Images courtesy of A24
THE BRUTALIST– 2 STARS
LESSON #1: THE MANY SYNONYMS FOR “MUSE”— Over the course of an unwieldy 215 minutes, Brady Corbet’s opus and critical darling The Brutalist calls to mind many synonyms for the verb form of “muse.” When the film’s precarious pendulum swings close to triumph and success, the musing harmonizes towards “contemplating” and “dreaming,” and Daniel Blumberg’s musical score follows suit with its own flourishes. Conversely, the orchestrational tone regresses and the musing modulates closer to “ruminating” and “brooding” when collapse rears its ugly head.
No matter which state of said musing is permeating pervasively at any given moment across that ponderous spectrum in The Brutalist, one top synonym for “muse” constantly seems to be missing: FEEL. The heaviness of the drama between the dreaming and brooding most certainly weighs down the beleaguered main character László Tóth, played by The Pianist Oscar winner Adrien Brody. He feels it all. The question is do we or can we, as the viewer, with the same strenuous sentiment? Too often, this is a film where even the most bracing and intimate displays of emotions– framed, dressed, and queued for maximum impact by towering production value– feels like a chasm instead of an arm’s length away.
The Brutalist begins in patriotic fashion with László’s inspirational arrival to the United States of America where his first sunlit view of the country is, as it was for so many immigrants, the imposing profile cast by The Statue of Liberty in New York City. The year is 1947, and he is a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who has traveled ahead of his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, narrating letters off-screen until her eventual arrival in the second half) and niece Zsófia (grown-up child actress Raffey Cassidy) to secure a footing in the fabled Land of Opportunity. Previously a revered architect in his native country, László is meeting his cousin Attila (current Kraven the Hunter co-star Alessandro Nivola) in the Philadelphia area who has a steady furniture business.
In short order, the over-qualified László shows his talent through custom furniture creations supported by Attilla. He gets the opportunity to take that aptitude a step further when the two are commissioned by Harry Lee Van Buren (Kinds of Kindness ensemble member Joe Alwyn)– the spoiled son of the wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (guaranteed Oscar nominee Guy Pearce)– to redesign his father’s library and study. Meant as a beautiful surprise, the drastic renovation enrages Harrison, who refuses to pay for the project. That financial hit eventually sends László down the ladder to poverty and menial jobs instead of fulfilling ones.
LESSON #2: FINDING A PATRON FOR YOUR WORK– Years later, Harrison has learned of László’s past expertise and architectural successes in Hungary and sought him out to pay him properly for his completed work on the now-lauded library. Enamored with his own ambition, Harrison commissions László to design and build a massive community center in Doylestown, Pennsylvania as a lasting centerpiece of his family’s legacy. This lucrative assignment grants the immigrant creative freedom and charitable access to Harrison’s lawyer who accelerates Erzsébet and Zsófia’s arrival in America.
It is at this arrival point after a self-inserted intermission that The Brutalist spends its sizable second half intentionally warping most of its positive musings. Artistic favor fades and the golden parachute fails. The sweeping marriage László envisioned with Erzsébet doesn’t meet his expectations, and his long-standing heroin addiction only gets worse. Beset by years of construction challenges and labor difficulties, the community center becomes a financial disaster as László cannot separate himself from Harrison’s wavering whims and resolute stances of privilege and superiority.
LESSON #3: THE ILLUSION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM– With these escalating trials and tribulations written by Corbet and his partner Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist unfurls a defeated version of the American Dream. Even when László is lifted or labeled to be the transcendental phenom that he is within his artistic medium, the proud Jewish man is never seen or treated as a true equal to the other Melting Pot demographics present. The downfall experienced by László represents an ugly illusion, where any perceived success, respect, or freedom existed only because it was briefly granted by the rich and powerful for their own gain. In this film’s America, the rich are necessary trendsetters and economic drivers, and a commoner’s own ambition is almost always usurped by the ambition of someone above them in station.
Without question, the most damning lines in The Brutalist cementing this fracture of enterprise were hearing “They don’t want us here” from one side and “We tolerate you” from the other. Festering inside this hateful stratosphere of constant prejudice, The Brutalist builds its symbolic stumps which are meant to mirror our current present day statuses of unwelcoming immigration policies, still-rampant anti-semitism, and unregulated elitism. There is, assuredly, an attempted self-importance available to mine within those echoes, but choreographing a story of nearly total failure is a difficult way to evoke tangible and lasting poignancy. Even a fast-forwarded epilogue willing finally give out flowers cannot create a fitting final swell.
The trouble is The Brutalist cannot decide whether to peck at that facade with an awl or swing at it with a sledgehammer. Too often, it hands the wrong figurative tool to the actors for the wrong moments. Appreciably, Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce are formidably locked into their roles and stalwart in their respective characters’ competing visions and varying sins of pride. However, big moments get unsuccessfully needled while small ones get overly demolished, which ultimately betrays more characters than Brody’s and Pearce’s. Can you postulate capitalism with the sexual urges of dominance? Can you make a grand thing boil down to that? More and more, those types of uneven treatments skew both momentum and empathy. We get it. America can fuck anyone over, but, unfortunately, so does The Brutalist when it’s all said and done.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1251)
