Adrien Brody's career reached its zenith with his portrayal of Władysław Szpilman in The Pianist—still one of the finest Holocaust films committed to celluloid, and a performance that quite rightly earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Less than a quarter-century later, Brody has returned to strikingly similar territory, playing another Holocaust survivor in Brady Corbet's The Brutalist.
Brody embodies László Tóth, a Hungarian Jewish architect who survived the camps but lost everything else—his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) remain trapped in Soviet-occupied Hungary whilst he boards a ship for America in 1947. The prologue establishes this separation with grim efficiency: László sailing toward uncertain promise whilst his family languishes behind the emerging Iron Curtain.
Upon arrival, he finds refuge with Attila Miller (Alessandro Nivola), a cousin who has thoroughly assimilated—name changed, Catholic faith adopted through marriage to Audrey (Emma Laird), who treats her husband's openly Jewish relation with barely concealed contempt. The Millers give László employment in their Philadelphia furniture shop, and when Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) commissions them to renovate the family home, László's architectural gifts briefly shine. Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), the family patriarch, initially recoils at the results and refuses payment—providing Attila the excuse he needs to cast his cousin onto the streets. Three years pass. László, now nursing a heroin addiction born from injuries sustained leaping from a camp-bound railway carriage, scrapes by on odd jobs until Harrison unexpectedly reappears, contrite and eager to commission a grand community centre dedicated to his late mother.
The second part opens in 1953 with Erzsébet and Zsófia's long-delayed arrival. The reunion brings fresh heartbreak: wartime deprivation has left Erzsébet wheelchair-bound, whilst Zsófia has retreated into muteness, her trauma rendered in silence. László throws himself into the Van Buren project, but delays mount, creative differences fester, and budget disputes eventually convince Harrison to pull the plug. The family relocates to New York—László finds work at an architectural firm, Erzsébet takes up journalism. By 1958, Zsófia has regained her voice only to announce her emigration to Israel with her new husband. Simultaneously, Harrison resurrects the abandoned project and demands László's return. Their journey to Carrara to source marble for the build becomes the crucible where years of simmering resentment finally detonate in devastating fashion.
The Brutalist is practically a masterclass in Oscar-targeting construction. Holocaust narrative? Check. Protagonists burdened with physical and psychological afflictions? Abundantly so. The heroin addiction, the wheelchair, the muteness—each tragedy meticulously catalogued. The strategy has clearly worked for Brody, who delivers genuinely powerful work as a man hollowed out by history, his task complicated further by lengthy passages of Hungarian dialogue. Though this linguistic authenticity sparked controversy when it emerged that AI-assisted ADR had been employed to polish his pronunciation—a sour note in an otherwise impressive performance.
This is not to dismiss the film entirely. The Brutalist carries its arthouse credentials conspicuously, positioning itself as the antithesis of contemporary Hollywood blockbusters. Corbet deploys every trick in the critic-wooing playbook, particularly those calculated to impress festival juries of a certain snobbish disposition. The most glaring example: the film premiered at Venice 2024, and—wouldn't you know it—the epilogue unfolds at Venice's inaugural Architecture Biennale. This flirtation with metafiction paid dividends, securing the Golden Lion, though one suspects the jury recognised their own reflection in the screenplay's mirror.
More genuinely interesting is Corbet's formal experimentation. Determined to evoke the 1950s authentically, he resurrected VistaVision, the widescreen format fashionable in Hollywood before its early-Sixties abandonment. The Brutalist's modest critical and commercial success has since inspired imitators—notably the Oscar-winning 2025 feature One Battle After Another.
Yet Corbet's period recreation remains stubbornly contemporary. Daniel Blumberg's score eschews period-appropriate orchestration for something darker, more depressive—distinctly twenty-first century in its sensibility. Similarly, the film's liberal deployment of profanity, nudity and sexual content would have been unthinkable in actual Fifties cinema. These anachronisms might be defensible were they in service of disciplined storytelling, but The Brutalist sprawls across nearly three-and-a-half hours with the self-indulgence of filmmakers desperate to demonstrate their capabilities. The reconstruction of 1950s Pennsylvania on Hungarian locations is undeniably impressive, yet one suspects the extended runtime also serves to accommodate supporting performances worthy of Oscar consideration. The actual architecture—which one might reasonably expect to dominate a film bearing this title—recedes into the background, only gaining prominence in the latter half. Even then, narrative clarity suffers, with crucial exposition deferred to the closing epilogue.
Another revealing detail: Gordon, the Black single father who becomes László's friend and indispensable assistant. One could cynically speculate that this character exists primarily to satisfy controversial diversity requirements for awards eligibility. The portrayal initially convinces—until Ivorian actor Isaach de Bankolé opens his mouth and his native accent emerges, shattering the illusion of African American authenticity that a more consistent performance might have maintained.
The Brutalist remains watchable, but only for dedicated cinephiles and those possessing the patience to endure its frequently frustrating duration. Corbet has crafted something undeniably ambitious, yet ambition without restraint risks collapsing beneath its own weight.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
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