The Brutalist – "much ado about nothing"

At first glance, The Brutalist appears to be a profound film with a lot to say. However, much like its predecessor The Zone of Interest—from the same studio (A24)—the film falls into clichés and emptiness and, despite a veneer of subtlety, force-feeds its message.

(This "review" is more of a judgment than an actual critique, and to pass judgment, arguments are needed. And to present arguments, spoilers are necessary. You have been warned!)

Adrien Brody, arguably the most handsome actor out there, has had a fascinating career. He thought he had the lead role in The Thin Red Line by Terrence Malick, only to end up with a five-minute bit part. His peak came with The Pianist, where he also played a Jewish character in relation to World War II. He later appeared in both major and minor films, but none of these roles seemed to show the talent Brody showed in The Pianist. Until The Brutalist.

Once again, he plays a Jewish man marked by war—this time not in Warsaw during the war, but in the United States as a refugee afterward. Having grown up and made a name for himself as a modernist—Bauhaus and Brutalism—architect in Hungary, László Tóth arrives in the U.S. as one of many nameless refugees.

(If there were any doubt about the life of fear, pain, injustice, and humiliation that awaits him, the viewer is given a not-so-subtle hint: the Statue of Liberty appears upside down. The American Dream? Not really, just so you know.)

In America, we follow László over thirty years of his life. He first stays with his cousin, who owns a furniture store and hopes to expand with László’s help, but is soon sent away (more on that later). He ends up shoveling coal and is eventually "rescued" by a wealthy American who wants Tóth to design a monument—entirely in the Brutalist style—to honor his deceased mother. This American has a complex relationship with the architect, both envying and despising him for his talent, which he himself lacks despite his wealth. And, of course, because László is Jewish. And for another reason we later discover—because the director wants to emphasize what he has been hammering home throughout the film. Yes, this reads exhaustingly, with all these clauses, but that’s just how it is.

So, László is "rescued" by the wealthy American, who gives him a job, helps him, but also humiliates him along the way. Meanwhile, László struggles with the absence of his wife and niece—both Holocaust survivors who are not yet able to join him in America—and with his opium addiction, which he picked up on the voyage to the so-called promised land. Amidst all this, he designs the monument, facing both progress and setbacks.

What’s striking is that this time, we don’t see the modernist architect as a "starchitect" who believes he alone knows how the world should look—like a Speer-esque dystopia—and despises the ignorant, naive, and traditional people around him who, how dare they, love classical beauty. This trope is found in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. Here, the architect is powerless; he must cater to every whim and fleeting thought of his client, who one moment gives him full creative freedom, only to later cut costs, then bring in another architect. Even then, the life of an architect was no bed of roses.

Eventually, László’s wife and niece arrive and move onto the American’s estate. However, things between him and his beloved do not go smoothly—one of the film’s strengths. His wife, now in a wheelchair, and he, both deeply traumatized by the war, barely know each other anymore. They have lived apart for years and now find themselves in a world that, at best, tolerates them and, at worst, would rather see them gone.

So far, an interesting film with a solid story, certainly worth watching. There are beautiful visuals, the tension between László and the condescending American family, the architect’s development, his battle with opium, and the love between him and his wife.

But!

There is also a lot wrong with the film. And I feel compelled to say this because it is being hailed everywhere as a masterpiece. It simply isn’t. A masterpiece requires a certain level of achievement—Once Upon a Time in America, Le Cercle Rouge, Aftersun, The Irishman, The Godfather, A Hidden Life—those are masterpieces. They transcend themselves, where everything aligns, striking a chord that makes the world appear anew. Just as Emily Dickinson's entire oeuvre is remarkable, not all her poems are masterpieces. That’s okay; we’d be lucky to approach even her weakest work.

Bluntly put: The Brutalist, like The Zone of Interest or Christopher Nolan’s entire body of work, is a masterpiece for mediocre people. That’s fine—my grandmother always said they, too, are children of God and deserve a place—but they are numerous, loud, and increasingly dictate which films get attention.

It’s not surprising that The Brutalist comes from the same studio as The Zone of Interest—quasi-profound films that, on the surface, seem to have a lot to say but ultimately leave little lasting impact.

Examples:

1. The upside-down Statue of Liberty. Heavy-handed symbolism reinforcing the film’s premise—America is not so easy—that is shoved down our throats. YOU CANNOT MISS IT.

2. László stays with his Catholic cousin, whose wife subtly (but not really) hints that he should leave because he’s a Jewish migrant—essentially, a Christ-killer in Catholic eyes at the time.

3. Broken glass appears in every crisis scene, as if we need a visual cue to understand that a crisis is happening.

4. The worst offense: during a trip to Italy to find the perfect marble, László and the American join Italian quarry workers for a drunken evening. The wealthy Protestant American looks down in disdain from above. Later, he approaches a drunk, unconscious László, lays beside him, makes antisemitic remarks, opens his trousers, and rapes him. The next day, it is never discussed, but from that moment, László is a truly broken man.

   
   

It’s ludicrous—not only physically unconvincing but also a redundant, exaggerated manifestation of what the film had already made clear: László’s humiliation. As if we hadn’t grasped the asymmetrical power dynamics and his fear of the American estate, the film literalizes it into sexual violence.

Like 12 Years a Slave, The Brutalist overshadows its valid points with excess. It’s not a bad film—it's creative and original—but it's certainly not the masterpiece it is being hailed as.

Finally - History & Memory

A brief philosophical reflection. The brilliant yet criminally unknown philosopher Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy gave a speech during World War II in Jerusalem. I'll keep it short and to the point. The problem, he said, was that historians failed to recognize the difference between memory and history. A people tell themselves a story—based on whole truths, half-truths, and sometimes even falsehoods. Through that story, they remember significant events, construct a self-image, and form an identity. This is memory. Whether it is historically accurate or not is irrelevant; what matters is that the people or group have this story. Often, as I would add, such a story contains a moral aspiration. When the Netherlands sees itself as a tolerant nation, it is essentially expressing a desire to be one. The way the country interprets its history is, in fact, a reflection of its ethical awareness of what was right and wrong in the past.

Then there is history—the facts. These can differ significantly from memory. According to Rosenstock-Huessy, 19th-century historians took a sledgehammer to memory. In doing so, they destroyed the stories that peoples and groups told about themselves, leaving them without identity and thus vulnerable to the allure of Nazism, fascism, and communism. The task of the historian, he argued, is to work within memory—to understand the significance of these narratives while patiently and carefully uncovering the facts.

This is not easy, but it is crucial. Just look at how the Netherlands has evolved: the debate over Zwarte Piet, the inclusion of slavery history in the Rijksmuseum, and the growing recognition of Anton de Kom. A multicultural society, in essence, means recalibrating memory. This requires the native population to let go of certain narratives—which can be difficult—and the immigrant population to fight for their stories to be acknowledged in the public domain. Ideally, this process leads to a new collective memory that integrates all these different peoples into a shared narrative. Whether this is possible remains to be seen.

Back to the film. America tells itself the story of the American Dream—the foundational myth that sustains the nation. The idea that anyone can make it, as long as they work hard. But as David Simon already pointed out in his series The Wire:

""(...)But a countering myth is at work, and it serves as national ballast against the raw, unencumbered capitalism that asserts for individual achievement and the amassed fortune of the wise and fortunate. In America, we like to believe if you are not smarter than the next man, if you are not clever or visionary, if you never do build a better mousetrap, then we hold a place for you nonetheless. The myth holds that if you are neither slick nor cunning, yet willing to get up every day and work your ass off and be a citizen and come home and be committed to your family and every other institution you are asked to serve, then there is a portion for you as well. You might not drive a Lexus; you might not eat out every Friday night; your children might not be candidates for early admission at Brown or Harvard; come Sunday, you might not see the game on a wide-screen. But you have a place. And you will not be betrayed." He went on to write, "it is no longer possible to describe this as myth. It is no longer possible even to remain polite on the subject. It is, in a word, a lie."'

The Brutalist challenges that myth as well. It aims to show that while the "memory" of the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) American is all well and good, the reality was quite different for others—migrants, Jews, African Americans, Italians, and all the other newcomers. They did not experience The American Dream. Memory is convenient, but here is the truth.

In that sense, The Brutalist is an interesting addition, as it attempts to carve out a place for the migrant within the collective memory of the United States, aligning it with the works of Albert Murray and James Baldwin. And yet, despite this contribution, The Brutalist remains a mediocre film that, in the end, is neither much better nor more original than The Immigrant (2013), which tells the story of a Polish migrant in America.