The Brutalist (2024) – Review

Quick Thoughts – Grade – A – Filmed in 34 days (what?) this $10 million budgeted epic is a thrilling and ambitious piece of filmmaking. Watch it!

In an interview with Variety, Corbet compared making a movie to constructing a skyscraper. It’s an interesting analogy because not only is there a tremendous amount of planning, there’s also budgets, egos, and clients who justifiably have a voice during the production/construction of each. László Tóth (Adrien Brody), the lead character of The Brutalist finds this out when he’s tasked with building a massive brutalist structure for a millionaire industrialist named Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Amongst many other things, The Brutalist focuses on what happens when ambitious creative freedom meets the worried accountants of a blowhard millionaire.

What’s interesting is that Corbett has constructed a skyscraper of a movie for the price of a McMansion. To avoid opinions and notes, Corbet raised the $10 million budget over seven years and cut many corners to ensure that every cent was seen on screen. After years of delays due to Covid and other issues, Corbet shot the film in Hungary (and Italy) and edited it in the U.K to ensure some money-saving tax incentives. The finished product is a gorgeous 3.5 hour masterpiece that is split into two parts, an epilogue and a 15-minute intermission. It’s the type of film that only comes from a frustrated artist who wants to create something outside of the system – and it’s beautiful to behold in VistaVision.

The Brutalist revolves around a Hungarian-Jewish architect named László Tóth who made his way to America in 1947 and found himself living in Philadelphia with his cousin Attilla (Allessandro Nivola) and his American wife Audrey (Emma Laird). Attila owns a furniture shop and with the help of Lászlóstarts building a customer base which leads to an architectural assignment for Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn – at his smarmy best), the son of a millionaire industrialist named Harrison Lee Van Buren. László’s modern designs are detested at first, but he is eventually hired by Harrison to build a community center that will stand as his legacy. 

On top of building a gigantic concrete structure on a hill in Doylestown, Pennsylvania,László, who is a functioning heroin-addict, also has to juggle the arrival of his mute niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) and his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), who developed osteoporosis after years of malnourishment during World War II. The reunion is bittersweet as the intelligent and capable Erzsébet learns that László has poured all of his pay into the project and refuses to compromise with the Lee Van Buren lawyers and advisors. During the production, Corbet barely saw his daughter because the film owned his life, and the same goes with Tóth as he dives headfirst into the project and wants to see it through no matter the physical and mental cost.

It feels a bit odd writing a short review about a film that required an immense amount of work to complete (much like most films, but this one is special). I hope the main takeaway from this review is that readers learn that The Brutalist is an ambitious and thrilling experience. Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Alessandro Nivola, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy and Stacy Martin are all excellent, and they must’ve taken massive pay cuts to take part in a film like this – and I admire them for it. The cinematography by Lol Crawley (Four Lions, The Devil All the Time, Vox Lux) is inspired and I appreciate how he made the film look epic while shooting in a widescreen variant of the 35 mm motion picture film format known as VistaVision. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Crawley said “What you see is What we shot,” and I love knowing how deliberate Crawley and Corbet were with their shot selection that included very little coverage and not much of a safety net for the final edit. The production design by Judy Becker (Carol, Brokeback Mountain, Garden State) is unsurprisingly top-notch and she said it was a “dream come true” working on the film because she had to “draw on every inspiration, idea and element in my inner library to become László Tóth.” There are some gorgeous moments that take place in the vast Carrara marble quarries and the scale of the performances, production design and cinematography combine to create a low-budget epic that feels grand.

Between The Pianist and The Brutalist, Brody has excelled in “ist” movies and in an interview with IndieWire he says that “The Brutalist “begins almost where [The Pianist] ended in a way. It is a Jewish immigrant’s journey, surviving.” He owns every second of the film and it’s been fun watching him collect trophies during the awards season because he’s rightfully earned them. Making The Brutalist must’ve been a draining and brutal experience for everyone involved, but the cast and crew supported Corbet’s vision and the end result is something special.