#TIFF24 Review: The Brutalist (Special Presentations)

By John Corrado

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 5th to 15th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.

The third film from director Brady Corbet (Vox Lux, The Childhood of a Leader), The Brutalist fully cements him as the real deal. The film itself is the grandest of visions; a three-and-a-half-hour epic set in mid-20th Century America, that recalls the works of Andrew Cimino, Sergio Leone, and Francis Ford Coppola.

Shot on VistaVision and presented in 70mm, we feel the grandeur of Corbet’s vision in every frame of Lol Crawley’s striking cinematography. It’s a film told in two parts that just keeps absorbing us deeper and deeper into its story, with a fifteen minute intermission that doesn’t break the flow but somehow adds to the experience, and an epilogue that brings it all together beautifully. It’s masterful stuff.

The story spans over a decade and begins after the Second World War, with Hungarian-Jewish architect László Toth (Adrien Brody) coming to America after surviving the concentration camps. László leaves his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) behind in Europe, and tries to settle in Philadelphia. It’s here that he is brought into the wealthy family of Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), when Harrison’s son Harry (Joe Alwyn) commissions him to design a library for his dad. Van Buren eventually enlists László to design a massive building project that would serve as a legacy piece.

We are instantly struck by the film’s scope and ambition, but it’s the careful, classical storytelling that draws us in. Corbet has made something that feels like the great American novel being played out onscreen. The screenplay, co-written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold, carefully lays the foundation and then builds on top of it. There are layers of subtext, things beneath the surface. It’s an immigrant story, and a tale of artistic ambition, but also a story about these two men and the shifting dynamic between them.

This dynamic works because of the yin and yang of the film’s brilliant leading and supporting performances. Brody and Pearce are both gripping to watch, fully embodying these characters. The changes in Brody’s physicality is fascinating to observe as the film goes on, with the actor revealing layers of buried emotion through his portrayal of László. Pearce is magnetic but also capable of being cold, his Van Buren able to turn on a dime.

There are shades of The Master and There Will Be Blood, but Corbet is not merely doing a Paul Thomas Anderson copy. Corbet is trying to craft the next great American movie, and he has succeeded; it’s a saga of America in a similar way to Coppola’s The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, or Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America. A movie like this was just waiting to be made again, it simply took the ambition and drive of a young filmmaker like Corbet to actually do it.

Corbet’s film also serves as an idiosyncratic, allegorical thesis in defence of brutalist architecture itself; it’s minimalism and maximalism existing all at once, massive objects that are unmissable due to their size but also on the surface appear simplistic. The story also presciently grapples with antisemitism in America (including how the founding of the State of Israel provided the promise of a homeland for the Jewish people). Who knew that these post-war themes would resonate again in such a way now.

It’s a grand, ambitious film. The first and second halves do feel somewhat distinct (Corbet has described the first as being somewhat minimalist, and the second maximalist), but the film fully justifies its length by bringing us so deeply into the world of the characters. By the time it all snaps into focus, Corbet delivers an immense emotional impact. It’s a sweeping thing to experience in a cinema, especially projected in glorious 70mm.

Film Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)