My ★★★★½ review of The Brutalist

The Brutalist uses its lived-in performances, stylized editing, and fantastic cinematography to create an American epic painfully rooted in realism.

What goes into making art? More specifically, what goes into making a building if that’s your particular mode of art? There are the people, the blueprints, and the materials. There’s also the energy required to finish it and the dedication to follow through. The Brutalist shows these attributes but decides to pull back and paint a larger picture around the initial blueprint. It’s not just about the structure or the man who made it but about the world around it. The Brutalist uses its lived-in performances, stylized editing, and fantastic cinematography to create an American epic painfully rooted in realism.

The Brutalist follows Adrien Brody as an architect named László Tóth, who relocates to America after leaving post-war Europe. Over these 215 minutes, he experiences so much, and Brody’s performance accentuates the shifts in emotion nicely. It’s a performance you find very easy to root for and care for, but I also found it thrilling because of its penchant for surprise. As he builds the character, the vision of what he means becomes clear. The performances around him are great as well.

Felicity Jones is also great as Erzébet Tóth and compliments Brody very well. She brings a fire to the film that it needs when she enters and is the center of a few great moments. Guy Pearce is great, as always, in a charmingly complex role as Harrison Lee Van Buren. His performance will linger with me for a while. I believe Joe Alwyn is also great in possibly his most impressive role as Harry Lee Van Buren. He’s unsettlingly charismatic in most scenes and communicates so much with his stance. Issach de Bankolé is also excellent in a refreshingly expansive supporting role for a movie with so much on its mind. All of these actors have a time to shine, and it’s great to see care given to them.

The editing is just substantial. It’s frantic and immediately all-compassing. This is a long movie, yet it flies by as every cut seems aimed at progressing entertainment. Voiceovers are cleverly overlayed over moments to ensure some plot-related purpose. Music sways in and out of being diegetic. It often feels jagged or harsh in how quickly it moves from place to place, but it works as a whole. The aspect ratio tends to shift, and there’s an air of refreshing stylization in most choices made. The editing wouldn’t be much without the beauty of the cinematography, though.

The cinematography here is gorgeous. It’s unbelievable that this was made for less than ten million dollars. Each shot feels tender and specifically crafted to stun or be effective for the movie. I don’t want to spoil much, but there’s a particular shot the film returns to in different ways many times over the film. It’s simply off the ground as transportation quickly glides over it. This image conveys the constant movement and the uncertainty of what will happen at the end of the road. It also serves as a great, thorough line for the movies focused on progression at any cost.   

For a long and sprawling film, some elements are bound not to be as fully sketched as other aspects. There are a few moments that I wish were touched upon more. A few loose ends that aren’t tied up. I don’t think they’re too detrimental to the overarching plot, as the last two scenes are near-perfect in execution. But I’m left reflecting and processing why certain moments happened and what characters were thinking. I think I’ll learn more about its intentions on a rewatch, but it provides something intriguing to chew on for now.

The Brutalist uses its lived-in performances, stylized editing, and fantastic cinematography to create an American epic painfully rooted in realism, sometimes to too ambiguous ends. The performances are primarily naturalistic while occasionally exploding in emotion required by the story. The use of quick cuts in its editing compliments the film’s central theme, among many others of progression. The cinematography renders every shot and, in extension, every scene as a work of symmetrical art. It does end with a few unanswered questions, which stop it from being necessarily pitch-perfect in my eyes, but with time, I could take to it more. The Brutalist is a long, beautiful, complicated epic film, and I’m glad I got to see it. You rarely see something so enthusiastically dense these days.

Thanks for reading this review. I hope you enjoyed it and enjoy the film whenever you see it.