The Brutalist (2025.10, Provocative , Huge )

The Brutalist – Michael’s Moments

Laszlo: Nothing is of its own explanation.  Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?

Erszebet: (later in the story) This place is rotten.  The landscape, the food we eat.  This whole country is rotten.

It was a bit of a challenge, but I actually watched this very long movie twice, and the second time was even more enjoyable than the first.  But I’m not sure most people have the time or interest to do that, especially to watch a strange movie about an immigrant architect.  The problem, and the joy, of The Brutalist is that it is just plain ambitious.  The film is packed with messages about courage and fortitude, immigrants, love, architecture, and capitalism.  In the first quote I selected above, Laszlo is explaining what his concept of architecture is to his rich patron, Harrison.  Harrison, a man pretty much devoid of artistic creativity, is enthralled with Laszlo.  And it is Harrison’s fascination that leads him to finance a huge work of a lifetime for Laszlo.

After Laszlo succeeds in getting his wife to America, with Harrison’s help, things evolve, and the relationship between Harrison and Laszlo changes significantly, although not actually because of her presence.  Instead, it seems, Harrison’s motives seem more unclear, but are critical to the movie.  Erszebet understands things better than Laszlo does, and she makes her comment.

The movie is about people, but it’s also about ideas.  Laszlo represents the human spirit at its best, resilient, creative, smart, loving.  Harrison is also human, but perhaps not at its best.  Although his expertise in the affairs of the purse allows him to fund Laszlo’s project, it is never really clear what his ultimate goal is.  But, in the end, we see his focus on power and control.  It is a fascinating study of opposites.  And it is an uncomfortable indictment of contemporary America!

If you are willing to make a commitment, you will love this movie.  But you are in for a long haul!

The Brutalist – Story and Tone:

The reason The Brutalist is more than three hours long is because of the huge amount of information and emotion that the writers have tried to deliver.  Called The Brutalist, and with the lead character a Hungarian architect who comes to the U.S. after WWII, it is assumed that this is the story of Marcel Breuer, the famed architect who, among other things, gave us the original Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, a favorite example of Brutalist architecture.  But I researched Breuer some this week and, frankly, I can’t find much evidence that the events of this movie, aside from the simple facts stated above, ever occurred.  I could find no evidence that Breuer was ever even near a Nazi concentration camp.  And he renounced his Jewish faith in the 1920s in order to marry a gentile, whom he divorced eight years later and married a Connecticut woman, Constance Leighton, in 1940.  (He did design the Wassily chair which looks very similar to one that Laszlo designed in the movie!).

So it is very important that we understand that, aside from being a Hungarian architect, there is little relationship to the famed exponent of the architectural style called Brutalism.  Instead, we should view this movie as a very long and complicated story of a man and his struggle with life, love, and the universe.  The first 10 minutes or so of the movie, before the credits roll, condense Toth’s origin story into a very effective sight and sound montage.  We move fairly quickly from air raid sirens to the screams of a concentration camp to the hold of a ship and the first sighting of the Statue of Liberty.  We also hear the recitation of a letter from someone whom we will come to know as his wife.  The words are in Hungarian.  After arriving in New York, Toth and his shipmate buddy head off to a whorehouse where Toth has some difficulty and laments the woman’s “space above the brow”.  Obviously, he has a complicated story and is struggling to find his place in this new world.

The value of this story lies in just how difficult his life is.  Confronted with problem after problem, the movie’s strength is in how resilient Laszlo is and how consistently he maintains his values.  And then he falls into the grace of a rich capitalist, Harrison Lee Van Buren, and it appears that his luck will change.  With Van Buren’s contacts, Toth is able to bring his wife, Erszebet, and his mute niece, Zsofia, to the U.S. (That doesn’t happen until the second half of the movie, after intermission).  Life is good— maybe too good…

To go into much more detail about this story would spoil it.  But clearly, the best way to enjoy The Brutalist is to buckle yourself in for a special cinematic journey through one man’s life with the people around him.  Some argue that the ending is disappointing.  Maybe.  Perhaps it depends on just what the viewer expects out of their own life.

