A work of staggering mystery and power, with an epic scope and a visual style to match, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is old school in the best possible sense. It demands rapt attention and deep thought as it winds down the dark roads of the post-war world. Detailing one man’s attempt to rebuild his life in the aftermath of the Holocaust, it charts the cruelty and greed of an American society that only pretends to cherish its mavericks and individuals. At four hours long (with an interval in the middle) it requires a viewer’s commitment and devotion, and repays them with triumphant artistry.
We eventually learn that our protagonist, Lazslo Toth, was a respected and innovative modernist architect in his native Hungary before the war (he’s played by an astonishing Adrien Brody, his face as beautifully jagged as the concrete artworks he designs). But we first meet him bruised, traumatised and stalk-thin after a tough journey from Budapest to Ellis Island in New York City, where, like so many Jewish refugees, he hopes a better life will await him in America.
Soon, he discovers that his wife Erzsébet (a heartbreaking Felicity Jones) and niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) are alive in a displaced persons camp back in Europe, and he takes a job in his American cousin’s furniture shop to bring his long-estranged family together again.
As Lazslo – a piercingly intelligent, mournful man of few words – settles in to his adoptive home, he also has a chance meeting with the wealthy WASP Harrison Van Buren (an imperious Guy Pearce), who integrates the architect into his master plans for a grand civic building. A clash of privilege, sensibility and race creates a distinct sense of unease throughout. Increasingly the two men’s egos and ambitions intertwine and then clash, revealing the cracks of power and society that separate them.
Guy Pearce as Harrison Lee Van Buren (Photo: Universal Pictures UK)Timothée Chalamet is the best thing about A Complete Unknown
Read MoreThis is a film about historical and personal trauma, ambition and artistic intent, both the immigrant hope of assimilation and a natural resistance to subsuming one’s past and identity. Shot in VistaVision – the retro film process giving a long, wide aspect ratio to its shots – and knowingly modelled on works like The Godfather and Paul Thomas Anderson’s dark epic There Will Be Blood – it uses its visual grandiosity to say something painful and true about art versus commerce, as well as power and cruelty.
As difficult as the Toth family’s trajectory from the concentration camps to American success may be – the struggle is for each of them to begin again, and to create something fresh in the shadow of the past – Corbet’s film also underscores the immortality of uncompromising creative vision. In dark times like these, when abuse of power is rife, that kind of belief in art is a salve in and of itself.
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