The Brutalist
Out of brutal times and experiences comes…beauty. Mix up Orson Wells Citizen Kane, hints of La Chimera, some Whatever Happened To Baby Jane noir, the sweep, multi-character story and vastness of Oppenheimer; the grandiose journey of Once Upon A Time In America… and architecture — and you have some idea of where the Brutalist is going. Only you don’t.
Uniquely, this film explores the post-Holocaust world, survivors and their ongoing pain, horror and guilt; how they deal with it and how people (immigrants and survivors try to build lives and start living again after such murderous horror and imprisonment). It’s about what isn’t said and interiors versus exteriors; grief and loss — and power. Not to mention navigating dual cultures, language, pronunciations and assumptions: suburban vs avant-garde, modernism vs tradition, urban vs small-town.
The cinematography stays small, and we often see things from László Tóth (Adrien Brody)’s point of view, in fragments. Coming to America, we see the back of the Statue of Liberty from Ellis Island, and upside down views as the boat that brought them there bobs on the water. We move through a bustling, jostling sea of faces, fearing loss of our luggage. There’s a lot of barrage as instructions from US Immigration are translated and hope as Brody’s Hungarian architect gets a longed for letter from his wife, Erzsébet Tóth (Felicity Jones). She’s alive as is his niece — and this hope gets him drawing again. A Hungarian Jewish survivor, he’s moved in with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and his wife Audrey (Emily Laird), who both seem to be welcoming. Only he’s put into a shabby box room off of the main furniture showroom, and has to navigate the exterior of the building to get access to the washroom.
It’s sad as time passes and you realise that he has to wait from 1945/6 to 1953 to be reunited with them.
In the meantime, a rich young man Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) drops into the office and requests a cut price quality library as a birthday surprise for his father. Everything goes a bit Ripley. Tóth creates a modernist masterpiece, which isn’t appreciated as the birthday boy arrives back unexpectedly, harangues their black colleague working outside peaceably and the workmen. Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) is equally horrified by the bright and light creation of his gift. Just as well he didn’t see the cousin dropping one of his first editions.
Unspoken is what happened to husband and wife during the war. Erzsébet is now frail, due to her time in the prison camp. More disturbingly, their niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) won’t speak at all — and we see her sensitively reacting to the room that’s been set aside for her, created for a child who has now grown up. Unspoken is the sense of who they were and who they are now — and if they can ever get back to their authentic selves. We see this when Tóth is given photographs of his pre-war creations — they’re symbols of who he was and of social and cultural revolution; reminders of what could be in the landscape.
We also get some sense of their lives — the niece has her aunt’s meds, baths her, learns English from her and carries out physio. The husband has his own secrets — some hidden under the bathroom sink, some hidden deep within him. Ironically, both husband and wife really care for each other, and want to be together, cherishing each other — it’s just how to do this best. The husband blames himself for his forced separation from his wife and we don’t know what horrors he’s experienced in the camp, but his damaged face (and the addiction he’s developed to manage the pain) tells us a lot. His wife wants to be intimate with him again, to emotionally, intellectually and spiritually connect, but he’s a closed door she can’t unlock. A very intelligent, highly educated couple, they support each other’s endeavors and creativity.
Erzsébet has an interesting perspective — that what they’ve experienced was done to their bodies, not their souls, their essential characteristics. That they’re still themselves no matter what. However, this doesn’t quite work as the husband’s pain, guilt and further trauma leaks out into everyday life and shouting at people. And addiction and obsession with having his plans kept as they are, without interference. However, he still really wants to be his wife — as we see him rejecting advances from other women; really only being a brothel to keep a friend company and resisting as much as he can.
At the same time, he’s developed a deeply intellectual friendship with the shouty rich dad Harrison from the library incident. Harrison swoops on László for lunch as he and a friend are working on stomach churningly high cranes with no safety gear, bar a rope. He’s hired as architect to the rich guy to build a legacy for the community and a memorial to his late mother. Using light and brutalist architecture, Tóth starts to create a interconnected building — part gymnasium, part chapel, part library/reading room and part concert hall. There’s a lot of tension as the rich man’s people try to cut costs, and alter the design — the architect is determined to keep everything as it is, even taking some of the costs for the materials out of his own fee.
Then there’s the rich man’s creepy son Harry — who insults the architect and threatens his niece, and reveals some horrible antisemitic views. In a wild switch of character on a marble buying trip, Harrison shows his own brutalism and antisemitism. This is mimicked horribly by the son when Erzsébet goes to challenge all of them and confront the rich man with his evil in brutal, public truth.
Throughout the film we’re asked a big question: ‘do Jews have the right to live full and fruitful lives?’ The movie starts with survivors scrumming out of the shadowy ship to a new life in the land of freedom and liberty, a journey overlaid with the announcement of the official nation of Israel on the news. Only for people, on arrival onwards, to start questioning who they are, where they’re from and even cultural assumptions imposed on them. Will they ever find a safe space to be? Should they stay or make aliyah as their niece plans to?
His cousin Attila has changed his name and his religion to assimilate — and invented a generational traditional business. Falsely accused of making a pass by his cousin’s wife, the architect ends up on the streets and in queues for bread, where he meets a man Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé) and his son, who become co-workers and friends. Even the gates he had to open and lock to access amenities at his cousin’s building seemed prison-like. It seems like little had changed — he’s unhoused, hungry, abused, othered. At Harrison’s party to show off his star architect, a couple start asking cringey questions — ‘where are you from?’ ‘Why isn’t your wife with you?’ ‘What happened during the war’. It’s excruciating — until we find out that they are Jewish too and in clunky ways trying to manage their own guilt and concerns.
As well as social veneers, the film explores power over other’s bodies and lives, such as when an overloaded goods train crashes injuring the workers and halting the project, damaging workers’ financial lives and families. And the ways in which Harrison rapidly switches between rage and aggression to charm and kindness, to artistic appreciation. He sneers at how his architect looks, yet clearly wants him around as some kind of house pet as the despised library is lauded and applauded. He even tries to launch Erzsébet’s career — as far away as possible from her husband. Nor is all well with the rich man’s children as the twins bicker and sneer; the son seems overly protective of his father and the daughter, Maggie Van Buren (Stacy Martin) is keen to be kind to all as a buffer to everyone else.
I’m not convinced fully by Harrison’s character or all of his actions and not a fan of all the needles on screen, but I do enjoy the ways in which the cinematography mirrors the boat journeys at the beginning and end. Only the end one is in luscious 1980’s Venice. We get unique takes on texture, size and perspective, like La Chimera and a bit like A Real Pain. The reveal at the end about the meaning of the building is something unexpected and surprisingly personal.
The performances are splendid — fully realised enough to make you worry about them; Daniel Blumberg’s score is magnificent and then there’s jazz! And Jonathan Hyde and Peter Polycarpou in there too!
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