“Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?” says the architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody). He’s a brutalist – the one described by the title of Brady Corbet’s new film, which has been nominated for 10 Oscars. His is an architectural language of simplicity and honesty. László, trained at the Bauhaus art school and once renowned in his field, is a Jewish survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, whose arrival to America has rendered him anonymous once more. He learns, over time, that many of his creations withstood the war; their constructions have continued to speak for him even in his absence.
What’s been heavily advertised – The Brutalist’s 215-minute running time, including a built-in, 15-minute interval; the use of the high-resolution, widescreen VistaVision format, which hasn’t been deployed for a full American feature since 1963; and the distribution of the film on 70mm prints – isn’t simply the fetishistic marker of an old school auteurist. Because there is no better description of The Brutalist than of its construction.
