The Brutalist, a film by Brady Corbet

Bauhaus meets Bathos. 

I enjoy long movies, if the length is justified. In the case of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, justification falls in the category of “I just wanted to,” not “The story needs this.” Laszlo Toth, the Brutalist architect subject of this pic, is portrayed as a junkie, homosexual, a Hungarian Jewish refugee whose best friend is a Black man, in America starting in 1947. Are these Corbet’s conceits, inserted to make Toth more relevant to our time, or more appealing, or sympathetic, or whatever? And, more to the point, what do any of those character traits have to do with Toth’s vision as a designer? 

This busy movie has 2 fully-realized characters: Adrien Brody’s Toth and Guy Pearce’s Harrison Van Buren. The rest are vehicles, sidekicks, and amplifiers of their passions. Brody plays a tormented outsider with creative vision, as he has before (think The Pianist). Guy Pearce gets to chew the scenery as a volatile man rich enough to force people to his will. He becomes Toth’s patron after a surprise by his children (transformation of his fusty library/ reading room into a modern space), which first enrages, then fascinates him. 

What the two men find in each other is a good listener. Van Buren waxes long-winded about his relationship with his mother, and with her parents who shunned her as an out-of-wedlock mother until in their old age they sought support. Then he pulled a cruel trick. He tells this story with the pride of a man who has bested a demon. Toth’s more circumspect, but he does talk about his artistry – the only part of this rambling film that interested me. 

Temper flare-ups from the clash between purity of vision and the realities of construction are performative. And why is Toth’s Black friend Gordon (Isaach de Bankole), who follows him from Philadelphia to sharing his bedroom at the Van Buren estate, accepted as his friend and equal? This relationship is not supported by the reality of 1950s America. Gordon, like other plot vehicles, serves a purpose: he introduces Toth to heroin. 

Even Toth’s Judaism feels like Corbet checking a box – Toth doesn’t mind designing Christian churches, nor does he seek friendship or comfort in the synagogue where he attends services. As an Orthodox Jew I didn’t see him refusing trayf foods – either his Jewish heritage matters to him or it doesn’t. 

The film is indulgent – I could take an hour out of its running time and you’d never miss it. My advice to Mr. Corbet is to go see Universal Language, a brilliantly subversive film by Matthew Rankin, in which you never know what’s going to happen next, but it makes its own sense when it does. In The Brutalist, I could see every plot twist coming a mile off. 

Adrien Brody, on the other hand, should play Samuel Beckett – if Tom Stoppard wrote the script, and Matthew Rankin directed, I’d go see that, whatever its run-time.