Few films engage with architecture like “The Brutalist” does. In the film, director Brady Corbet does not relegate architecture to the background but instead explores it through the experience of a Holocaust refugee.
“The Brutalist” — set during World War II — follows Hungarian-Jewish architect Lazlo Toth (Adrien Brody), as he emigrates to the United States in 1947 after being separated from his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy). The film chronicles Toth’s life in the United States and his episodes of architectural brilliance. Those moments crest briefly over the film’s dominant backdrop — anguish.
At the start of Part One — the first of three, along with an intermission — dubbed “The Enigma of Arrival,” Toth moves to Philadelphia, Pa. where he works at a furniture store owned by his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola).
While working for Attila, Toth becomes acquainted with Harry (Joe Alwyn) — the son of wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) — who approaches him with a commission to renovate the family estate’s library and study. Toth accepts the job, finding himself once again helming the design of a building.
From the beginning, Corbet aligns Toth’s architectural aesthetic with the film’s cinematography. In his renovation, Toth guts the study, stripping away its velvet walls and dark wood to reveal an open, almost monastic room without ornamentation. There’s a similar austerity to the precision of every shot — and to Corbet’s slow, careful construction of the film itself.
When Van Buren, the estate’s owner, arrives home, he is furious at the renovation and refuses to pay for the materials. It’s a devastating moment. Attila then blames Toth for Van Buren’s fury — and falsely accuses him of pursuing Attila’s wife — before firing him from the furniture store and kicking him out of the house. Years pass as Toth works at a shipyard, smoking heroin to escape the banalities of each day and the painful, years-long absence of his wife.
An enduring sense of loss marks “The Brutalist” — the feeling of trying to find something or return somewhere. That loss takes on an amorphous, unyielding form. Toth knows there is no way to restore his old life or his marriage, at least as they existed before the war. He wanders in search of what might be built — what he might build — instead.
Eventually, Van Buren seeks out Toth and apologizes for his initial reaction to the renovation. In the years since, Toth’s refurbished library has earned praise from the architectural community. Van Buren invites Toth back to his estate and asks him to build a community center in honor of his late mother, promising to bring Erzsébet to the United States in return.
Such begins the second chapter, “The Hard Core of Beauty.” Erzsébet, now confined to a wheelchair, arrives in the United States alongside Zsofia; Erzsébet has osteoporosis, we discover. The couple’s reunion — ultimately cold and awkward but delivered with perfunctory decorum — only seems to underscore the death of their former life. Wasn’t this what Toth was waiting for?
Over the next few years, the drive to design and complete the community center consumes Toth. He is meticulous in his planning. At dusk, he notes to Van Buren, light will filter through the building, casting a cross against its wall. His steadfast vision slowly chisels into a final form — one that is unsurprisingly brutalist in nature, with slabs of exposed concrete, and symmetric in shape.
The center — positioned atop a grassy knoll — is an emblem of permanence, designed, as Toth remarks, to “endure erosion of frivolity.” It is difficult to express the raw visual beauty of both the building and the film. Perhaps, as Toth notes, “Nothing is of its own explanation. Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?”
Each frame of the film, like the architecture, reimagines space and light. For example, at the beginning of “The Brutalist,” there’s an arresting view of the Statue of Liberty, upside down and silhouetted against the sky. Its emerald crown extends toward the ground. In a different frame, light slowly saturates a sea of fog until we can glimpse a train moving below. Another shot shows Toth against a dark blue sky, with embers scattered from his cigarette like sparklers.
This dance between darkness and light defines “The Brutalist” — not only visually, but also thematically. A train, carrying materials for Toth’s designs, crashes and kills two men. After a hiatus, the project resumes. The center seems to be a flare of hope that Toth cannot surrender.
After recommitting to the project, Toth and Van Buren travel to a quarry in Italy to source materials. The subsequent scenes are striking and strange, reminiscent of the caves in E.M. Forster’s “A Passage to India.” In the quarry’s caves, Van Buren rapes Toth. Though never explicitly explained, the moment is understood — Van Buren exerts an ultimate dominance over Toth. Back in Pennsylvania, Erzsébet confronts the Van Burens about the rape, but the family drags her out of the house.
In “The Brutalist,” justice only manifests in the realm of architecture. Toth is raped just before the end of the film, without finding any true sense of reparation by the time the credits roll; Erzsébet dies — her brilliance, it seems, stifled. Toth’s career, meanwhile, languishes in obscurity for decades. But the center is completed, and Toth’s architecture is celebrated at an exhibition in Venice during the film’s epilogue. With Toth sitting in the crowd, senile and silent, his niece Zsófia gives a speech: “No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.”
But that destination does not satisfy. “The Brutalist” represents a window into the suffering of a man, and the steady journey in pursuit of his ambition. There is a hope that — upon arrival at that goal — the pain might retreat. By the end, it’s clear: nothing could correct what happened before the film even began when the war broke out.
At the final exhibition celebrating his work, Toth’s expression is blank. The film lacks an emotional release, and that early weight of loss never lifts. Only Toth’s architecture, the physical remnants of his life, feels complete. With this, “The Brutalist” gestures toward the endurance of architecture, even when all else fails.
Corbet constructs a film the way Toth constructs buildings: exact, with each component made beautiful. The result is visually stunning and thematically rich. Yet, the final film settles into something dull. Ironically enough, contrary to Zsófia’s speech, “The Brutalist” succeeds in the journey — but not the destination.
Rating: ★★★
