by A.J.
Best Pictures #108: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee
The Brutalist
“Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?”
The Brutalist begins with a powerful and most memorable image: refugees cramped and huddled on a ship pushing their way topside to their first view of the United States: the Statue of Liberty upside down. This chaotic, joyous sequence is among the best in the 3 1/2 hour movie, which includes an intermission. The rest of this epic length immigrant story about art, the post-second-world-war world, and the American dream comes close but never quite lives up to this brilliant opening.
The upside down view of the Statue of Liberty belongs to the fictional architect László Tóth, a Hungarian Jew and survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, played by Adrian Brody. After a brief stay in New York he arrives in Philadelphia to live and work with a cousin, played by the always good Alessandro Nivola, who immigrated years before, changed his name from Molnar to Miller, converted to Christianity, has a pretty blonde wife, and a small furniture business. He seems to be living the ideal immigrant life but none of it feels right to László, including the style of furniture. László’s opportunity to shine and be creative again comes when they are hired to renovate the library of a wealthy American businessman, Harrison Van Buren, played by the always good, but especially good here, Guy Pearce. Years pass and Van Buren tracks down László, now shoveling coal, to hire him to build a massive community center for the suburb of Doylestown, Van Buren’s getaway. With a few phone calls and letters Van Buren brings László’s wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece from Hungary to live with László on the Van Buren estate. Van Buren does this not so much for their well being but to make László a happy worker and show off how he can make seemingly anything happen.
If you are unfamiliar with the architectural style of brutalism, you will remain so because there is no scene explaining it or why László’s style is so striking and different. There’s only one scene where László talks about what his architecture makes him feel—it’s built to last—and Brody makes the most of it. In small moments like this and bigger ones, Brody’s performance, his best in recent years outside of a Wes Anderson movie, is a major part of what sustains The Brutalist through its runtime. Brody has earned an Oscar nomination for his performance and rightfully so.
Guy Pearce, who has had a long and impressive career with performances to match, whether he is the do-gooder cop in LA Confidential or the tough guy action hero in Lockout (AKA Space Jail) has finally earned major recognition and also a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Pearce plays Van Buren as entitled and insidious as any supervillain, only he is far more disturbing and unsettling because he feels so realistic. Felicity Jones seems to get short shrift at first, and perhaps she does. Erzsébet used to report on foreign affairs in Hungary before the war, but we learn this only in passing. Her frustration with her new job—which Van Buren conjured up to keep her from distracting László—writing a "women’s column" is also dealt with only in passing. However, the climactic confrontation with Van Buren—an intense scene of pain and triumph through defiance—belongs to her. Jones’s performance, combined with the score and camerawork, make this another of the strongest scenes.
The liveliest scenes by far are of László designing and building. While still working for his cousin he creates a post-modern (brutalist) chair. The camera looks up at him as sparks fly into the bottom of the frame. This image was wisely used as the poster. Another memorable scene, perhaps the most visually stunning, is the awe inspiring sight of the world renowned marble quarry at Carras, Italy where entire sections of a mountain have been cut out and removed. The brilliant Oscar nominated cinematography Lol Crawley and score by Daniel Blumberg are at their best in these scenes, but unfortunately there are not enough of them. There is simply not enough brutalism in The Brutalist.
The conflict between László and his ultra-wealthy, demanding, and unrealistic patron should be the main driving force of the movie but it is only one of many threads. There is also the immigrant story thread; the Holocaust survivor thread; the post-war American dream thread. Then there is the story of a marriage. When act two begins after the intermission, László is overcome with emotion at being reunited with his wife, but then their dynamic becomes hard to pin down. Is the strain they feel now a result of the trauma of the war and Holocaust? Or were there troubles in their marriage before the war? There is also László’s heroin addiction which seems to be a problem only when the movie needs it to be and forgotten about the rest of the time (I have no personal experience with the terrible drug but films like Trainspotting have led me to believe that a heroin addiction is not quite so manageable.).
I really enjoyed director Brady Corbet's previous film, the strange portrait of a fictional pop star played by Natalie Portman in Vox Lux. There are aspects of The Brutalist that are unfortunately less strange and more odd. The use of a newsreel, whether authentic or created for the movie, to explain the idea of Pennsylvania is odd and unnecessary. Audio of an old newsreel explaining the dangers of heroin as László is on a bender is honestly more amusing than anything else. An epilogue set at the first Biennale in Venice in the 1980’s that raises more questions than it answers is another odd choice. The screenplay co-written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold has the makings of an epic tale but lacks focus. So The Brutalist presents the surprising conundrum of a 3 ½ hour movie being both too long and too short.
Nominees: Nick Gordon, Brian Young, Andrew Morrison, D.J. Gugenheim and Brady Corbet, Producers
Director: Brady Corbet
Screenplay: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
Cast: Adrian Brody, Guy Pierce, Felicity Jones
Production Companies: Brookstreet Pictures, Kaplan Morrison
Distributor: A24
Release Date: December 20th, 2024
Total Nominations: 10, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: Actor-Adrian Brody; Supporting Actor-Guy Pierce; Supporting Actress-Felicity Jones; Director-Brady Corbet; Original Screenplay-Brady Corbet,Mona Fastvold; Cinematography-Lol Crawley; Editing-Dávid Jancsó; Production Design-Judy Becker (production designer),Patricia Cuccia (set decorator); Original Score-Daniel Blumberg
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