Brady Corbet, the director of the award-winning 2024 film The Brutalist, said he faced difficulties when embarking on the project, with producers unenthusiastic about his desire to film most of the sequences with VistaVision, a technique developed by Paramount engineers in the 1950s but that was quickly deemed obsolete.
For Corbet, “the best way to access (the 1950s) was to shoot on something that was engineered in that same decade”. It also gives the movie a more panoramic perspective, which aligns with the protagonist’s obsession with architecture.
This film is about a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor who goes to live in the United States but initially struggles to succeed. It was made on a modest budget, costing no more than $10mn, but earned almost five times that amount at the box office. It subsequently won three Golden Globe awards and was nominated for 10 Oscars.
Perhaps producers were reluctant to back The Brutalist, but it is hard to believe that Corbet undertook this project without a clear expectation of the acclaim it would receive. Today, it is an underdog that defied initial scepticism.
Fighting the world
The protagonist is László Tóth, played by Adrien Brody. Tóth is a fictional character inspired by several real architects and artists, many of them Jewish Europeans who moved to the US or the UK, including Marcel Breuer, László Moholy-Nagy, Louis Kahn, and Ernő Goldfinger.
Tóth is portrayed as a man who fought against the world and was broken by it yet still managed to leave behind remarkable architectural imprints belonging stylistically to the Brutalist school of architecture, which emerged in the UK after the Second World War. Tóth’s legacy is as if in defiance of the humiliation he suffered for being Jewish.
There is a sense of victimhood from Tóth that helps define much of the film’s vengeful stance against America and the American Dream, which Tóth pursues initially to no avail, landing on hard times involving sofa-surfing and drug use.
The America depicted here is not the country as we know it, nor does it represent recent US policy against immigrants. In The Brutalist, America becomes synonymous with the world—and the world humiliated and scorned László Tóth. Crucially, his suffering is not framed principally as that of a migrant but as that of a Jewish migrant.
From surviving a Nazi camp in his native Hungary to crossing the ocean, arriving in the US (where he first lays eyes on the Statue of Liberty turned upside down), everyone seems to treat him with contempt—from a cousin who has renounced his Jewish identity to assimilate into American society, to his cousin's Catholic wife, and finally to the family of businessman Harrison Lee (played by Guy Pearce).
Lee recognises Tóth's extraordinary architectural talent—which the film showcases with striking visual appeal—yet he, too, exacts revenge on him for possessing it. Tóth's brilliance is marked by experimentation and aesthetic grandeur that often surpasses the forced symbolism of the inverted Statue of Liberty.
Ensnared in a web
Viewers have commended the film's visual storytelling, yet the structure is also of interest, comprising a prologue, two main parts, and an epilogue, incorporating a 15-minute intermission within the film itself.
Obsessive control over the audience's viewing experience extends to the filmmaker's insistence on dictating how we should perceive Tóth's journey. Unless viewers knew that Tóth is a fictional character, they could easily assume he was a real person—one who struggled against an ungrateful host society and built his own legend.
The Brutalist does not really begin with Tóth's suffering in the Nazi camp, nor upon his arrival in America, nor even in the letters exchanged with his wife (played by Felicity Jones) who remains stranded in Europe, unable to join him.
The film truly begins when Tóth meets businessman Harrison Lee, from which point it gains momentum. A wealthy unmarried American capitalist who sees the world through an inherited, limited perspective, Lee expresses his fascination with Tóth's work, but his admiration visibly extends to Tóth himself.
Lee then ensnares Tóth in a web of seduction, exploiting his greatest vulnerability—his deep-seated need for praise and validation. This narcissistic trait defines both Tóth and The Brutalist itself. It blinds them to reality, trapping them in an insular vision that seems to distort their understanding of the world.
Since Lee is manipulative, perhaps even suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, he extends his deception over Tóth, luring him into grand projects that consume years of his life and deplete his finances, yet never end up materialising. This drawn-out dynamic stretches the film to over three hours. At times, it drags.
Despite his wife's warnings, Tóth keeps returning to his predator, convinced that this time, Harrison will fulfil his architectural ambitions, which can be seen as an extension of his need to assert himself in his new entourage.
After the war and Hitler's suicide, he never returns to Hungary, nor is he satisfied with his role as an architect at an American engineering firm. He yearns for immortality, for a grand prize—much like the film itself.
Tóth's sense of victimhood reaches its peak when he is sexually assaulted by Lee in a scene that is both shocking and glaringly contrived. The world, having already subjected Tóth to relentless humiliation based on his identity, now extends its cruelty to the extreme of rape.
Zionist propaganda
This leaves him with no choice but to make aliyah and move to Israel to be with his orphaned niece, Zsófia. Here, Israel is depicted as the ultimate refuge for Jews, yet making aliyah is a notion he had previously resisted.
The movie's ending is abrupt. As if the director's ability to make things up had run its course by that point, he inserts himself into the narrative, delivering a final speech that mirrors the inverted Statue of Liberty from the opening.
Tóth, now an old man, accepts an award as his cousin delivers a demagogic monologue about ends and means, saying those who believed the journey mattered more than the destination were mistaken—reaching the goal is what truly matters.
This conclusion seems to apply not only to Tóth but to Israel itself. The past suffering of the Jewish people is not what matters; what matters is that they are here now. In this, The Brutalist upends its structure and shifts from artistic ambition to Zionist propaganda.
Brody's performance here contrasts with his performance in The Pianist—a far more poignant film conveying unforgettable human suffering. Within the broader landscape of Holocaust cinema, The Brutalist offers nothing new.
