The Brutalist has been a long time coming to the screen. Back in 2018 director Brady Corbet told the world that his next film would be The Brutalist. Then in 2020 it was announced that the cast would include Joel Edgerton, Marion Cotillard, Mark Rylance, Sebastian Stan and Vanessa Kirby. Corbet’s film finally premiered in September 2024 at the Venice International Film Festival with not one of the aforementioned actors now taking part. We can now only imagine who would have played who?
Before going to see The Brutalist you should perhaps know that Corbet’s finished feature is made up of three parts and has a running time of 3 hours 34 minutes including a 15 minute intermission after the first part.
Part 1: The Enigma of Arrival sees Jewish architect László Toth (Adrien Brody) arriving alone in America after escaping post-war Europe. His wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) being stuck in Europe due to some red tape. Toth’s first job sees him working for his cousins (Alessandro Nivola) furniture business where he’s asked to renovate the grand library of millionaire business man Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). After originally hating Toth’s work Van Buren takes a liking to both the architect and his brutalist architecture and commissions him to design a grand community centre that’s to stand as a monument to his late mother. Part 1, which is is mostly an introduction to the characters, zips along at a fair pace and the intermission feels like a break that we don’t really need.
Part 2: The Hard Core of Beauty sees Van Buren helping to get Toth’s wife into America and the pair continue to work on Van Buren’s grand hall.
Sadly The Brutalist ends up feeling like a two act play where you’ve loved the first half came back after the break to your seat only to find that the second half doesn’t match the enjoyment of the first.
Corbet sets up his story brilliantly but with the characters introduced it all starts to unravel in his second act. Needless plotlines only lengthen the considerable running time whilst the ending feels rushed and slightly out of kilter with what’s went before.