This is Brady Corbet’s first nomination as director and he and his partner, Mona Fastvold, wrote the script for this amazing movie which was also nominated.  Corbet has good instinct for what he wants in a movie – perhaps if he could be just a little bit more economical, then he might enjoy more popular appeal.

Related Movies:   (None I am aware of.)

The Brutalist – Storytellers

Movies often get their synergy from the chemistry between the actors who, when they are good, are able to share their energy with the rest of the cast, infecting them with additional enthusiasm and, often, boosted performance.  Such is the case in what I call “ensemble” movies, where multiple cast members are nominated for Oscars.  The Brutalist is a great example of an ensemble movie.

Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) – Toth is our protagonist in this movie, and it tells his story pretty much from his point of view.  He is a Jewish Hungarian architect who, as the movie recounts in the first 10-minute montage, was held in a prison camp, was liberated, and found his way to the U.S. with the help of his family.  Separated from his wife for years, the architect who had no small amount of success before the war is now reduced to sleeping in homeless shelters, eating in soup kitchens, and trying, at least, to get unsatisfying sex in a whorehouse.  Because of no fault of his own, a once happy, successful man is reduced to a splinter of his former self.  And then luck changes – or so it seems.

The Laszlo character is immensely complicated and is not an easy performance, and yet Brody seems to embody this man as if it were his own history and future.  A man of obvious wisdom and persistence, he manages to survive despite repeated obstacles and dead ends.  His love and need for his lost wife are so strong that alternative paths aren’t satisfying, and he turns to an easier means of solace.  This is a difficult character with multiple problems and conflicting dimensions.

This is Adrien Brody’s second nomination and his second Oscar win!  Somehow, he nails this performance with an implicit understanding of his character, probably drawing on the experiences of his parents.  As you watch Brody’s Laszlo, pay attention to how he draws on his strengths when he’s at his lowest and how he always pays attention to his fellows who might be even lower.  He can talk to a millionaire with intellectual stimulation while conversing with his wife in tender feelings.  This was a difficult role, and Brody pulled it off.  Enjoy his performance.

Erzsebet Toth (Felicity Jones) – Erzsebet (Elizabeth in English) is Laszlo’s wife.  Although we hear her voice as voiceovers in recited letters from her to her husband, we don’t see her at all for nearly two hours into the movie.  When she does arrive, it is one of the most important events in Laszlo’s life.  Their first night together, after years of being separated and, initially, no knowing if the other was even alive, is an intense evening.  As Erzsebet struggles to regain intimacy with her husband, she finds it may take a while.  Felicity Jones was nominated for supporting actress here, and she gives a powerful and difficult performance in the Van Buren mansion at the movie’s climactic ending.  But my favorite Felicity role was as Hawking’s wife in The Theory of Everything.  As you follow Jones in The Brutalist, watch her facial expressions!

Harrison Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce) – I don’t know Guy Pearce well at all, and this is his first Oscar nomination.  In this movie, he initially plays the super-rich millionaire patron ready to set Laszlo up for life with an architectural project beyond his wildest dreams.  (It’s kind of fun to consider that the budget is set at, what was then, a staggering $850,000! – oh how far we’ve come…or not!).  But Harrison isn’t exactly what he appears to be.  And his insecurities eventually create havoc for both him and all those around him.  (One question you should have early on is why the rich Harrison has no wife?).   Pearce plays this very difficult role with aplomb and makes the ambiguity of this capitalist’s moral character very real.

Harry Lee (Joe Alwyn) – Another Brit, born in 1991, Alwyn plays Harrison’s son, Harry.  He’s a spoiled character, but in lots of ways, reminds me of the Trump sons – rich kids playing games with people’s lives with money they didn’t earn!  It’s a fun supporting performance.

