At the 82nd Golden Globes Awards, Adrien Brody took home the Best Male Actor – Motion Picture – Drama for his stellar and gut-wrenching performance in “The Brutalist.” The film had select screenings in big cities like Los Angeles and New York City, along with premiering at major film festivals, but never got a wide release. Fresno got a select screening to show the film in IMAX on Jan. 15.
“The Brutalist” is a period piece set in 1947 in the post-war United States. Brody’s character, a Jewish-Hungarian architect named Laszlo Toth, makes his way from New York City to Philadelphia to work with his cousin. Toth meets and is hired by Harrison Lee Van Buren, played by Guy Pearce, for a massive project that will shape his life forever. It was directed by Brady Corbet and co-written by Corbet and Fastvold and has a run time of three and a half hours.
Throughout the movie Toth is constantly being tested, whether it’s being disowned by his cousin in America or taken advantage of by a new friend, while at the same time trying to reconnect with his wife, played by Felicity Jones. “The Brutalist,” like the name, shows the brutality that is life for a European immigrant during the war and the treatment of Jewish people escaping during that time.
From the start, the film is very open about the ominous journey the film takes the audience on by showing Toth coming to America after being separated from his wife and niece during World War II, and it runs all the way until the end of Toth’s life in 1980. He’s making his way through other immigrants on the boat to the deck and then celebrates after seeing the Statue of Liberty. This specific scene sets the stage for the film both stylistically and in terms of its themes and story.
Brody’s performance was perfect. He’s physical and vulnerable in a way that only makes sense for this story. He’s not portrayed as someone who never stays down after getting knocked down, he’s not hopeful throughout his loneliness, he’s not altruistic. Instead, the director makes it very clear that he is not an angel — and he shouldn’t be.

He cheats on his wife and is a drug addict, and he never stands up for himself but internalizes the pain and discrimination he receives into rage, only being able to express his emotions and words into his architecture.
The best scene in the movie shows the two main characters, Van Buren and Toth, sitting down and talking about how they view life. Toth talks about how architecture is truly an everlasting form of political expression, as his building in Europe still stood despite the destruction of the war.
He makes an analogy by describing a cube as just a cube, just a shape, but when an architect builds a cube as a building or structure the meaning of the cube has changed — it has a meaning beyond the shape.
During this conversation, Van Buren talks about his relationship with money and how he sees it. Throughout the film, we see him throw mass amounts of money, especially between the 1950s and 60s when the film takes place.
He sees money as power, which isn’t unusual, but it sets him up to be untrustworthy which completely twists the character around from what we’ve seen of him at this point as he’s seen giving money away left and right, only to be brought down by things outside of his sphere of influence.
He sees so much potential in Toth and starts throwing money at him to work on his project, but slowly takes away and replaces it with falsehood and exploitation until Van Buren sees Toth as a mad dog who needs to be put down.
The film is also shot beautifully. The way they frame characters and light rooms, or shoot landmarks makes everything feel cohesive and vibrant.
The shot of the Statue of Liberty at the beginning might be the best shot in cinema of the decade. It’s shot upwards and upside down just like how someone on a boat sailing right underneath it might see, just like Toth on the boat. It’s also no secret how great the scene is since it has been used to market the movie.
Having the Statue of Liberty be a symbol for the “American Dream” and a new start, but being shot on a hand-held camera and being upside down sets the film up to literally deconstruct the idea of the American Dream by showing the symbol of it as flipped, and representing an American myth of golden roads and fresh starts which perfectly encapsulates the theme.
The film’s run time is another huge plus. Despite it being a story about an immigrant architect that’s three and a half hours, it never bores the audience. It has a 15 minute intermission halfway through the movie, which ends the first act.

Corbet has a story to tell and it deserves three and half hours. It’s really impressive that they did the filming, actor’s salaries and editing on a $10 million budget.
These performances really transcend the film from being a really good drama to potentially winning most major Oscar awards.
The acting and story are as close to perfect as a movie can be, but the film does have some shortcomings.
The ending is really off-putting, in regards to quality. It feels lazy and has a five minute monologue from one of the supporting characters, but it’s nothing new. The only thing it does is say how much of a genius Toth is, which we already knew, and fill in what he was doing from the mid 60s until 1980 through the monologue.
While not awful, it could have really done for a more fleshed ending that ties some of the many loose ends together; and there are many loose ends.
It also has some untimely political and social themes about Zionism and Israel which was built upon since the beginning of the film and with a current lens. As the main character and his family are Jewish and survivors of World War Ⅱ, it makes sense why the film portrays Israel the way it does.
And for those who are triggered or sensitive to sexual assault, they should be warned that there are some scenes that are heavily vivid in that regard, even though it’s an important part of the story.
For all the flaws, “The Brutalist” more than makes up for it with its beautiful shots and all-time great acting performance.
When the wide release of “The Brutalist” comes along it’s a must watch film that shows the story of human expression and asks if brutalism is a condition of American ideals or forged by trauma and exploitation. It’s a must watch for drama junkies and fans of film as a whole, and I’d score it with a 9/10.