The Brutalist movie review (2025) | Little White Lies

The Bru­tal­ist review – gor­geous, capital‑C Cinema

20 Jan 2025 / Released: 24 Jan 2025

Words by Hannah Strong

Directed by Brady Corbet

Starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce

A man in a checked shirt sitting on the grass, writing in a notebook under a tree in a lush, green garden.
A man in a checked shirt sitting on the grass, writing in a notebook under a tree in a lush, green garden.
4

Anticipation.

We’ve been hearing rumours about The Brutalist for six years. Can it live up to the hype?

5

Enjoyment.

A staggering achievement in every conceivable way.

5

In Retrospect.

Gorgeous, capital-C Cinema. Corbet proves himself as one of the finest talents around.

Adrien Brody is phe­nom­e­nal in Brady Cor­bet’s sub­lime three-and-a-half hour dra­ma, as a Jew­ish archi­tect arrives in post-war Amer­i­ca to a hos­tile new world.

Louis Kahn, one of the great Amer­i­can archi­tects, adored the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. All Bach cared about was the truth. Inde­fin­able, unmea­sur­able truth,” he said of the com­pos­er. And so it is with archi­tec­ture. It’s a search for the truth.” Kahn, who had immi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States from Kures­saare (now Esto­nia) with his fam­i­ly as a young boy, lived and worked in Philadel­phia, where he would begin a career defined by geo­met­ric forms and a rev­er­ence for the ancient ruins of Europe.

His work – much of which still stands today, con­struct­ed with durable con­crete and an unmis­tak­able for­mal­i­ty – inspired gen­er­a­tions of archi­tects and artists to search for their own truth. The Bru­tal­ist, Brady Corbet’s six-years-in-the-mak­ing study of a fic­tion­al Hun­gar­i­an-Amer­i­can archi­tect named Lás­zló Tóth, has an advan­tage over a build­ing in that it can be both a fab­ri­ca­tion and decon­struc­tion at the same time. But, as Kahn encour­aged, it’s all true, all the beau­ty and all the ter­ror that the Tóth fam­i­ly faces in the new world.

The strik­ing archi­tec­ture of Adrien Brody’s face is what first becomes appar­ent, amid the dark­ness and rhyth­mic chug of a steamship. Two green eyes, wide as din­ner plates, and the ele­gant slope of his nose peak out from the bow­els of the ves­sel – and then anoth­er face comes into the frame. The great, oxi­dised vis­age of Lady Lib­er­ty, beck­on­ing immi­grants forth at Ellis Island. The year is 1947 – hav­ing sur­vived the occu­pa­tion of Budapest and intern­ment at Buchen­wald, Lázs­ló gazes upon lib­er­a­tion. His coal-streaked face breaks into a wild, dis­be­liev­ing grin. He laughs out of some mix­ture of dis­be­lief and relief. He has escaped fas­cism; now he is home.

In three-and-a-half hours (includ­ing a fif­teen-minute inter­mis­sion built into the film) Cor­bet decon­structs the myth of Amer­i­ca with scalpel pre­ci­sion, work­ing in the same sharp geo­met­ric lines as his pro­tag­o­nist. When Lás­zló arrives in Philadel­phia, brought to the Land of Oppor­tu­ni­ty by his cousin Atti­la (Alessan­dro Nivola) to help run his fur­ni­ture and ren­o­va­tion busi­ness, his nose is bro­ken from the per­ilous jour­ney and he regards his new home with equal parts bewil­der­ment and intrigue. A bad­ly received com­mis­sion ini­tial­ly leads Lás­zló into pover­ty, where he devel­ops a friend­ship with sin­gle father Gor­don (Isaach De Bankolé) in a shel­ter for the unhoused. The two work tax­ing con­struc­tion jobs and ease their chron­ic pain with hero­in, until fate brings Lás­zló a vis­i­tor in the form of wealthy busi­ness­man Har­ri­son Van Buren (Guy Pearce) who devel­ops a fas­ci­na­tion with the archi­tect and his work.

Two men in coats and hats embrace in front of a vintage green train carriage.

Bru­tal­ism as an archi­tec­tur­al style is among the most divi­sive – crit­ics fre­quent­ly inter­pret its harsh­ness as ugli­ness, and since the height of its pop­u­lar­i­ty through­out the 50s – 70s, many build­ings have become wide­ly loathed or torn down alto­geth­er. But bru­tal­ism, which is a stark­ly func­tion­al prac­tice, favours sim­plic­i­ty and hon­esty. There is nowhere to hide in a build­ing com­prised of angles and open spaces. So too is there nowhere to hide in Corbet’s film, where the cap­i­tal­ist rot of the past eighty years per­me­ates like a fog. Lás­zló, although stub­born, mean, reck­less and fre­quent­ly dis­agree­able, is also vio­lent­ly abused by a world that holds lit­tle stock in true beauty.

Brody, a man of sharp angles and radi­ant soft­ness, is phe­nom­e­nal­ly cast here, with a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in his green eyes and expres­sive, upturned brows that ren­ders him at once heart­break­ing­ly beau­ti­ful and ter­ri­ble. He is sur­round­ed by more obvi­ous ugli­ness: the tacky, louche avarice and snob­bery of Van Buren (Pearce is on astound­ing form), scars from the war that exist in his wife’s osteo­poro­sis and niece’s mute­ness; a phe­nom­e­nal­ly ambi­tious, almost insur­mount­able con­struc­tion project, dogged by pen­ny-pinch­ing yanks and László’s self-destruc­tive streak.

And yes, the word epic” is bandied about in film every few months at this point, slapped on what­ev­er fes­ti­val dar­ling is the flavour of the month, but how else should one describe both Corbet’s nar­ra­tive scope (the film, divid­ed into three chap­ters and an over­ture, takes place over three decades, on two con­ti­nents) and phys­i­cal craft? Shot on 70mm Vis­taVi­sion by Lol Craw­ley (who also shot Vox Lux and Child­hood of a Leader) and scored by Daniel Blum­berg (who worked with Cor­bet on his performance/​short film project GYU­TO in 2019, and scored co-writer Mona Fastvold’s 2021 dra­ma The World to Come), these recur­ring col­lab­o­ra­tions sug­gest a mutu­al under­stand­ing that has led to the breath­tak­ing end prod­uct that is The Bru­tal­ist, where each frame is a Hop­per-esque por­trait of Amer­i­can indi­vid­u­al­ism and isolation.

It is, like those beau­ti­ful con­crete mon­strosi­ties which are revered and reviled in equal mea­sure, a film that tow­ers across the Venice line-up this year, trag­ic and wry and gor­geous and dis­turb­ing – any num­ber of hyper­bol­ic terms might apply to the beast that Cor­bet has cre­at­ed in The Bru­tal­ist. But what real­ly remains, amid the rub­ble of the audi­to­ri­um after all the cin­e­ma patrons are gone, is the echo of some­thing mourn­ful: this is a eulo­gy for a world in an eter­nal death rat­tle, bril­liant and bleak – and as Louis Kahn demand­ed it – true.

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