Fleeing war torn Europe, László (Adrien Brody) lands in America as some beautiful credits role. This you can tell, is going to have some style. He’s been through a lot, but has a cousin in Philadelphia to put a roof over his head, explain American ways to him and give him good news that his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) is alive too, just still stuck in Europe. They are of course Jews, lucky ones to escape Hitler and to have help building a future. Building, creating is László’s thing. He’s an architect and designer. Starting with furniture in his cousin Attila’s (Alessandro Nivola) store to begin as the news anchors us in 1947 with the creation of the State of Israel. This isn’t a simple everything’s going to be okay story though. At well over 3 hours, it’s not in a rush. Neither is László, he drifts, he shoots heroin. Tortured, with survivors guilt perhaps. His experiences poured into his art, but his talents continue to open doors, no more so than with Industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who feels inspired by László and offers him a job. The project that’s conceived is immediately ambitious and its beginning marks a new start, but there’s a shift in the unlikely friendship between László and Van Buren, as Erzébet makes it to America with her niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy). When László arrived he was a shell. Erzébet, despite being in a wheelchair is more formidable. She’s an intellectual match for anyone in the room and it’s these characters dynamics that make The Brutalist tick. It’s not just about architecture in the same way Jaws isn’t just about a shark. The Americans are bold, uncultured, a sea of faux graces. The Europeans are cagey, cautious, but strong. It’s a power struggle and tempers rise as the building does. A simple story with a craftily hidden depth. Beautiful from start to finish, shot in VistaVision (that’s not been said in while), with an enticing score of jazz and modern classical. It does have loose ends, which seems odd given its runtime and its far from complete in any artistic or historic sense. Stark and cold. Honestly quite bleak and pretty depressing. Cynics of brutalist architecture will no doubt make a clumsy comparison. It’s marvellous though and well worth watching. Don’t worry, there’s an intermission and you don’t have to love brutalist architecture either… although I do and that might help.
7/10
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