The scope and scale of the film ‘ The Brutalist’ is about as encompassing as you would expect from a three and a half hour tale of immigration inthe 1950s. The first half (the film has a 15 minute intermission so as to take a break from the deluge of cinema being poured upon you) tells the story of Lazlo Toth (Adrine Brody), a Hungarian architect, having been forcibly separated from his wife during The Holocaust arrives on Ellis Island shaken from his wayward journey but ready to build a new life for him and his wife to settle down in. He moves in with his cousin Attila and works in Attilas furniture shop, designing furniture to sell in Philadelphia.

So much of ‘The Brutalist‘ fells like old Hollywood. From the runtime and the intermission to the choice to shoot on 35mm Vista Vision. Few films have ever or will ever look this good. From scenes on a hill in Pennsylvania, to the warm glow of a kitchen, or the stark white of a marble quarry in Italy. Every frame is just oozing with warmth and depth. I’m hopeful that Corbet’s choice will encourage others to shoot on older media. The score also sounds like an overture from a sword and sandal epic from the 1950s, with the dirge of the horns that comprising swelling when we first see the Statue of Liberty while coming into Ellis Island.

The film knows what year it’s coming out though, there are infomercials about how Pennsylvania is unique in it’s ability to represent America as a whole. Much like we heard leading up to this November, it’s what makes it such a target for politicians and pollsters to take a temperature of the nation. And as Lazlo navigates Pennsylvania he navigates all that America has to offer. Both the good, and the bad. He redesigns a library at the behest of Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), son of a wealthy business mogul Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce). The redesign is supposed to be a birthday surprise so when Harrison comes home unannounced he screams at the team doing the work to get out. Harry of course refuses to pay after his father lets his disapproval of the project be known and Lazlo is forced to live on the streets.

Eventually Harrison comes to find Lazlo, having calmed down and taken a look at the work that was done. He loves his new library, and his new pet project Lazlo. This is one of the major plot points of the film. The power of the wealthy to use the impoverished as pawns in their little games. It reminds me of a more serious and less poppy ‘Saltburn‘. Harrison hires Lazlo to design a community center for the Philadelphia suburb of Doylestown. Lazlo is happy to have the work, and to have the high powered connections that might make it easier for his wife Erzebet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) to immigrate into the US.

Without going to much further into simply the plot of the film, Lazlo’s journey is about a battered and broken people trying to reclaim and recover from the terrible war crimes that were done to them. And as Lazlo gains power he uses it, he uses it sometimes to help, and later he uses it to protect his own lot in life. Hurting those beneath him. The cycles of violence put upon him are reflected back on the people his is able to rise above in status and station. The realization that “no one wants us here” as Lazlo and Erzebet are driving back to Philadelphia, the plight of the immigrant to not be wanted by his cousin, his boss, his neighbor is a heavy pill to swallow. They’re already here, why would Lazlo think he can just come here as well?

The most frightening part of the film is the last line. In the future showing off the many illustrious works of architecture he made a withered Lazlo is introduced by his niece Zsofia. His many building have stood the test of time, and we are left to imagine the necks he had to step on to achieve these works, in the closing moments of the film Zsofia delivers directly to camera the lie that has made her life, and Lazlo’s life so impossibly difficult, but that also made them rich and famous as they leaned into it. “No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.”

4.5/5