In many ways, The Brutalist is an impressive artistic achievement. It is a sweeping post- WWII story about immigration and a fading chapter of American history. It is a serious, thoughtful film that is deeply character-driven, and epic in proportion, covering multiple decades (from the 1950s to the 1980s).
Adrien Brody stars as László Tóth, a visionary architect fleeing Europe at the end of the Second World War.
He is forced to leave his wife and young niece behind until he can find work and save enough money for them to join him.
When he arrives, he is taken in by his cousin and his cousin’s wife who own a small furniture business in Philadelphia. He lives in a cramped spare room next to the store’s small showroom.
Opportunity appears to knock when Lászió is offered a job redesigning a private library in the mansion of a rich, temperamental businessman, Harrison Lee Van Buren (played by Guy Pearce). While the initial encounter is disastrous, a friendship forms when the millionaire realizes that László is a man of enormous talent with an impressive resume of work that he had done in Europe.
His buildings and designs were stunning examples of a daring modern trend that acquired the label Brutalist Architecture, Van Buren offers László the opportunity to design and build a massive, multi-purpose community center.
The building of the project is the centerpiece of The Brutalist. Much is at stake, but it allows Lászió to be reunited with his wife and niece. Following the war, the U.S. Government welcomed tens of thousands of “displaced persons” to emigrate to the United States to start a new life. It was a far cry from current immigration politics, but it was not without its own obstacles and problems stemming from assimilation and acceptance.
Upon his arrival, Lászió discovered that, when his cousin tells him that he felt pressured to change his last name to Miller in order to disguise his Jewish ancestry. For the sake of blending into the community, the cousin named his business Miller and Sons even though he has no sons. It was more acceptable.
The Brutalist is a long, three-and-a-half-hour film split into two parts with a 15-minute intermission, much like classic epic movies of the past like The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959). While many current movies run long, none of them have an overture or quarter-hour intermission.
While the first half of the movie moves at a slow pace, it has the appearance of a quality foreign film, beautifully photographed in soft, muted light. The art direction and costume design create a very believable world of the past. There is loving attention to realism and detail.
Adding to the movie’s impressiveness are the performances of Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones as Lászió’s wife who arrives in America in a wheelchair resulting from years of starvation that she had kept secret. The performances are exceptional, in particular that of Adrien Brody who won an Oscar in 2003 for Best Actor in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist.
Likewise, Brady Corbet’s direction is restrained, but powerful. It all works in the first half of The Brutalist. The story is slow but steady, leading into the intermission break.
Sadly, the second half of the film attempts to do too much in resolving all the plot points and connecting all the dots. It’s a stylistic jump that make the two halves of the film seem strangely disconnected.
It’s a shame. The Brutalist starts out as a bold story of suffering, struggle and success that embraces darker story elements like drug addiction and sex. It is a showcase of acting talent that might find favor more with movie critics than movie audiences at the multi-plexes
In many ways, it is a movie very much worth seeing, that is to say, at least the first half.
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