Related Movies: The Pianist; Blonde; The French Dispatch (Brody)/ The Theory of Everything; The Midnight Sky (Jones)/ Mary Queen of Scots (Pearce)/ Harriet; Mary Queen of Scots; The Favourite (Alwyn)

The Brutalist – Movie Magic

The Brutalist is nothing if it isn’t bold!  While the story is complex and touches on so many themes, many relevant to today’s frightening world, one of the key reasons to see this movie is because of how it stretches movie making with techniques and ideas that would frighten most filmmakers.

Cinematographer LoL Crawley won the Oscar for his groundbreaking techniques in The Brutalist.  One was the decision to film the movie in the 1950s technology called VistaVision, a technique that hasn’t been used in films for more than six decades.  Then there are the ways technique was adapted to a scene’s situation.  How better to convey movement and transition than by mounting the camera on the front of the car while driving down a country highway or, similarly, on the front of a train engine while hustling down the track?  What better way to integrate what you are about to see with the right sense of history than by playing old movie newsreels talking about how modern and important Pennsylvania was during the post-war era?  Laszlo’s sexual difficulties are cast in ways that emphasize the carnality of the moment but often with a tenderness suggesting distance and lack of involvement.  And then, with his wife Erzsebet, scenes are cast behind thin veils emphasizing their tenderness.  There’s a scene after the intermission where the construction cranes move, as a dance to the pulsating music, in fast-motion, but always with a sunset background – a beautiful scene.  The list of artistic and creative uses of the movie camera could go on; it is a must-see movie for this reason.

None of those techniques would matter a whole lot if they couldn’t be stitched together in a coherent whole.  Editor David Jancso is a Hungarian editor who has been making movies and TV episodes since 2006.  He had the unenviable job of editing what must have amounted to thousands of hours of film, newsreels, and still images into a coherent movie experience.  He was nominated but did not win the Oscar for his work on The Brutalist.

These two men working with director Brady Corbet have produced a very long movie, and normally, a long movie is an indicator that the editing wasn’t done properly.  But in this case, a key part of the experience is to feel the passion of the movie maker as evidence of the intensity of the architect protagonist.  Throw in the spectacular soundtrack, and you have a first-rate movie.

Related Movies:  Pieces of a Woman (Film Editing)

The Brutalist – World Building

Although The Brutalist clocks in at more than 3 hours and 20 minutes, the longest of this year’s Best Picture nominees, it was produced on a budget of just $10 million.  The question is how do you do that?  

One of the answers is that the movie, although funded by U.S., British, and Canadian firms, was filmed almost entirely in Budapest, Hungary, and used largely Hungarian movie professionals.  Most scenes take place indoors, and those that don’t are framed with a more local perspective, so you never know that you aren’t, for example, actually in New York.  Most scenes are set in the late 40s and 50s and incorporate vehicles and clothing appropriate to the struggling times.  Nonetheless, this movie does its world building through the grounding in World War II history, not in expensive sets, elaborate costumes or hairstyles…people were struggling!

Related Movies: American Hustle (Production Design)/ Cyrano; 1917 (Makeup & Hairstyling)

The Brutalist – Sound & Music

Daniel Blumberg, a young man born in 1990 in London, started scoring movies only in 2019, and yet he won the Oscar for this musical score.  The music is often soft piano but can also pound with driving electronic percussive notes and soar with orchestral strings, or go improvisational with club jazz.  The music earned the Oscar and helps keep the movie together.  The soundtrack is longer than many feature movies and consists of 32 tracks with names like “Erzsebet”, “Handjob”, and “Marble” and “Search Party” give an idea of the range of emotions the music is charged with evoking.  Pay particular attention to the merging of sound and music in the overture montage in the first 10 minutes of the film – there is no dialogue but a rush of images and sound that introduce you to the setting and the history behind the story.

The sound team had some extra difficult assignments in The Brutalist.  Keeping the movie rolling amid some difficult scenes and, especially, when the scenes sometimes merge and overlap, was noticeably accomplished.  Part of what keeps you enchanted through more than three hours is the satisfying effects on your ears.

Related Movies:  Golda (Sound)

The Brutalist – What Others Think