Euronews Culture's Film of the Week: 'The Brutalist' - An uncompromising triumph heading for Oscars

“I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.” 

Wise words from the late David Lynch, who famously lost all say over his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune”, which led the director to be sickened by the experience of having to sign away the final cut of his film.

This quote from Lynch was echoed this month when The Brutalist director Brady Corbet (The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux) accepted the Golden Globe for Best Film (Drama) and made comments in his speech about creative freedom.  

“I just wanted to leave everyone with something to think about: Final-cut tiebreak goes to the director,” Corbet stated, in what was his second speech after winning Best Director earlier in the evening. “It’s sort of a controversial statement. It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be controversial at all.” 

The “final-cut tiebreak” he mentions refers to the director’s vision prevailing over any disagreement with the financiers. And by the sounds of things, support for The Brutalist was not abundant.  

“I was told that this film was un-distributable,” Corbet told the Golden Globes audience. “I was told that no one would come out and see it. I was told the film wouldn’t work.” 

Granted, a seven-years-in-the-making, three-and-a-half-hour film predominantly shot on VistaVision, an antique film stock that hadn’t been used since the early 1960s, about a midcentury architect isn’t the easiest pitch. Add the fact it starts with an overture and is split into two halves by way of an old-school intermission, and the kneejerk reaction of dismissing it as pretentious or an overly affected folly could be understandable.  

Thank the stars then that Corbet managed to look past the naysayers and get The Brutalist in the can. In turn, he is entitled to feel vindicated, as he defied conventional industry wisdom to create a masterful and richly textured American saga that has become the unlikely frontrunner in the still wide-open Oscar race. 

Before the stylish opening credits appear, we meet László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Bauhaus-trained Jewish architect from Budapest who emigrates to the US in 1947.

His wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) is alive and he hopes she’ll be able to join him soon – provided her and László’s niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) can leave a displaced-persons camp and secure the necessary paperwork to do so.  

The ominous score by Daniel Blumberg crescendos and drowns out the voiceover before "Part 1: The Enigma of Arrival."  

As the title card suggests, the first half of Corbet’s film wastes no time in dealing with the post-war immigrant experience, as László never shakes this weight he is made to carry as a foreigner. In many ways, it’s all there at the end of the first single-take: an upside-down Statue of Liberty. 

“Give me your tired, Your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” reads the famous inscription. But the reality is far from welcoming, as America’s trumpeted principles about tolerance and upward mobility often ring hollow. Corbet announces from the get-go what The Brutalist will have to say about the fabled American Dream: it is an illusion powered by envy, xenophobia and the preservation of a status quo that ensures privilege remains insular.

No points for recognizing the depressing timeliness of this period drama.

László meets with his cousin but is then falsely accused of trying to seduce his wife, an injustice that costs him a client he recently secured. That client is pampered heir Harry van Buren (Joe Alwyn), who wants his tycoon father’s library reimagined.  

Thankfully, the work that László had already delivered soon gets recognized as a triumph of minimalist design by several architecture magazines. The initially furious Harrison van Buren (Guy Pearce) seeks out László and delights in the “intellectually stimulating” conversations he has with him.  

It turns out van Buren Sr. has an ambitious project, one that will either make or break the famed architect trying to restart his career... 

Written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold with a scope worthy of the best Paul Thomas Anderson films – reminiscent of There Will Be Blood and The Master’s aspirations – The Brutalist wows from start to finish.

While the runtime of 215 minutes initially seems perversely long and indicative of a passion project run amok, not a single frame is wasted in this meticulously composed epic. The sumptuous stylistic execution reveals Corbet as an actor-turned-director who can rise to the challenge of his ambitions.

Joining him are Lol Crawley and his gorgeous cinematography; Daniel Blumberg with a score that strikes the sweet spot between ominous and beautiful; and a cast who have all understood the assignment.

Adrien Brody’s turn as a Holocaust survivor is both raw and fascinating in the way varying shades of tumult and passion intertwine at all times. It recalls his Oscar-winning work in Polanski’s The Pianist, and it seems like he’ll add another Best Actor statuette for this electrifying performance of a man who is perverted by the company he keeps, becoming a creator who “worships only at the altar of himself”.

He is matched by Felicity Jones’ turn as Erzsébet in "Part 2: The Hard Core of Beauty" and by a never-better Guy Pierce. László may be the titular brutalist in the sense he specializes in functional architecture; however, the other sense of the word belongs to Pierce’s bullish patriarch – as well as his son, played by Joe Alwyn.

The Van Buren father-son duo embody the capitalist elites, but also those who under the guise of culture and affinity for the arts, savagely maintain hierarchies based on wealth.

The patriarch wants his name to be associated with László’s singular talents, and despite his big claims that it is the responsibility of the privileged to nurture artists’ visions, he progressively reveals a loathsome attitude as a cultural gatekeeper only interested in his own legacy. To him, the denial of an artist’s freedom of thought and even identity is incidental, as immigrants should be cheap, deferential and grateful.

As for Alwyn’s Harry, he grows (much like his father-aping moustache) into a singularly detestable slimeball who believes that anything he takes is rightfully his. His presence assures that the next generation will uphold the same imbalanced structures based on exclusion and entitlement. Like father like son... And vice-versa, as the two family members commit the same degrading act at two points in the film, even if Harry’s takes place off screen.

“Why architecture?” asks Harrison during an evening he’s hosting.

“Nothing is of its own explanation. Is there a better description of a cube than its own construction?” replies László.

His reply exemplifies some of the film’s brawny themes, which complement The Brutalist’s expansive nature. Yes, this is a movie that ponders weighty questions of patronage, creativity, capitalism and America’s complex cultural relationship with Europe, but Corbet has found a way of never letting them feel ponderous. In delving into myth-making and its many facets through an entrancing personal story, he delivers a film that becomes its own explanation.

Granted, the first half is undoubtedly the superior one, but when a film draws you into a balanced yet asymmetrical maze you don’t want to escape from, you can only be in awe of a director’s big and bold swing.

Corbet has taken risk-free Hollywood to task through his ambition, and it has paid off. It remains to be seen whether Tinseltown will reward his seemingly "un-distributable" film with the Golden statuettes it deserves. Here’s hoping that the perfectly placed and bladder-compassionate intermission - which can’t count down quickly enough – will play in its favour...  

Whether it does leave with the main prize in March is irrelevant though, as Corbet's uncompromising achievement has proven him right: Final-cut tiebreak should go to the director. How many masterpieces have we missed out on because it hasn't?

Now there's a brutal line of inquiry.

The Brutalist is out in cinemas now.