'The Brutalist' -  A monumental work of cinema

ADRIEN Brody gives an outstanding performance in this stark, beautiful and epic historical drama about a Holocaust survivor architect who comes to postwar America.

Directed and co-written by Brady Corbet, the film is a passion project long in the making, with development beginning all the way back in 2018.

After numerous delays the end product has arrived and it is impressive to say the least.

It might be the most bold and original piece of filmmaking you are likely to see all year.

Despite its tremendous scope and run time (215 minutes, including a 15 minute intermission) it cost less that £10 million to make.

That fact perhaps serves to sum up just how remarkable a feat the movie is.

The film is told in two parts and follows the trials and tribulations of László Tóth (Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish architect. After surviving the Holocaust, he emigrates to the United States in 1947.

Previously separated from his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece at Buchenwald concentration camp, he has no idea whether they are alive or dead.

Travelling to Philadelphia to stay with his cousin Attila, a furniture salesman and his wife, László is relieved to hear his own wife and niece are alive.

Taking a job with his cousin, they are commissioned by the son of a wealthy industrialist to renovate a library as a surprise for his father.

The library is a graceful, modernist design but when the industrialist, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) sees the project early, he throws a strop and dismisses László and Attila. László is later kicked by his cousin, blaming him for the library’s failure and levelling false accusations at him.

Sometime later, László is eking out a living as a labourer (and having developed heroin addiction) when he is approached by Van Buren.

The industrialist is apologetic, saying he has grown to love the library and reimburses him for his efforts.

Van Buren invites László to a party at his home, where members of the architectural community laud his library design and artistic vision.

Van Buren makes an ambitious commission to László to build a grand community centre project in memory of his late mother. László accepts and project set him down a tumultuous, obsessive path, one from which he may have trouble escaping.

To call The Brutalist ambitious would be an understatement.

A 3½ hour epic dealing with incredibly heavy themes in unflinching detail, it is a far cry from the largely conventional output of modern Hollywood.

That ambition however, is realised in extremely satisfying fashion.

Though the film is ostensibly about an architect, in a way it is not really about architecture at all. It is more a story about trauma.

What we see proceed onscreen is irrevocably a result of the trauma that has come before, the horrors of the Holocaust, of the camps.

Though he puts on a brave face, László is a man haunted by his past and who uses the passions and obsessions of his profession as means of managing the devastating consequences of what was done to him and his family.

The architectural project that ultimately serves as the focus of the film is a big brooding metaphor for these personal issues and the film’s exploration of that metaphor proves to be unforgettable.

Brody is one of the favourites to lift the Best Actor award at this year’s Oscars and on this basis, he would be worthy of a second win in that category (his first coming for 2002’s The Pianist).

As László, Brody is faced with a thoroughly challenging role but he dives in headlong.

As he interprets the character’s personal and professional problems, he is at times affable and charming and at others raw and harrowing.

His performance makes the character’s journey all the more enthralling; ensuring that the film seems to be just a fraction of its extended run time.

The Brutalist is an unqualified achievement, an absorbing, unflinching epic of monumental proportions.

RATING: ****

Matthew McCaul