TIn 2015, Brady Corbet’s menacing debut feature about a fascist dictator, The Childhood of a Leader, wasn’t a masterpiece, but it billed itself as one. Declarative, even cheeky, ambitious in its subject matter and formally grand in execution. Even if you don’t think it’s a truly great film, and even if, like this critic, you find its brio bordering on arrogance, it’s still a film directed by the American actor-turned-director. Even if you promise to be, you still have a few years left until you’re 30. His stunning, cracked-mirror portrait of the pop machine, which has captivated many while deterring others, finally and unmistakably captures it with The Brutalist. is here. This is Corbet’s claim to join the ranks of the modern American majors.
Corbett’s graduation in this regard is a film of epic proportions about an artist doggedly pursuing the masterpiece that seals his legacy. In this case, the architect is designing a vast, imposing, and demanding mountain of concrete modernism in the face of public skepticism and pragmatism. Opponents are not immune from criticism. At the festival’s debut in Venice, so many critics reached for the adjective “monumental” that A24 blinked and compiled their quotes into a poster. A uniform brick of praise, so to speak. And yes, the muscular, sprawling, decades-spanning 215 minutes elegantly divided by built-in intervals, The Brutalist is a near-overwhelming feat of construction, one that commands a degree of awe through its heaviness. I invite you to remember.
But Corbett’s films aren’t just scary, shadow-casting cinematic obelisks. Like many great architectural achievements, its beauty lies in the subtlety and complexity of its details. The folding intricacies of historical revisionism and political commentary, the finely carved figures, the textured patina of Lol Crowley’s dazzling Vistavision cinematography, and the unexpected stings. Burnt, mordant humor. And after the divisive, angular subversion of Vox Lux, The Brutalist’s biggest surprise is its elegantly assured classicism. Large-scale yet intimate at its core, the story unfolds as George Stevens and Elia Kazan’s powerful mid-century Hollywood saga unfolds. When the first half ended and the lights came on, I blinked in surprise. It felt like less than an hour had passed.
In a now unimaginable role once assigned to Joel Edgerton, Adrien Brody plays the role of the emptier man once celebrated in his homeland before the abuses of the Holocaust and subsequent immigration to the United States plunged him into anonymous poverty. He plays Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian Jewish architect who is possessed by a ghost. state. There’s a metatextual poignancy to casting Brody in the role of a man chasing past professional and artistic glories. Many thought Brody had reached his peak long ago with his Oscar-winning performance as another Holocaust survivor in Roman Polanski’s 2002 film The Pianist. But there’s a broken, languid stillness to his work here, a disintegration of soul in the resigned body language and deep, wary gaze that might characterize his career. do not have. Even for his director, this huge third film could be a milestone for him to be known for the first time forever. Still, at just 36 years old, Corbett may still be laying the groundwork as a writer.
