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The Brutalist reaches its full potential, thanks not just to its writing and its technical brilliance but also Adrien Brody's performance, applauds Deepa Gahlot.
For a filmmaker in his mid-30s to attempt a film as ambitious in scope and scale as The Brutalist is a remarkable achievement.
That he was allowed to fulfill his uncompromising vision and then lead it to a march of awards triumphs, plus 10 Academy Awards nominations, winners still to be revealed, immediately puts Brady Corbet in the list of Hollywood greats, with comparisons to Orson Welles and Martin Scorsese.
At a time of diminishing attention spans, Corbet made a 202-minute film, reintroduced the 'Intermission' to American cinema and shot his epic on the VistaVision format that has not been used for decades.
The hero of the film, Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), is a fictional Hungarian-Jewish architect, a survivor of the Holocaust, who leaves his wife and niece behind to make it to America.
The Bauhaus-trained and celebrated architect in Europe has to work in his cousin's furniture showroom, and live in a cramped room.
Right from the start of his life as an immigrant, into a country that does not care for his suffering or his art, Toth accepts what comes his way, from sleeping in a homeless shelter and hauling coal one day to being feted by the elite circle of his industrialist patron, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce).
But there is always pride in his work and a desire for a kind of almost spiritual expression.
Van Buren first throws him out of the beautiful library Toth has designed for his home because he cannot understand the concept and does not like surprises. He is, however, willing to concede his error when the design of the library is appreciated by experts and he discovers the value of Toth's reputation.
He commissions Toth to design and build a multipurpose community space on the crest of a Pennsylvania hill, in memory of his mother.
The people Van Buren works with cannot understand Toth's designs, and in a rage, he offers to put his own fee into it.
By this time, his wheelchair-bound wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and mute niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) are brought to the US, with the help of Van Buren's powerful friends.
Even as he acquires some stability in his home life, the work on the community centre is beset with problems, and Van Buren treats Toth with a brutality that unhinges him.
Keeping the troubled post-War times, and Toth's monumental creation in mind, Corbet darts off briefly to check on Toth's Black friend and associate Gordon (Isaach de Bankole), Van Buren's spoilt son Harry (Joe Alwyn), his nicer twin Maggie (Stacy Martin), and the decisions Zsofia makes to recognise her Jewish legacy.
The Brutalist is visually stunning, with Lol Crawley's camera capturing grand homes, the unfolding drama of construction and the painfully intimate moments of Toth's relationship with his wife.
The American Dream has been portrayed with varying points of view in literature and cinema but The Brutalist shows it with all the soul-destroying compromises demanded in return for survival.
Antisemitism, racism and the bitter immigrant experience butts heads against the pomposity of American capitalism, not even bothering to hide its pettiness.
The film reaches its full potential, thanks not just to its writing (Corbet and Mona Fastvold) and its technical brilliance but also the performance of Adrien Brody, who almost flogs himself bare emotionally so that the viewer can understand and appreciate the character, flaws and all.
Toth is not made of larger-than-life heroism that would defeat the exploitative Van Burens of the world but he is like the raw concrete -- le beton brut -- which gives the architectural style of Brutalism its name and this film its apt title.
