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Film Review — The Brutalist

Strong performances and old-school epic evocations enhance Brady Corbet’s tale of immigration, architecture, and the American Dream

Simon Dillon
Simon Dillon Cinema

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Credit: A24/Universal/Focus Features

Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a curious beast. On the one hand, it has the trappings of an old-school Hollywood epic, structured as such in its cinematic presentation. Shot in 35mm VistaVision (blown up to 70mm in certain venues), it features an overture, intermission, and full frame chapter captions: “Part 1: The Enigma of Arrival”, “Part 2: The Hard Core of Beauty”, and “Epilogue: The First Architecture Biennale”. These evoke memories of everything from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to The Godfather Part II (1974) and Barry Lyndon (1975).

Yet despite such formal nostalgic nods, The Brutalist is a thoroughly modern piece of cinema in many other respects. Its subject, Hungarian Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrien Brody), is a modernist designer of the Bauhaus school (hence the title). The film reflects the utilitarianism of that design movement; for example, the brevity of the aforementioned overture and the striking, Bauhaus-inspired Dutch-angled end credits. Despite the lengthy running time (214 minutes, including the 15-minute intermission at the halfway point), nothing feels superfluous. There’s a spareness and economy to…

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