'The Brutalist' review

 At the end of ‘The Brutalist’ we are told that it is not the journey that matters, but the destination. As we look at the result of László’s work across the 3.5 hour runtime, a concrete and marble tribute to a dead woman, with a cross made of light shining at its centre, this becomes the question. Was it worth it? Is everything he went through, everything he did to the people around him, justified by beauty? More generally speaking, how much of these experiences are contained in the work? 

Throughout the film we see people struggling with dilemmas. Harrison Lee wants to create something beautiful, but cannot handle how ugly the process of creating that thing is. Similarly, he celebrates modernity and forward-thinking but is held back by his prejudice. Erzsébet is torn between her love for her husband and the dark path his ambition is taking him down; she sees the importance of his work but struggles to cope with the toll it takes on them. 

For László, his vision is everything. He will do whatever it takes to create beauty. Unlike Harrison Lee and Erzsébet, the people swept up his wake, there is no conflict. There are only challenges. His love for his wife, his drug addiction, even staring his own failure in the face, doesn’t stop him from pursuing beauty. He struggles, but is always focused on his ambition. In particular, when faced with the prejudice of the Jewish people and immigrants in general in America, he perseveres, and eventually translates this to his work. His building is said to reflect his experiences in a concentration camp, having been unable to speak much about his experiences previously. 

It is because of his devotion to his craft, his rejection of compromise, and the fact that he doesn’t have conflicts but challenges, that his work is beautiful. His complete and entire commitment to his work means that it is entirely his. All the intricate details in his building, he has given everything to. Everything in the building, he accepts as his own. The building reflects him. The challenges against the realisation of his vision affect the final product, but it is still something that is completely his. 

This is one of the key paradoxes in the film. We have a building which is entirely his, but also inseparably determined by forces behind his control, such as train crashes and money problems and American architects. There is also the fact that the building is dedicated to Harrison Lee’s mother. To what extent does this building represent her? How can it, given her son’s evil is a large part of it?

Brady Corbet said in a an interview that he sees the immigrant experience as very similar to the artistic experience. So, very similarly to the previous questions, we can ask to what extent is László shaped by his trauma. He struggles with his identity in the face of persecution, addiction and alienation. He is changed by political forces out of his control. However, he still strives to fulfil his dreams and desires. To what extent is he who is? How much do his actions reflect him? There is an instability in his identity, just like in his art. 

There is no answer to the question of how much of László is in his work. But this is what makes it beautiful. It is beautiful because of the challenges he has faced in order to fulfil his ambition. It lies in a liminal space between his soul and his suffering. It stands as a testament to his spirit against the pain and struggle he experienced throughout its construction. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

The beauty of his work is that it ignores the existence of the challenges. This is the hard core of beauty which the second part of the film is named after: it is what it is. It is entirely self-contained. It goes beyond its circumstance, even if it is affected by it. Isn’t this the dream for a Jewish immigrant in the 20th century, to escape one’s circumstances?

We can also ask if it was all worth it. Whether his suffering was justified by the end result: his building. The beauty of László’s work is that he doesn’t know if it is worth it. Maybe he thinks it isn’t. But he makes it anyway. Beauty is all that matters to him. As soon as he arrives in America, he heads straight for a brothel, but only to admire the beauty of the women. 

As I have probably elaborated on enough, this is a film about beauty. It is an ode to the persistence of the human spirit, and the beauty that comes with it. It is easy to draw comparisons between the building and the film. From the very first scene, you can see that this is a film unrelenting in its ambition and focus. It is impossible not to admire it. If you are a young, first-time director like Brady Corbet, this is exactly what you want to do. Something self-obsessed, full of ugliness and pain, and magnificent because of that. After all, it is not the journey that matters, but the destination. 

I am writing about this film as if I’m giving it 5 stars. I am not because it is flawed. But I don’t really care about its flaws. The things it explores are done so well that it is impossible to lose focus of them.