The Brutalist [2024] – ★★★1/2

If The Pianist (2002) was Paris’s Notre-Dame de Paris, a soulful meditation on human struggle and condition, then The Brutalist is London’s Barbican Centre – empty in everything but performance and concrete image. It is an audacious construction of a film that, like much of modern architecture, is soulless. Directed by Brady Corbet (The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux), the film centres on Hungarian-Jewish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp and architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) who emigrates to the US following the World War II in 1947 and is given his first architectural assignments. First, he is commissioned to build a library, and then, construct a big community centre overseen by wealthy manufacturer Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce). László’s wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) soon also join him in America, but not everything goes smoothly because tensions between László’s family and Harrison’s family escalate, and László also battles a drug addiction. This is seemingly a plot to make the next American film classic, but, while being visually intriguing, The Brutalist is also historically empty, narratively both manipulative and predictable, and character-wise – woefully thin.

László experienced the horrors of the World War II first-hand, and yet, The Brutalist treats this history as though it is some incidental, flu-like event after which one wakes up as though from a fever dream. There is little indication in the story that this is important history that now should shape our main character’s conviction, vision and behaviour. As László travels to the US, we are shown a whirlpool of images shot in the dark and that supposedly represent the activities below the deck of a ship bound for New York City, US. There is disorder on board: noise, loud footsteps, some shouts. From these chaotic, brief images, we are supposed to get all the trauma that the people on board experienced during the war and now view them as immigrants hopeful for a better life in the new country. László himself is supposed to be a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, but in the film’s first hour, he is presented as a man with little historical background save from his trip on board the said ship and some letters we are shown from his wife Erzsébet. How are we supposed to believe in this character built from so few fragments? The film, running more than three hours, has plenty of time, and yet, shockingly, it says so little, especially about the horrific history, its impact on the human psyche, and how exactly it shaped the consciousness of US immigrants circa the mid-1940s.

What unfolds in the film’s first hour is a story that is only too easy to over-sentimentalise. We have a misunderstood genius fallen on hard times. There is no sense of history, but plenty of scenes that drag endlessly to produce in us only one emotion – sympathy for László. We are not allowed to feel anything else. László is first welcomed then “betrayed” by his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) in Philadelphia. Attila first offers László a job in his furniture business, but then does not want anything to do with him. Everything is so black and white in the film, it becomes a sob story without true history or nuance. As a war refugee and brilliant architect, László is often reduced to a caricature for the ages, a “punching bag” throughout the film. He gets bruised by everyone he meets, and those who do not bruise him are his friends that are in need of Lászlo’s help. Every secondary character seemingly exists as our emotional manipulator to either hurt László or to underline to us just how benevolent or great Lászlo can be. For example, Lászlo tries to help destitute single father Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé), and Gordon “helps” him in return. There is no thought-provoking inner journey or narrative momentum. And, we certainly should not expect anything even close to a deep character study that shined in numerous similar films, most notably in Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, also a film about a survivor of Nazi persecution who now lives in America.

Have we forgotten how to write characters for film anymore? Astonishingly, in the film’s three hour-run, director and scriptwriter Brady Corbet didn’t even think to include one short scene of relative quietness where we can connect with László intimately, on a personal level. And, The Brutalist tells a story where this is so needed. Give me just one quiet film scene that is without special effects or the camera’s wonky movements or self-love, where the audience can feel like they hold László’s hand or hear his heartbeat! Give me one single scene in the film where László is not an obvious victim wronged by others, a sexual object, a frustrated husband, or a misunderstood genius (the latter every time he assumes that supposedly “cool vibe” with a cigarette in his mouth), but just another human being! That never happens. The film’s issue is that it loves its image more than its character or story. As the audience, we do not want to be mere spectators to the camera’s wobbly work or upside-down images of Statue of Liberty. We want to feel like we are involved participants. We want to connect – above anything else.

The rest of The Brutalist is as tedious as it is predictable. Lászlo is trying to design that perfect community centre for wealthy man Harrison Van Buren. It is a vast project, and the finished building is meant to contain a gymnasium, a library, a chapel, and an auditorium. László is now living with his wheelchair-bound wife Erzsébet and mute niece Zsófia on the grounds of the Van Buren estate. Soon, Harrison’s pompous son Harry (Joe Alwyn) takes an unhealthy interest in Zsófia, and a railway incident involving Van Buren contractors results in much legal fees and over-budgeting. The community project is abandoned, and László and his family move to New York City, where he works as a draughtsman and Erzsébet writes for a newspaper. When Harrison re-hires László again to complete the centre, László becomes a victim of crime.

Guy Pearce embodies phenomenally the ruthless capitalist Harrison, stealing every scene, and Brody shows much raw emotion that makes us committed to every scene. But, these actors do not have characters that serve as anchors to the story. The characters are stereotypes without nuance that we either love (Lászlo) or hate (Harrison/Harry). Their caricaturish characteristics of “victimhood”, “need”, “power” and “ruthlessness” are recycled throughout the story. Sounds interesting? Then, another disappointment is that the film decides to go for an easy, cowardly opt-out to deal with its “villain”, too. A children’s fairy-tale is more imaginative.

 “They indicate nothing, they tell nothing. They simply are”. By the looks of The Brutalist, it seems like this line from the film also sums up our modern cinema and what is wrong with it. It often tells nothing and means nothing, and just shows – sometimes – too much. Even, the film’s idea of architectural conflict is either money worries or “concrete is not very attractive”-like statements. It does not go deeper than that or beyond its symbolism of capitalism crushing creativity or artistry, or even try to provide some thought-provoking insights into the brutalist architecture in which Lászlo should be a visionary, one-of-a-kind expert. The brutalist architecture is a post-war architectural style of the 1950s-1970s period characterized by massive, monolithic forms and exposed concrete, and the goal of functionality. Even in the visual department, the strongest aspect of the film, we have a controversy. The Brutalist used artificial intelligence not only to enhance its lead actors’ Hungarian accents, but also to make Lászlo’s architectural drawings and a few of completed buildings, as well as to render the look of the 1980s television.

What is more inexcusable, though, is that the film constantly dances around important issues, including war trauma, anti-Semitism, and the roots of heroin addiction, and does not make any concrete connections between cause and effect, or even pinpoint the origin of Lászlo’s increasingly disturbing behaviour. It never focuses on any serious issue long enough. We are in a constant thematic haze in The Brutalist, and won’t remember well any important issue the film allegedly tries to portray. The war that once took 85 million lives is reduced to a discomfort experienced by Lászlo over a lavish dinner, or a talk during a sexual foreplay (this is no joke). And, after all that, we are supposed to get teary-eyed when we find out that Lászlo’s community centre that he built for Harrison Van Buren was meant to resemble cramped rooms in a concentration camp? This is a farce itself, an insult of great proportion. A self-serving, empty gesture veiled as a tribute to immense human suffering that again, like Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, indirectly glorifies the fascist order and design.

Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce’s acting range is a force to be reckoned with, and Lol Crawley’s cinematography and Judy Becker’s design will undoubtedly leave an impression. But, the biggest problem of The Brutalist is that it mistakes image for meaning, and confuses visuals and emotion. The film should have stepped away from its character caricatures, empty spectacles and narrative predictability, and showed us both – a real human being and a history. Just like in our daily life in the year of 2025, in The Brutalist, we suffer from much visual excess, and in desperate need of thematic and character depth, narrative complexity, and more vitally – emotional nuance.