The Brutalist

by Chris Stewart 03.2025

Early in Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, the sweeping story of the compromise-filled rise of a displaced Hungarian architect in postwar America, a sex worker remarks that protagonist László Tóth is ugly. It stings, but can't hold a candle to the cruelty with which another character later flings the word “beautiful” at him. Being ugly may risk your self-esteem, but being beautiful, in this film, risks your soul. Corbet's thesis here concerns America's midcentury eagerness to elevate and eventually violate rare things. To paraphrase fellow recent Best Picture nominee “A Complete Unknown”, “You can be beautiful or ugly but you can't be plain.” 

Like There Will Be Blood, a similarly rich dissection of American ambition, the key tension in Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, is between the industrial and the sublime. Here, art stands in for the latter, as opposed to religion. When Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pierce, delicious and withholding) sits with László Tóth (Adrien Brody, suffering beautifully) at a cafe and shows him blueprints from Tóth's previous life, he asks why he now toils away loading coal. Separated by economic and ethnic strata, the two men are, of course, more than just two men here. A benefactor is turning his eye to the edification of an innocent with enormous potential. Tóth, heartbroken at a glimpse of the past, is set down a path. In this exquisitely crafted, somewhat effortful film, a taste of  exceptionalism will come at a high price.

At three and a half hours long, does The Brutalist, for all of its admirable formal rigor and Vistavision grandeur stray into indulgence? Structurally, no. But narratively, the trials – external and internal – of the film's third act prove more patience-trying than its runtime, subtitles, or lack of conventional thrills. Smartly, Corbet's clinically poetic eye allows for some distance, echoing Michael Haneke with whom Corbet worked during his acting years. Punishments endured by László and his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) are never presented tawdrily. Still, they're as unsubtle as the film's most pointed visual motifs: the rhyming imagery of an inverted Statue of Liberty in the first act and an inverted crucifix in the third. 

What's undeniable is Corbet's purpose. As László rises in estimation, he reclaims some of himself and his great passion in life: to build beautiful spaces; beautiful specifically in their strict, unembellished nature. Brutalism, the architectural school, draws in part from a departure from opulence and obvious loveliness. Tóth, as such, stands in contrast with America's other esteemed builders and artists. He has brought something of the Old World with him. If this is explored with less impressive texture than various interpersonal betrayals (of others, of self) are – well - due praise that The Brutalist tries for, and does not quite achieve, the power of a great novel. Like Tóth's works, it is an object of genuine, hard won beauty. Intelligently designed, if you will. The faithful are invited to see this evidenced in every creative flourish. Just as planned.

The Brutalist

Run Time: 218 minutes

Director: Brady Corbet