There’s a lot to like about The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s newly minted Oscar best picture frontrunner. The tale of a Hungarian architect’s early years in postwar America and tortured quest to build a vast modernist community centre, it’s the sort of grand, decades-spanning epic that we complain Hollywood doesn’t make any more. It is full of chewy ideas around art, patronage, assimilation and America’s complex cultural relationship with Europe.
Despite a (by modern standards) tight $10m budget, it looks astonishing (one scene filmed in a cavernous Italian marble quarry will set your eyes on stalks). The performances – Brody as its lead, Guy Pearce as his controlling, blue-blooded benefactor and Felicity Jones as his steely, principled wife – are layered and striking, as is its relentless score, by former Cajun Dance Party and Yuck guitarist Daniel Blumberg. But along with those qualities, one of my favourite things about The Brutalist might sound like an insult. I really enjoyed the bit when it wasn’t showing: its interval.
