A film that takes in immigration, massive architectural challenges, drug addiction, the Bauhaus art movement, the establishment of the Jewish state and capitalism has got its work cut out so its little wonder that director and co-writer Brady Corbet of The Brutalist has made an epic three and half hour film that incorporates an interval to handle these topics and more beside.
Laszlo Toth ( Adrien Brody) is the fictional Hungarian architect The Brutalist of the title. A European immigrant to the US he lands in a post war US with nothing except the clothes on his back. He’s taken in by his cousin Attila (the always watchable Alessandro Nivola) offering him a job in his furniture story Miller & Sons, a non-existent family name with no sons either) but it’s a bed, a roof, food and running water in return for working there and in such capacity he designs chairs which draws the attention of customers. It also gets him a commission by the son of wealthy industrialist Harrison Van Buren ( Guy Pearce) to redesign his library as a birthday surprise. And it is a surprise for Van Buren who returns early and is incandescent with rage that a bunch of strangers are in his house and redecorating it not to his liking, But Van Buren later finds that Toth is an architect of some repute in his homeland and offers him a small fortune plus a promise to bring his wife Erzebet (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece Zsofia ( Raffey Cassidy) to the US if he will design and build a community centre in memory of his late mother.
That a camel is often described as a horse designed by a committee is an apt description of what Toth soon finds himself up against here in a project that will is increasingly becoming something of a folly as cost and other facts delay the project. And it’s this that becomes the utterly engrossing first half of the film before audiences will get an onscreen 15 minute countdown interval giving you time to absorb what is already a remarkable film.
Part Two covers 1953 – 1960 and its sees the arrival of Toth’s wife Erzebet played by Felicity Jones a very good actress here looking like comic actor Rebecca Front’s daughter but sounding like Borat’s long lost sister. The second half sees his prediction for drugs that often sees him in a heroin haze that counters his quick temper as he battles Van Buren and his right hand man along with a number of other factors that makes the completion of what has become a ‘years in the making’ construction seem an impossibility. The second half of the film is perhaps not as engrossing as the first but it is nonetheless something to behold especially if seen in 70mm glory – scenes in a marble quarry are stunningly photographed.
Director Brady Corbet has made a truly epic film that has so many themes that the film rewards a second viewing. An array of great scenes that sees Van Buren trying to exert the upper hand and control over Toth are terrific and Brody and Pearce excel in a film that will surely be showered with accolades and it is hard to imagine what might other film might be a serious contender for Best Film.
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Here’s The Brutalist trailer…..
