In the opening shot of The Brutalist, László Tóth (Adrien Brody) ascends from the depths of a ship docked at Ellis Island. World War II is over, and the Jewish Hungarian Tóth is reborn into America. Big brass horns accompany him as the doors open up to the Statue of Liberty. It calls to mind the sweeping opening of The Godfather Part II, but instead of a wistful sense of desperate hope, there is a triumphant confidence.
The fictional Tóth is a renowned architect and survivor of the Holocaust, but his architectural practice seems like a thing of the past. Tóth is a weary survivor, by no means defeated but appropriately wounded. Fortunately, his cousin runs a furniture business in Philadelphia, where he is going to work. Not long after, the two are approached by a mysterious businessman (played by Joe Alwyn) who commissions them to renovate the study of his wealthy industrialist father, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Yet when Van Buren arrives home after its completion, surprised and apparently unaware of the project, he dismisses the workers without pay (sound familiar?).
The Brutalist grapples with the dysfunctional marriage of art, class and commerce in an enormous swing of a movie.
Years go by before Van Buren finds that his study has been applauded as an architectural revelation. Suddenly with the attention of the artistic elite, Van Buren discovers Tóth’s notoriety as a designer of brutalist-style buildings in pre-war Europe. Seeking Tóth out, Van Buren offers him a proposition: to design and construct a massive building, to be dedicated to his late mother, atop a hill near his property in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It would be a community center, but also a theatre, a church and more.
Tóth, living in a boarding house and nursing an addiction to heroin, has no choice but to accept the offer. Work begins immediately on Van Buren’s community center, a sort of shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope for Tóth and the American dream he is pursuing.
With his good fortune and new resources, his wife Erzsébet and his niece Zsófia are able to leave Europe and join him. Having developed osteoporosis from being famished in the camps, Erzsébet is wheelchair-bound. Their new presence with Tóth on Van Buren’s property brings a sense of unease. The balance suddenly feels tipped, and the specter of antisemitic sentiment lurking in the corners of Van Buren’s estate awakens more fully. Suddenly Tóth is not just a visiting genius architect but a working American with a family and a dream of a better life. One who happens to be a Jewish immigrant. This is going to complicate things.
As survivors, Tóth and his family are about as lucky as they come. They are full of hope, the artist designing a new wave of American post-war prosperity. Yet the structure Tóth is building is no Taj Mahal. Part of the wave of brutalist architecture that followed World War II, the building design seems to reflect the cold, hard realities of what Tóth had just lived through. The brutalist ethic itself stands in opposition to the shiny suburban America of the 1950s, a reminder of what the world still felt like over in Europe. It seems almost out of place in sunny Doylestown. Looking through examples of brutalist architecture, they look more like the defense bunkers of Omaha Beach than they do a place where humans want to live or work.
In a discussion with Van Buren, Tóth suggests that his theory of design is to create things that endure in the face of decay and destruction. Van Buren may well view his own legacy in the same manner. Yet it begs the question: What does Van Buren have in mind? Does he have a vision for this creation beyond seeking approval from a high-minded artistic consensus? Is brutalism the right design for a gym, a theatre, a church? Even Van Buren’s own idea for the function of the center is vague, like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Perhaps it is merely an attempt to win his mother’s love and approval from beyond the grave. Having no taste himself, he hires the taste of others. This is consistent with the history of American Jews in the mid-twentieth century; though often kept out of sight in major institutions, they were nonetheless relied upon for artistic jobs, from writing popular Christmas songs and composing film scores, to playing a vital role in the creation of American comedy—and so much more.
The Brutalist’s director Brady Corbet (Vox Lux, The Childhood Of A Leader), who co-wrote the script with Mona Fastvold, grapples with the dysfunctional marriage of art, class and commerce in an enormous swing of a movie—a three-and-a-half-hour epic shot on 70mm film. Much like the buildings themselves, as the saying goes, they “just don’t make ’em like this anymore.” One can see Corbet taking in grand pieces of cinema such as The Godfather or the films of David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, et al.). In a cinematic world where half of everything is owned by Disney, how much room is there left for something big and original like this? That is, if your name isn’t Christopher Nolan.
Today, much of the post-war brutalist architecture has been torn down. Those artistic reactions to the aftermath of World War II are no longer needed, no longer serve a purpose. If there was this window of time when artists were given the reins to design the world the way they saw it, it is now shut. The Van Burens of the world are fickle, lacking taste or vision, vulnerable to trends and the opinions of the masses, ready to turn their back and walk the moment the cultural winds seem to blow another way. They cast a long shadow over America, but if you look closely enough, you can still manage to see the ways in which artists the likes of Lászlo Tóth, or Brady Corbet, managed to sneak something personal and profound into their creations.