Director(s)	Brady Corbet
Principal Cast	Adrien Brody as László Tóth Guy Pearce as Harrison Lee Van Buren Felicity Jones as Erzsébet Tóth
Release Date	2024
Language(s)	English
Running Time	101 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

Note: This review was done off of theatrical viewings of the film and as such the review does not feature images or extended granular analysis. Once I am able to get a physical copy of the movie to watch, pause, analyze, and get stills from, the review will be updated to match the site’s standard review format.

A black screen, the ringing sound of sirens, then the text: Overture.

Just as he did in his previous two films, director Brady Corbet makes us formally aware that a thesis will be presented.

Glorious horns break in before the overture disappears and the sound of a shrieking woman pierces through the soundscape, shattering the grandiose aura.

A woman (Raffey Cassidy) is sat down and interrogated. She is tasked with explaining her family’s genealogy, give proof of her existence as a legible subject of the social order She remains silent and stares at the screen, forcing us into the position of interrogator struggling to make meaning of a gaze that avoids explanation.

Then, a cut: a new character, a new setting.

A man (Adrien Brody) tumbles around a boat and the chaotic sounds of the ship begin to overlay with the musicality of the overture; the line between that which is diegetic and that which is not blurs.

A woman’s voice layers over this sonic tapestry, reading from a letter. From her words we know that she is this man’s wife. She explains that she’s still alive and she is unable to come to him at the present. But her words are for us, not him – at least not yet.

He proceeds through the ship, bustling amongst the bodies on his journey to the deck. Finally, he reaches the outside.

The horns crescendos: Glory is here, hallelujah!

The camera turns and the Statue of Liberty occupies the frame; but this great symbol of American Freedom is presented upside down – a stark visual contrast to the booming of the horns and the presumed jubilation of the moment.

The man, László, beams with enthusiasm upon seeing this symbol of the American Dream, for unlike us, he sees the symbol as the powers that be intended it to be seen.

The woman’s speech ends: ” Go to America, I will follow you.”

Thus, the overture informs us of the deconstructive tendencies of the film, it’s desire to break-down that which it builds up:

• The film opens on the image of a woman who refuses to answer that which she is asked while an unseen woman supplants the space the former’s voice would have occupied; visual and auditory presence is exchanged along the register of gender.
• The triumphant score and narrative milieu immediately call the aesthetic of the Great American Novel caught on film but the image of Liberty rendered against itself calls the foundations of this image into question. The promise of freedom has been flipped on its head.
• The formal bracketing of the women announcing and auguring the film’s subject, a man on a journey towards the dream, immediately invites question on the construction of narrative, both of the individual and of the statecraft.

From the outset, we are forced to decipher a labyrinth of symbols and associations wherein even seemingly simple exposition becomes something else totally.

New text materializes: Part 1: The Enigma of Arrival.

László gets off the ship and stands amongst the immigrants aboard the ship. An official gives the group instructions in English as a translator repeats the same information in another language; the two dialects overlay onto each other, confusing the presentation of the information even though the content of the utterances remain the same: difference materialized through the act of translation – the enigma of arrival, indeed.

Yet, despite possessing little income and being advised to be wary one’s use of their capital, László’s first free act off the boat is to find the nearest prostitute to avail himself of his wares. The lingering admission of love enunciated earlier to us as voice-over serves as stinging rejoinder to this seeming betrayal; we feel for this unseen woman and chastise our protagonist despite his lack of knowledge; dramatic irony is thus rendered a formal conceit, a function of exposition that creates distance from context.

But try as he may, László is unable to fully consummate his tryst, a failure which leads the brothel’s owner to suggest that his sexual proclivities may not fall within the heteronormative paradigms of the time. She suggests men. He rejects her repeated suggestions with an air of disdain, a repudiation which operates both to show us László’s reticence to being categorized, in this case as queer, and as a comment about the contours of sexuality, the manner in which masculine sexual inclination is positioned in particular.

As László acclimates to his new home, Corbet intersperses radio broadcasts about the domestic and foreign affairs at the time alongside historically-tinted propaganda video sections extolling American virtues (presented in a boxier video-format), constantly complicating our relationship to the information being presented. The assertion of fact in these proclamations trains us to be suspect of the relationship between enunciation and verisimilitude

The narrative proper which features scenes upon scenes of our primary characters explicitly asserting themselves become doubled due to this inculcation, and the dread of what is not said, the visible absence so to speak, continues to build critical mass against the apparent didactic being employed until its provocations threaten to expose the artifice of the film all together.

In this vein, The Brutalist operates in a dialect with itself through its Rorschach-like formal tactility. On the surface, the film contains all the trappings of the Great American Novel:

• The story follows a rags-to-riches redemption story emblematic of the American Dream: László is a Holocaust survivor who is given a chance to continue his architectural genius under the purview of a new patron (Guy Ritchie)
• Composer Daniel Blumberg’s mostly momentous score emphasizes the epic stature of the tale.
• The formal demarcations of the film accentuate its novelistic quality, operating like chapters.

Yet, where the film shines is not the content of the narrative per-se as much as the structure by which it is presented. When the story as presented is viewed as veneer to be peeled back, the film transforms into a ghost story, one in which the myth of the epic assemblage haunts the story as a specter, both within the narrative proper (ex: diegetic and chronological ellipses) and around the narrative in the non-diegetic features.

By using the trappings of the Great American Novel, Corbet is able to toe the line between serious drama and deconstructive pastiche that his previous works have been unable to broach as successfully. Because we are aware generally of where László’s journey should go given our familiarity with the milieu, we are more perturbed by disturbances to that rhythm, a facet that the polarizing 2nd Part of the film exploits to full effect; when the film “cheats” and gets to the next preordained spot on our expected journey, we’re left to reckon with the through-line motivating the transition between the points without the usual journey which would explicate as much; when the film “breaks” with the structure and introduces a pivot that is seemingly out-of-place, we’re left recoiling with deducing what more commonplace moment has been replaced.

In either case, we are forced to use the film against itself, utilizing its ambiguities to mine into one another to craft a structure of meaning that can serve to scaffold the verifiable aspects of the film. This provocation is made explicit by the story, as László’s brutalist architecture, his artistic contribution, is constantly being symbolized, discussed, interpellated. We can’t help but caught up in analyzing the film’s grammar when the film centers itself around the same activity.

Ultimately, it is this act of interpretation, a brutality representing the most fundamental form of violence, that the film circulates around. The title then, a reference to both violence and art, is a confirmation of the intimate relationship between the two concepts and the manner in which the former both allows and enshrines the latter.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	The Brutalist sees the Great American novel rendered undo itself, operating as both a more traditional character-focused epic following a protagonist struggling to achieve the American Dream whilst deconstructing the meaning of that Dream and the ideological consequences of its deployment, presenting its findings as a Rorschach test that will give viewers as much as they put in.
Rating	10/10
Grade	S+

Go to Page 2 for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .