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The Brutalist
An allegory of art and commerce
The first half of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is taut and gripping. It tells the story of Laszlo Toth, (a solid Adrien Brody) a renowned architect and concentration camp survivor as he adapts to freedom and a new life in the United States. The opening image, a sequence full of confusion and fear in which we don’t know whether Toth and the people around him are escaping or going towards more danger, spits him out into Ellis Island, represented by the sight of an inverted Statue of Liberty, which encapsulates the overarching theme of the movie. How free is the United States? How free is freedom under capitalism?
At first, the movie concerns itself with the experience of the new immigrant, who is given a job and a place to stay by his assimilated cousin Attila (the excellent Alessandro Nivola) who has married outside the faith and americanized his name. Soon we find out that Laszlo, this impoverished, unassuming man, was a talented, well known major architect before the nazis dehumanized him and then tried to kill him.
The title of the movie alludes to his slow, painful and in some ways reluctant human reconstruction. I found it fascinating to follow a man in such a dramatic and unique quandary: should he become someone else, or rebuild himself in this new land and its crass commercial customs? What do you make of yourself after surviving…
