Brutal truth

Escaping post-war Europe, visionary architect Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) arrives in America to rebuild his life. He and his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) were forced apart during wartime by shifting borders and regimes. Only after he manages to establish himself in Pennsylvania, where the wealthy and prominent industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren recognises his talent for building, is he able to bring her back into his life. But time hasn’t healed and the deprivations of war have taken their toll.

The tone is set in the beginning itself. The score by Daniel Blumberg is starting to come into its own. We see Toth move through the crowd, pushing himself through doors and into sunlight, his face bursting with happiness at the site of the Statue of Liberty. But we see the iconic structure upside down. A telling moment indicating that the American dream is not what it’s made out to be. Then we get to read the statement: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free.” The picture becomes clearer as the runtime gathers moss.

Brady Corbet’s ‘The Brutalist’ is as much about capitalism as it is a story of immigration, addiction, Zionism, architecture, inequity, class and violence. The script by Corbet and Mona Fastvold makes it about life in the free world as opposed to life in detention, and the free world doesn’t really distinguish itself, especially for immigrants like Toth. Toth believes himself to be free and gets a job at his cousin Attila’s (Alessandro Nivola) furniture shop, notably named Miller & Sons. No prizes for guessing why it’s named as such, despite there being no Miller and no sons. It doesn’t take long for Attila’s beautiful wife Audrey (Emma Laird) to fabricate an offence so that Toth is asked to leave. The problem is compounded when Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), who commissioned Miller & Sons to remodel his father Harrison’s library, refuses to pay them.

Harrison (Guy Pearce), much later, returns with an apology and draws Toth into his world of upper-class snobs, people who see a Holocaust survivor as another object to own. Meanwhile, Toth has already gone into an addiction spiral with his friend Gordon (Isaach de Bankole). Adrien Brody’s performance is award-worthy, for sure.

‘The Brutalist’ critiques the ways the privileged class exploits immigrants while refusing to treat them as equals. Harrison himself is a prime example of that practise. He doesn’t hesitate to cut Toth to size with a ruthlessness that is to the manor born. This is also a film about an architectural monument that lives up to its promise in design, but fails to live up to the needs it was created for.