Immigrant Song — The Brutalist

The plight of the American immigrant is a seemingly bottomless well from which to draw stories and drama for film, and really all media. Part of this is because this nation was founded on the principle of being a beacon of hope and freedom for oppressed peoples the world over. Immigration is part of the backbone of our national identity, and the quest to achieve the so-called “American Dream” has an almost universal appeal. From serious dramas like Gangs of New York to heartwarming family fare like An American Tail, the promise of a better life in the U.S. will exist as a plot motivator for as long as this nation does.

But another big reason why we can keep telling these stories is that, nearly 250 years after its founding, there is still a dark underbelly to the ideal, an overt hypocrisy where the powers that be talk out of both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they say that America was built by immigrants and that they’re crucial to our success, but on the other there’s overt racism and ethnocentrism to separate out and scapegoat the “bad” migrants that we as a country don’t want. It’s a practice that’s been in place since the Colonial Era, and sadly still thrives today. Hell, we’re less than two weeks away from the second presidential term of a man who married two European immigrants (the current one having possibly overstayed her original visa, thus becoming “illegal,” and using the derided “chain migration” system to get her parents into the country) and basically turned his campaign over to a wealthy South African one, yet at the same time makes promises of mass deportations of millions of Mexican, African, Central and South American, Asian, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern ones. I’m sure there’s something that makes the former group better than all the rest, but I can’t q-WHITE put my finger on it.

Again, though, this is nothing new. If you’ve studied history, or just watched the right films, you know that basically every cultural group was denigrated at one point or another for daring to come to our shores despite us openly inviting them. Blacks, Irish, Italians, Jews, Hispanics, Japanese, Chinese, the list goes on and on. We are ostensibly a melting pot of a country, but there remains after two and a half centuries a sizeable chunk of the populace and the government that wishes for that pot to be decidedly monochromatic.

This is the backdrop for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, acclaimed as one of the best films of 2024 and certainly campaigning as one of the favorites this Awards Season. An intimate epic about how America treats the men and women who built it, the picture stands at a whopping three and a half hours (broken up by a merciful and all too rare intermission halfway through), and going to great lengths to be as thorough in its portrayal of exploitation as possible. Does it hit all the right notes? Mostly. There are a few items that felt tacked on while other crucial plot points are glossed over. But on the whole, this is a solid prestige entry, one that I wouldn’t necessarily vote for if I could, but at the same time won’t be the least bit offended if it does take top honors over the next two months.

Adrien Brody carries the proceedings as László Tóth, a Hungarian Jewish architect who survived the Holocaust and moved to the U.S. after the war. Making his way to Philadelphia, he meets with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who owns a furniture store and who married a Christian woman named Audrey (Emma Laird) as a way to assimilate and hide his heritage, the first major sign of cultural concession that László encounters. It’s never spoken aloud in the film, but the history is taken as read that while America fought the Nazis, it’s not like the country was enthusiastic to take in Jewish refugees. Attila’s business succeeds through a façade of a non-ethnic family structure that he completely made up. László is hired on by Attila to help design and build new pieces, but for no pay, instead getting a spare room and Sunday dinner as compensation.

One day, a high-end client named Harry Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) commissions Attila for a special project renovating the library at his father’s mansion. It’s meant to be a surprise, with the job needing to be completed within the week that the patriarch is out of town. László negotiates a large payday for his kin, assuming a good chunk of it will pass to him and he can become a salaried employee. Recruiting a homeless builder named Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé) whom he met in a bread line, László is able to construct a lovely yet sparse study where the bookshelves become hidden cabinets flush with the wall, allowing the client to read at his leisure with maximum sunlight and minimal clutter.

However, when the owner, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) comes home early and sees the nearly-finished product, he goes into a rage, driving László and Attila off his property, and Harry refuses to pay. László is then evicted by Attila, blaming him for the situation and accusing him of making a pass at Audrey. Months later, homeless and working as a day laborer, László is tracked down to a construction site by Harrison, who does a complete turnaround, becoming László’s patron and commissioning him to build a massive community center in his late mother’s honor, having discovered that László was an architect of renown back home. Suddenly László is invited into high society, and is granted favors from Harrison’s well-connected friends, including pulling strings to get László’s wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy as a teenager, Ariane Labed as an adult) safe passage to the States, as they’ve been living under Soviet rule since the end of the war.

The bulk of the film is a tragic cycle of privilege and power, with László being praised and uplifted as long as he’s useful and acquiesces to American squeamishness. For example, he comes up with a grand design for the community center, including things like a theatre and a library. However, because he’s Jewish, and because the close-knit, semi-rural Pennsylvania community where he’s working is uncomfortable with that, the project can’t be approved by the town council until he agrees to add a chapel and a massive cross-shaped steeple. When Harry makes several improper advances towards Zsófia, László asks him to leave her alone, only to be met with a threat that he’s merely “tolerated” in this country, and that if he doesn’t look the other way on the indiscretions, Harry will actively work to ruin him. The dramatic climax of the entire film concerns a truly gruesome act by Harrison to make it clear where László stands in relation to him, a reinforcement of their dynamic that is as heartbreaking as it is completely believable, especially considering the people we somehow elect to our highest offices.

