The Brutalist

The Brutalist, directed by Brady Corbet and co-written with Mona Fastvold, chronicles three decades in the life of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish Bauhaus-educated architect and Holocaust survivor who arrives penniless in the United States in 1947. Initially staying in Pennsylvania with his assimilated cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), László labors in relative obscurity, battling poverty, displacement, and the trauma of war while desperately trying to secure immigration visas for his ailing wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and mute niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy).

László’s fortunes appear to change when he catches the attention of Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), an immensely wealthy and charismatic industrialist. Van Buren commissions László to design an ambitious, monumental community center and memorial chapel dedicated to Van Buren’s late mother. Thrilled by the opportunity to practice his radical modernist architecture on an unprecedented scale, László throws himself entirely into the commission.

However, the collaboration quickly exposes the volatile, transactional, and predatory dynamics between the European artist and the American plutocrat. Spanning 215 minutes and divided into two distinct acts with an overture, intermission, and epilogue, the film unfolds as a grand, novelistic inquiry into capitalism, physical and psychological endurance, exile, and the heavy price of legacy.

The central thesis of The Brutalist is that American capitalism absorbs, exploits, and reshapes immigrant trauma under the guise of opportunity and benevolence. Corbet explores the paradoxical nature of artistic creation: László builds enduring, indestructible structures out of concrete and marble to resist historical erasure, yet the capital that finances his art demands absolute ownership and subjugation. The film presents the "American Dream" not as a sanctuary of freedom, but as a gilded cage governed by commodification, power imbalances, and subtle or overt violence.

The film invites several key readings:

The Brutalist captures the post-1945 transition where the center of architectural innovation and global wealth shifted from war-ravaged Europe to corporate America. Hailed alongside masterworks like There Will Be Blood, The Godfather Part II, and The Fountainhead, the film is viewed as a landmark revitalization of the large-scale, serious auteur epic. It received widespread universal acclaim at Venice, Toronto, and New York film festivals, earning major awards praise for Corbet’s direction, Lol Crawley’s cinematography, and Adrien Brody's career-defining performance.

The film received widespread critical acclaim and is widely regarded as a cinematic masterpiece of modern American cinema and a triumph of large-format visual storytelling. Audiences and critics universally lauded its monumental scope, exquisite 70mm VistaVision textures, Adrien Brody’s devastating performance, Daniel Blumberg’s score, and Corbet’s bold narrative pacing.

A minority of viewers and critics noted the deliberate, ponderous pacing across its 215-minute runtime and the jarring tonal shift in the second half. Intense debate was sparked by controversial narrative choices, specifically the graphic, shocking sexual assault scene in Carrara and the abrupt 1980 time-jump, which divided audiences regarding narrative subtlety versus visceral thematic impact.