The Brutalist

It is very apparent, from its immense, atmospheric ouverture that enraptures with its cacophony of sounds and images, that The Brutalist is a film for the ages, larger than any piece of cinema that has been released in the past decade, larger not merely in the sense of scale, but also in the sense of depth. Despite what the use of the Vistavision format would suggest, it is not a return to a classic form of cinema from the '50s, if not for the comparable length and roadshow-styled viewing event- it is a much more mature film, a much more intense experience. It has a modern sensitivity to a deeper, thematic narration of hermetic purpose, in which the meaning is complex, hidden below the surface of a storyline.

Often dubbed as a grand american epic, in truth, The Brutalist is not. Although it is centered on a hungarian architect who flees from Europe after the second world war and starts a new life in the american continent, this is not a film exclusively about the american dream, nor about the downfall of it. Still, the image of the statue of Liberty, that appears head down, immediately unlocks this interpretation, which becomes more outlined as the story follows through, as László, who is an accredited Bauhaus architect, ends uőp shoving coal or working as a firm employee in this so-called land of opportunities.

It is also not strictly about the antisemithism of which the puritanistic traditional regions of the United States is imbibed, even if it does play a major role. Some of the occurences in the film seem to parallel in a way the biblical story of Joseph, who was sold as a slave in Egypt and would earn his freedom in a series of ordeals -  particularly, the episode in which Joseph is accused by Potiphar's wife of assault is reminiscent of a similar plot point in the film. The rise of Zionism and the birth of Israel is tangently present, often as a background historical event that parallels László's own overcome of his past traumas, later on in the film perceived with criticism by the protagonists. The holocaust is a continuous off-screen presence, evoked in the soundscape of the ouverture, but never directly addressed until the epilogue.

Yet, the protagonist Tóth László (Adrien Brody) himself points it out in an early line, he believes that he is not accepted, not as a jew, but as a foreigner alltogether. In this sense, The Brutalist is a film about the immigrant experience, that complex stuation in which people are eradicated from their homeland and are forced to move to a foreign land that contemplates them with disdain. The choice of shooting The Brutalist on location in Hungary to represent the state of Philadelphia has an artistic connotation in this sense, pointing to a sort of perpetual visual short-circuit for whoever is familiar with the central european landscape: it evokes a familiarity, yet the film presents it as the foreign land. The quasi-abscence of hints at what has happened to either László or his wife Erszébet achieves a sense of universality, that in this case depicts european emigrants, but that is not dissimilar from contemporary examples either.

Finally, The Brutalist is a film about the artist's struggle, and its difficult identity. If sincere and incorrupted by success, penniless, at the mercy of the goodwill of patrons, liable to their exploitation. Guy Pearce's Van Buren is an exceptional counterweight to László that deeply explores the mentality of this perpetual opposition-attraction and its fatal consequences.

This being a drop in the ocean of what The Brutalist is about, it can be determined with certainty that we are facing a giant cathedral of a film, deeply chiseled with sculptures, details, themes, like very few films have ever succeeded.