This belated review has to begin with the acknowledgement that there was really no other choice for the role than Adrien Brody. He won his first Oscar for his depiction in The Pianist (2002) of a sensitive, tortured artist made a victim both of the Holocaust and its aftereffects. Now comes the similarly titled The Brutalist (2024), and a role for Brody that sounds almost identical on paper but in reality, feels more twisted and somehow more painful than his previous. This film has all the hallmarks of a typical Oscar winner, but sometimes that does, contrary to expectations, actually produce a fantastic film – although one crafted for the cinema exclusively, and probably impossible to rewatch.
The Academy loves these kinds of films. A guilt-wracked Holocaust survivor emigrates to America. There, our Hungarian-born hero László Tóth wastes away in the throes of heroin addiction after failing to impress the architectural world with his divisive, radical style. His wife’s confined to a wheelchair and even after he finally gets the work he deserves, his immigrant background cuts him off from ever getting the basic respect of his snooty peers.
In a harsh light, this is a narrative precision-engineered to win Oscars. We’ve got suffering, the immigrant experience, the Holocaust, a physical disability, addiction, the American Dream, and a melancholic artist-genius failing to achieve recognition in the face of great oppression, in that ever-unbelievable Ayn Rand fashion. If The Brutalist (2024) ever seemed like it was cynically throwing up these tropes to win awards, it’d fall apart faster than Adrien Brody in the second act.
But – as tough as it is to admit – it doesn’t. The Brutalist (2024) dares, at the very least, to toe the line, and somehow doesn’t come across as melodramatic. The quiet pervasiveness of the main character’s addiction feels surprisingly tasteful, and as the monumental runtime rolls along, the film settles into a really beautiful visual style with a wonderful score by Daniel Blumberg. Those external elements allow us to appreciate some originality to an otherwise familiar story.
Top performances all round from everyone but Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones knock everyone else out of the running. Again, everything could so easily tip into melodrama but the seething, slightly cracked energy of their performances keeps the film firmly on the straight and narrow. And it’s never a bad time watching Felicity Jones in such a high-level film, where someone of her massive talents should be. On top of that, the gradual erosion and obvious flaws of Adrien Brody’s László Tóth manage to steer the film away from being just another epic about a victimised genius who no one understands. It’s a combination of acting and directorial talent to make that central character feel genuine – and it has to be acknowledged that The Brutalist (2024) was, of course, based on a true story.
At the end of the day, too, it’s a film about Brutalism. It’s pleasing to see a piece of work of this scale treat Brutalism with so much affection and insight, when audiences are generally relegated to being shown pictures of grey Soviet skyscrapers and dour shots of Trellick Tower in London. But it was a very serious and controversial movement, and architecture is benefitted from this film’s existence.
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It has to be said that director Brady Corbet gets full marks here. The acting’s great, the writing’s decent, and stylistically The Brutalist (2024) feels refreshingly original. But it’s Corbet who’s been championing this film for half a decade and through countless restarts to production, and without his hand on the controls it’s clear this film might never have survived – or might have ended up falling off the rails.
Just remember the elephant in the room. The Brutalist (2024) has a runtime of nearly 3 and a half hours, and it’s definitely a one-time cinematic experience – not a bad thing, but not a film for a quiet night in on the couch. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, though it also comes with a handy intermission, which is appreciated and, again, strikingly original for a modern-day epic. Gear up for this film, enjoy it once, and clap when it wins all the awards.
Still: A24