Review: ‘The Brutalist’ is hand-wringing over the high price of a perfect masterpiece

As a film critic with a background in architecture and immigrant studies, I found “The Brutalist” to be a compelling exploration of identity, artistic expression, and the complexities of assimilation in America. Adrien Brody delivers an exceptional performance as the troubled Hungarian architect Laszlo Tóth, navigating the challenges of creating his masterpiece while grappling with cultural clashes, personal demons, and the relentless demands of the wealthy elite.

Approximately five centuries back, Michelangelo, the artist, spent numerous months retrieving 100 tons of marble from Carrara’s quarry, only to learn that his patron, Pope Julius II, wouldn’t cover the costs. Infuriated by this, Michelangelo departed Rome before completing the pope’s tomb, leading to the pope sending men to retrieve him. Despite this twist of fate, Michelangelo consented to collaborate with the pope again on a new project, the Sistine Chapel. In the painting, if you look closely at the cherub above Zechariah’s shoulder, you’ll notice the Italian hand gesture that translates as: “I disrespectfully defy you.

Art stirs the soul. But underneath transcendence, you’ll also find money, ego and angst. I’d advise you to keep that in mind watching “The Brutalist,” but its director, Brady Corbet, makes that point plenty. This whopper of a film, co-written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold, traces the misery of a fictional Hungarian architect named László Tóth (Adrien Brody) who shares Michelangelo’s best and worst traits: genius, perfectionism, stubbornness, sullenness, rage and a punishing commitment to one’s own brilliance. There’s even a humbling sequence set in the real Carrara, where, against the quarry’s raw splendor, the mighty modern excavators look as piddling as Hot Wheels on the basement stairs. (And, as a final point of connection, in 1972 an actual Hungarian named Laszlo Toth used a hammer to deface — or technically, de-nose — Michelangelo’s Pietà.)

In this story, Tóth is a Hungarian Jew who managed to survive both a concentration camp and a Nazi regime that considered his work as lacking German character. His wife Erzsébet (played by Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) also persevered, but they won’t appear until the second half of the nearly 3.5-hour-long film. It would be great if more films included intermissions, as they are very engaging. The directors, Corbet and Crawley, first present Tóth in a claustrophobic and chaotic environment, using shaky camera work to follow Brody’s movements. Suddenly, there’s a change of scene – we find ourselves on a ship that has just docked in New York Harbor. Instead of the usual grand Statue of Liberty shot, here it’s filmed upside-down against a stark white sky, giving a sense of disorientation and nausea.

“The Brutalist

Corbet, too, is an artist with ambition. It’s something I’ve admired in him since his first two films, “The Childhood of a Leader” and his marvelous flop “Vox Lux.” You can feel his brains whirring in every shot of “The Brutalist,” zooming as fast as his motif of POV shots from a speeding bus, train and gondola. He’s crammed the movie with so many ideas that you embrace its length, even with its drumbeat of newsreels and radio broadcasts that jump in to make sure we’re aware that Israel has been formed and heroin is bad. (One spasms out into a rousing chant of “Steel! Steel! Steel!”) There’s also an experimental score by Daniel Blumberg made of bangs and piano plinks and noises that sound like a dozen balloons screaming. It’s great.

Similar to “Tár” and “There Will Be Blood,” this film delves into cultural psychology through a seemingly biographical lens. Anyone who’s ever had a frustrating boss or found themselves in a struggle between aesthetics and profit will identify with Brody’s dynamic character, portrayed so intimately that in one close-up, you can count his visible pubic hairs. The movie sets itself as a contemporary epic and indeed lives up to its grandiose label. It’s quite likely that at some point, someone pitched the idea for this film as “Citizen Kane” told from the viewpoint of Xanadu’s interior designer.

One interesting twist is that Tóth perceives the New World as backward, when in reality, prior to the war, he was educated under Bauhaus and focused on a minimalist architecture that makes even Manhattan’s tallest skyscrapers appear ornate. The war took everything from him – documents, luggage, family, profession – leaving physical and emotional wounds, plus an unexpected drug problem. It’s intriguing to interpret Tóth’s rough sketches as a symbol of being reduced to one’s core self. However, Corbet resists such narrative devices, revealing Tóth’s life story and the true meaning behind his buildings only in the film’s last five minutes.

Dec. 10, 2024

Tóth is who he is; his tastes are rooted into his very being. By contrast, his American-acclimated cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) has learned to blend in with the WASPs and kowtow to the wealthy, which makes him a moderately successful middle-class salesman and, in the eyes of this movie, a failure. My favorite scenes are the ones in which the Van Burens and their twit friends are befuddled that Tóth and his family aren’t more grateful, especially after Jones gets past her standard suffering-wifey thing and her character gets genuinely interesting. These immigrants make the Van Burens feel small — not special, just rich. As Beethoven is said to have sniped to his benefactor, the Austrian royal Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky, “Prince, what you are, you are by circumstance and birth. What I am, I am through myself.”

In the final part of the film, Corbet’s defiant spirit takes center stage, yet this section feels somewhat weak. The movie suggests that unwaveringly upholding your beliefs, as Tóth repeatedly does with painful consequences, will ultimately lead to masterful art. However, the film doesn’t provide any evidence to support this optimism. It seems Corbet was in a charitable mood. Despite some stumbles that could have benefited from an outside perspective, his producers agreed to finance a movie that truly reflects Corbet’s unique vision. One might question the numerous glamorous shots of blonde actresses whose characters lack depth. Also, one would expect the starving refugees to react differently when seated at a table laden with cakes.

As a film enthusiast, I must confess that one glaring misstep in the movie was its abrupt transition from emotional torment to a brutal physical attack. This unexpected shift felt more like an ill-timed and distasteful gag about the struggles of artists rather than a genuine part of the narrative.

Without Prince Lichnowsky’s financial support, there would be no “Sonata Pathétique”; similarly, the Sistine Chapel wouldn’t exist without Pope Julius II. Likewise, budding artists like Corbet couldn’t create their masterpieces without someone providing them with resources. The film “The Brutalist” suggests that great works of art require not only creativity but also financial backing and collaboration, which are the same ingredients that make up a society – though fragile, they often drive ambitious individuals like Tóth to escape one decaying nation for another. However, in his wake, he leaves behind a path of splendors, including this film, despite its shortcomings, which is one such example.

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2024-12-18 14:32