Why Adrien Brody’s The Brutalist should take all 10 Oscars
Adrien Brody carries The Brutalist writer-director Brady Corbet’s vision of astonishing scope, says Adam Bloodworth
Right at the point when The Brutalist starts threatening to live up to its name, the action blackens into darkness and the word “INTERMISSION” flashes up. The audience is encouraged to stretch their legs, much like Vue audiences did last year when a pause was introduced to the middle of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
In this new world of uber-long movies – Gladiator, Wicked, Dune Part 2 and Nickel Boys – no genre discriminates. Broadly, the rise of three-hour-plus experiences has been positive, the form allowing cinemagoers longer to luxuriate. This is certainly true of The Brutalist, a majestically realised and painstakingly nuanced story about one Jewish immigrant who moves to New York in the post-war era.
Relative newcomer Brady Corbet expertly zooms in and out of both themes and stories. The epic scale of industrial growth in Pennsylvania, documented through historical footage, is a great thudding symbol about the power of the American desire for growth at all costs. In the forefront of Corbet’s formidable black and white period panoramas of coal pits and quarreys is László Tóth, a lauded architect in eastern Europe, realised by Adrien Brody. Tóth is a nobody in America who’s forced to take a job shovelling coal while he waits for his wife and her sister to arrive from Hungary after they survive the Holocaust.
The Brutalist – Brady Corbet’s notion of chaos takes an extreme focus
It is the scope of Corbet’s writing and direction that feels remarkable – and more than justifies its ten Oscar nominations, including for best actor and best director. He leaves much for us to deduce about Tóth’s challenging mental state rather than painting a more overt picture of agony. His misery is driven by a lack of work and social isolation, as well as the trauma caused by relocation. We’re drip-fed scenes that shock, but Corbet’s less-is-more approach makes the brief moments of agony feel way more insidious. Corbet refuses to focus on one element of misery – be it corporate bullying, drug addiction or family tensions, finding astonishing pace and breadth.
Directorially, the notion of chaos – of contrasting stories, places and things – takes a more extreme focus. Images and language are not always referring to the same thing; throwback footage of Tóth’s relatives dancing juxtapose with his American boss commenting on his professionalism – it’s to show how for someone in his position, explosively contrasting thoughts pop up at any point, and how even when things are going right, you’re yearning for home.
Brody is a steady pair of hands; God knows how it must have felt waking up every morning to nail yet another tracking shot of him looking perpetually bereft; no matter how hard he works, the ladder is pulled away from underneath him by arrogant American men. But Corbet frames Tóth’s misery against the aspirational life of Guy Pearce’s wealthy industrialist Harrison, whose high-ceilinged Connecticut mansion is a beautiful antidote to the weary tableauxs of Tóth wandering the streets of Manhattan looking for work.
Pearce imagines him with a sociopath’s unnerving poise; Joe Alwyn (most famously Taylor Swift’s ex) gives a brilliantly cold turn as Harrison’s deathly cold son Harry, but The Brutalist leaves the meatiest roles to the outsiders, and Felicity Jones is staggering as Tóth’s beleaguered wife Erzsébet. She gets the film’s best scenes, delivering the lead female with an astonishing balance of power and vulnerability.
It’s immensely difficult to make a three-and-a-half hour film about something much more straightforward – but this rumination on 20th century wealth and status sketches a new horizon. Immensely nuanced, The Brutalist justifies every minute with slaps of style and substance.
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