Writer’s note: The second paragraph of this article (just below the first image) contains a basic outline of the film’s premise. There are no spoilers that weren’t already inferred in the film’s own trailer. However, if you want to completely avoid potential spoilers, skip over the second paragraph.
When something is called an ‘event movie’, it usually refers to the biggest films, with the biggest stars, with the most epic stories. These are films which everyone goes to see, as they’re usually massive spectacles that you have to see on the big screen. For the last few decades, these movies have often been big action packed blockbusters with very broad appeal. By today’s standards, event movies from decades past seem very niche. Older event movies were often three or more hours long, had overtures and intermissions, and dealt with relatively mature subject matter. Thus, it is very hard to imagine now that audiences made blockbuster successes out of these kinds of productions. Today, three hour epics still come out and become massive hits, but only if they have masks, capes or dragons. That being said, Brady Corbet aims to bring back classical event movies with The Brutalist (2024).
The story picks up directly after WWII, with Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody) forcibly separated from his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy). László has made his way to the United States of America, hoping to find work while he lives with his already naturalised cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola). After a few false starts, László meets a wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who takes interest in László’s Bauhaus architecture. Harrison commissions László to design a building as a tribute to the industrialist’s mother, but László has different artistic aspirations with this project. Things aren’t easy for László, as his heroin addiction, and his immigrant status, result in people exploiting him.
From a production perspective, Brady Corbet has delivered a near masterpiece with The Brutalist. Despite its minuscule $9.6 million budget, the scale of the film feels absolutely massive, dwarfing what many $100 million productions manage. With its gorgeously wide locations, massive set constructions, and realistic period detail, The Brutalist successfully recaptures the enveloping scope of classic event films. Corbet’s camera slowly lingers over every detail, intending to completely transfix the viewer with his beautifully bleak world. Some may say that this is an imitation of classic epics like Reds (1981) or Amadeus (1984), but The Brutalist actually feels like it came from earlier decades of filmmaking.
While all this certainly feels like it puts The Brutalist into very high esteem, there is a nagging sense that it is only that: a feeling. On the surface, no one would ever question The Brutalist’s status as a masterpiece, given the artful direction, perfect performances, and seemingly complex themes. The script aims for the highest highs of nuanced storytelling, being packed to the brim with serious minded issues such as Holocaust trauma, objectivism, drug addiction, sexual frustration, sexual abuse, immigration, discrimination, self-determination and antisemitism. With all these heavy ideas, The Brutalist can’t help but feel like it should be an important and deeply powerful film. However, once you dig a little deeper, you unfortunately find that The Brutalist may be biting off more than it can chew.
To start with, let’s unpack how the film addresses its most central themes of discrimination towards immigrants. It’s obvious that Corbet is trying to deliver a message about how the powerful in the United States have exploited, controlled and beaten down those who are perceived as different. The Brutalist’s intention is to show that no matter how hard a hardworking immigrant tries, they will unfortunately always be used and hated by powerful bigots. Despite this noble thematic intention, the film’s plot and character beats imply something slightly different. Namely, The Brutalist accidentally places blame on the victim, suggesting that László put himself in a position to be discriminated against and exploited. This mishandled storytelling completely confuses everything else the film is trying to say, as it’s clearly an accident and not what is intended. There are also questions as to whether or not the production team grasps the cultural or historical reality of their characters, or the nature of racial discrimination in general. These themes feel like a result of research, not personal experience, and this is what causes the confused messaging.
What makes this mismanaged storytelling especially frustrating, is that it’s due to some very clichéd character development. For all its apparent complexity, the things that actually affect the plot are very simplistic and overdone. Thus, László’s heroin addiction is crippling not just to him, but to the film as a whole. We’ve seen film protagonists be addicted to drugs time and time again, that it has practically lost all meaning. In the case of The Brutalist, it is somehow both underdeveloped and given too much sway over the story, resulting in a slew of similarly overused dramatic tropes. For a film which is going out of its way to be as bold, brave and unique, it falls into obvious storytelling traps too frequently. These aren’t bad story choices in theory, but it’s somewhat deflating when the rest of the film aims for complexity and nuance. This is especially disappointing, as it reduces what could’ve been a powerful analysis of trauma into something skin deep.
Regardless, there is definitely still some genuine merit in the thematic presentation, as the film’s visuals allow the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Corbet’s direction and Lol Crawley’s cinematography take an objective view, allowing the audience to simply observe and think. That’s probably why The Brutalist has become such a huge talking point among filmmakers, film critics and film buffs. Corbet has presented a large, blank table, and invites the viewer to bring their own thoughts, perspectives and ideas to that table. It’s the type of filmmaking that greatly excites those who love artful and interpretative stories, but it still leaves the viewer feeling cold, empty and wondering what on earth the final point was. This would’ve been fine if the film had a David Lynch-esque open ending, but it’s clear from the final moments that Corbet did have a point to make. So, we can’t help but wonder why the film kept us at arms length if it was going to try and make a closing statement.
Its artistic presentation is masterful and its staggeringly high ambitions are admirable, but The Brutalist can’t quite live up to its own lofty expectations. Once you start peeling back its layers, you find that it’s a little too hollow to be as emotionally involving as it wants to be, and a little too simplistic to be as intellectually challenging as it tries to be. The Brutalist is an expertly crafted and respectable film, but it probably won’t create a rebirth of classical ‘event movies’. Unless of course, it makes $100 million or more, and that seems unlikely.
6.5/10
Best way to watch it: With an intermission… which it does have thankfully.
