REVIEW: “The Brutalist” (2024)

WRITER’S NOTE: The following was originally posted on my Facebook page on February 21, 2025. 

As both a throwback and tradition of numerous films with long runtimes and intermissions, there’s been a re-emergence in recent years of contemporary filmmakers who have both embraced those aspects and supposedly challenged the conventional commercialism and artificiality of modern cinema. On the heels of such titles as Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s Drive My Car and Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, actor-turned-director Brady Corbet (along with co-writer and partner Mona Fastvold) presents a sprawling, three-and-a-half-hour epic drama about a Hungarian architect (and Holocaust survivor) who emigrates to America after the Second World War for new opportunities, only to have those opportunities squandered. 

Shot in the rare and expensive 70mm VistaVision format (with a built-in 15-minute intermission), The Brutalist was reportedly filmed in 34 days, with a budget of no more than $10 million. It’s an astounding fact you wouldn’t think of when looking at the film, considering its ambitious scale. Not to mention its central visual and thematic element of brutalist architecture. It refers to an avant-garde style that combines both beauty and harshness—elements that encapsulate what Corbet’s film is. 

I’ll admit, I was on the fence about this Best Picture nominee (also up for nine additional awards), as it seemed like one of those pretentious, “Oscar bait” types. I have to say I was quite surprised by what Corbet and company were able to pull off with what they had, despite controversies surrounding the reported use of AI in post-production (primarily to make sure leads Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones’s Hungarian accents for their respective characters were authentic and consistent). The extensive use of archival footage throughout the film likely played a key role in keeping with its budget. I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to Frances Ford Coppola’s Godfather films (especially the 3-hour-22-minute Part II from 1974). 

The Brutalist is an astounding combination of old-school analogue filmmaking and contemporary sensibilities and techniques, including guerrilla-style perspective shots and long takes. (The opening scene on a ferry coming into New York City, glimpsing the Statue of Liberty upside down, is a key example.) Even the way the credits (set to composer Daniel Blumberg’s great score) are stylized feels like something I had never seen before. Ditto the image of a wedding photo during the intermission. (Once again, Godfather vibes.) Title cards give the story a novelistic tone, as do montage sequences of letters written between characters while intercut with architectural construction and progress. And the buildings themselves, from their blueprints to their development and/or completion, are mesmerizing to watch. Ditto the quarries in Italy. 

There are also first-rate and layered performances from Brody (thoroughly engaging as architect László Tott), Jones (as his supportive and long-suffering, wheelchair-bound wife Erzsébet, who suffers from osteoporosis), Guy Pearce (as wealthy and complex businessman Harrison Lee Van Buren), Raffey Cassidy (as László’s mute niece Zsófia), and Isaach De Bankolé (as a homeless father who becomes one of László’s closest friends and coworkers). I was also surprised to see veteran character actor Jonathan Hyde in an almost unrecognizable supporting role. (My generation would know him from 90s movies like Richie Rich, Jumanji, and Titanic.)  

But while the first half of the film (titled, “The Enigma of Arrival”) sets things up steadily, even with potential hope on the horizon, nothing prepares you for the rough and harsh reality of the second-half of the story. (This slow-burn Part II is titled, “The Hard Core of Beauty.”) The film features pornographic nudity and sexuality (including a pre-opening-credits scene at a brothel, and later a horrendous rape scene that made me turn away from the screen). There are also scenes of heroin use and addiction, with characters slowly losing themselves and sinking into depravity—with life-threatening consequences. Add to that haunting issues of antisemitism, sexism, greed, and quiet deception (“snakes” in the mix), including those who ask about the war but don’t really understand. A Goethe quote that opens the film reads, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free.” Nevertheless, those deeply problematic and morally damaging (if cautionary) elements put this otherwise rare moviegoing experience out of bounds for me to recommend. 

When asked to give a reason for his chosen profession, László responds that his projects were not built for political statements or agendas, but to endure harsh times, contrary to artificiality and commercialism. There’s also the question of what to do with them, even those unfinished or unresolved. The same could be said for this film’s final act, which seems to leave a few stones unturned, including László’s drug addiction, as well as another climactic pin-drop moment, and a subversive epilogue featuring a Euro-pop soundtrack. 

Perhaps that “Oscar bait” label may still be applicable here. (Or maybe not, it’s hard to say for sure.) There is poetry and ambition, even passion and (as Van Buren, Sr. describes) “intellectual stimulation” in The Brutalist, to be sure. Some of the buildings may (still) stand, but their founding and backstories are as harsh as they are jaw-dropping. Mixed emotions and breakdowns included, whether you believe the film is too long or not long enough. 

#filmfreeq #bekerianreviews #21stcenturycinema #a24 #bradycorbet #monafastvold #thebrutalist2024