of Europe, perceptions that are still felt across Southern Europe. Spend a summers week in Italy today and tell me you’re stoked the Americans are there.
But aside from that, the metaphor feels broken, beset in beautiful landscapes that push our brutal reality forward, as both Lee and Tóth continue their journeys, I am not sure that the story hits the mark. This is supposedly the story of two great men who circle the sun as they grapple with their own ambition. But gratuitous sexual violence is a lazy crescendo to an otherwise complex ideology, and in trying to say everything, The Brutalist almost says nothing. Heroin addiction, while holding greater historical importance to this story than I initially realised, does nothing but present an escape. Corbet was closing in on a truly wonderful depiction of why Brutalism, as a design philosophy, was so historic, so important, so divisive. But instead he tells a story of painful humanity, as you watch on with great sympathy for two men who, do not in my view, depict greatness. At the end of the day only one message is plain - America will fuck you. There is no idealogy of the free, the everyday obscuring the desire to escape a fascist regime. Beset against the climate of the day, it feels vaguely inappropriate, and takes a strange political stance. If told with a more delicate touch, it might have actually done what I had hoped of this film.
Brody delivers a view of a man drowning in his own god complex like never before, it’s intimate, you truly get it. You can see deeply the desire to outlast, to leave a legacy, opening a window into the tortures of war amid an era of destruction, a miniature form of rebellion, and personal journey for respite. With one’s impact on landscape comes an opportunity to change the face of a nation, this is a common trope among architectural and engineering hopefuls. To look back on a city and say ‘see that one, I built that one’. I think we can all relate to that ambition. But unfortunately, among the litany of sins in this story, we do not see great men rise above it all, and endure until their vision of progress is realized. We see the agony of a generation grappling with it’s own sin. Where the only reason to feel is either anger or regret. It’s all so self-indulgent. And the building has nothing to do with it, if not give us a reason to celebrate the designs of endurance.