Brody gives a fine performance, suffering the slings and arrows appropriately in the moment, but honestly I think Pearce and Jones outshine him at every opportunity. Harrison is an immaculately crafted real-world villain, his cruelty and bigotry so ingrained and natural that you can often shudder in your seat realizing you know people just like him. This is arguably the finest performance of Guy Pearce’s career. On the complete opposite end, Felicity Jones as Erzsébet is tender, assertive, and alluring. Surprising László by arriving in a wheelchair, she explains that she suffers from famine-induced osteoporosis, severely limiting her strength and mobility, a side effect of her time under Soviet occupation. At the same time, though, she demands no special treatment, whether she’s confronting the Van Burens on their behavior (arguably the most powerful scene in the entire film) or whispering to László at the community center’s ribbon-cutting ceremony that she wants him to make love to her when they get home. No matter the circumstances, Erzsébet is a fully-realized person, and Jones gives a stirring performance, expertly conveying all the complexities of the character.

There’s a lot to enjoy from a filmmaking perspective as well. Given that László is an architect, the production design has to be lush and ambitious to meet the needs of the character and story, and it does so spectacularly. Daniel Blumberg provides a powerful, booming score that at times makes the film feel like something akin to Rocky, and given its use in advertising, might be the most recognizable orchestration for any project in 2024. It’s shortlisted for the Oscar, and deservedly so. Finally, I absolutely loved the cinematography, particularly when it comes to long shots of vehicles traveling down the road. The camera is fixed either to the lowest part of the front grill, or just underneath the front bumper, so that we get a first-person, ground level view of the various pieces of infrastructure we traverse. This visual through line is paid off perfectly in one of the story’s most dramatic moments, one that sadly further drives home the exploitative dynamic between Van Buren and László. The fact that all this was done on a budget of less than $10 million makes it even more impressive.

So why isn’t this a surefire Best Picture candidate for me? Well, there are a few shortfalls that just left a bad taste in my mouth as they accumulated. The first is the excessive smoking. Now, you may think this is minor, and it is, but it’s a symptom of the larger problem of how the film is paced. I’m not a fan of smoking in general, but I tolerate it just fine. I used to be a huge narc about it when I was in high school, but I mellowed out as an adult (especially when I myself started smoking weed). Still, when the act goes from something in the background to essentially a character trait for no reason, then I take notice and get irritated. In nearly every scene, László is smoking. He even stops himself in the middle of a sentence to light up or ask for a cigarette. It adds nothing to the story nor does it develop his character in any way, and yet it’s a huge part of his action. Given that movies have to put a disclaimer in the credits that states that the production wasn’t paid to feature tobacco products, you have to wonder what motivated Corbet to include such heavy usage. A lot of movies had a lot of unnecessary smoking this past year (by which I mean yes, I know people smoked more back in the movie’s time setting, but it’s not like you’d bat an eye and think the flick was unrealistic if it wasn’t there), but this is like 1980s territory here. It’s almost a crutch for the actors, especially Brody. I half wonder how much runtime would be saved if you just cut it all out.

Along similar lines, László becomes a heroin addict, shooting up with Gordon at every opportunity, and even putting Erzsébet’s life in danger with it at one point. Again, there’s no satisfying establishment as to why he uses (there’s literally one line late in the film about him taking it to dull the pain while he was on the boat to America — a scene we never saw — but otherwise it’s completely glossed over), nor any real explanation as to how he keeps his supply up. His habit is retroactively used by Harrison to disparage his character and further cement his patriarchal superiority, but that’s not enough to justify the multiple diversions we take to show it. Honestly it feels tacked on just to give László some kind of affliction to check off a box with Academy voters, and it genuinely undercuts his character, because it gives the Van Burens a legitimate vice to use as a weapon against him, when their remorseless hatred and devious sense of entitlement were more than enough evidence for us to know that they’d try to victimize our hero.

Beyond that, several plot threads are either left hanging or just disposed of without reason. The two biggest ones involve Harrison and Zsófia. In the latter’s case, she’s mute for most of the movie. We never know why, only that once the Russians took over, she refused to talk. I think we’re meant to assume it’s so she won’t inform on anyone, but it continues when she gets to America and is hounded by Harry. However, when we jump forward a few years, she’s married to a man named Binyamin (Benett Vilmányi) and speaking frequently and openly. What changed? When did she decide to talk again? How did she and Binyamin meet? We have multiple minutes for cooking spoons, but not 10 seconds to answer one of the most burning questions of the entire film? Similarly, when it comes to Harrison, things do finally come to a head for him, and we of course wonder what his fate will be, given all his schemes, crimes, and violent abuses. I won’t spoil the ending, obviously, but what we got was too opaque for any story enthusiast to be fully satisfied.

Again, taken on their own, none of these problems is that important. But in a sprawling, 3.5-hour marathon, they do add up and make you question why such creative choices were made, and to what end. The Brutalist is a really good film, and creeps ever so closely to the 2024 pantheon, because it’s an excellent production with terrific performances and a plot that resonates in our current political climate despite being set 80 years ago. Even the basic impetus for László’s work is coming under fire with the new administration. During his first term, Trump signed an executive order declaring that all new federal buildings must be designed in “classical” or “neoclassical” architectural styles. Now, he’s going a step further, and proposing the demolition of all federal buildings that don’t adhere. Essentially, he’s trying to erase decades of art that don’t conform to his rigid idea of “beauty,” which flies in the face of people like László who make things to endure, to be a legacy not just of themselves, but of the struggles they went through along with their people. Imagine a day when the Smithsonian’s African American Museum is torn down because it doesn’t have any gold-plated toilets. It’s dire possibilities like that which make The Brutalist an essential film experience, even if it’s not the greatest overall.

Grade: B+

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Originally published at http://actuallypaid.com on January 11, 2025.