THE BRUTALIST

The Brutalist thrillingly recalls the grand American movie epics of the fifties in ambition, themes and psychology, not to mention the exquisite use of the immersive VistaVision filming process.

A film that starts with an overture, is well over three hours long and includes a mid-movie intermission could be interpreted as a relic of the past or an exercise in style over substance. Yet with The Brutalist director Brady Corbet somehow fashions an engrossing picture that deconstructs the past and analyses the present in equal measure.

The Brutalist follows fifteen years in the life of an iconoclast Hungarian architect who flees the European concentration camps and starts a new life in the United States, where a wealthy businessman commissions him to construct a monumental building in memory of his deceased mother.

While there is a strong plot that ties the movie’s many hefty themes together with an emotional resonance that could have been culled straight from a Great American Novel, The Brutalist is at heart a film about grand ideas: the role of architecture in society, the way trauma shapes art and the tribulations of the immigrant experience.

Even to me this sounded as a recipe for hubris on behalf of Brady Corbet – none of whose previous films as a director I enjoyed – but he pulls off a minor miracle. Not all of his big swings pay off, including the rather hammy, pompous epilogue, but for much of the movie you are so engrossed by the brilliant acting, the propulsive music and VistaVision images which perfectly combine the epic with the intimate, that you cannot help but be mightily impressed.

I’m sure The Brutalist will not be to everyone’s taste: the film to some extent invites itself to be called elitist, cold and intellectual. Despite some minor flaws I was totally won over however, to such an extent that I wouldn’t mind if the film capitalised on all of its ten Oscar nominations in early March.

release: 2024

director: Brady Corbet

starring: Adrian Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn