We went to an early screening of The Brutalist starring Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Felicity Jones. With stand out performances to an incredible score that brings atmosphere to the film. Those of you who enjoyed The Pianist will be familiar with how Adrien Brody is capable to enhance and capture the viewers emotion.
The cinematography is out of this world and really brings depth to the film. Brody's performance is jaw-dropping throughout. The Brutalist is a film you will not want to miss.
Continue reading on the international press notes and stills for The Brutalist.
**Official Selection – Venice Film Festival**
**Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Directing – Venice Film Festival**
**Official Selection – Toronto International Film Festival**
**Official Selection – New York Film Festival**
SYNOPSIS
Escaping post-war Europe, visionary architect László Toth arrives in America to rebuild his life, his work, and his marriage to his wife Erzsébet after being forced apart during wartime by shifting borders and regimes. On his own in a strange new country, László settles in Pennsylvania, where the wealthy and prominent industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren recognizes his talent for building. But power and legacy come at a heavy cost...
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
From writer-director Brady Corbet (Vox Lux, The Childhood of a Leader) comes the story of László Toth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect who, after surviving the Holocaust, emigrates to the United States to begin a new life while awaiting the arrival of his wife, Erzsébet, trapped in Eastern Europe with their niece following the war.
What László finds upon his arrival in the West is an America far different from the one he expected. The promise of the American Dream proves to be illusory as his stature and reputation as a successful architect in Budapest do not translate to his blue-blood Pennsylvania surroundings.
“The Brutalist examines how the immigrant experience mirrors the artistic one in the sense that whenever one is making something bold, audacious or new — like the Institute László constructs over the course of the film — they are generally criticized for it,” says Corbet, who spent seven years making the film. “And then over time lionized and celebrated for it.”
“László Toth is a Jewish Hungarian architect who flees Europe after the war and comes to America to start a new life and reconnect with his wife who he has been forcibly separated from,” says Adrien Brody, who plays the lead role in The Brutalist. “It’s a journey of a refugee connected to his past who has also been stripped of his past. He’s trying to find his way in a new land with a new set of rules.”
Adds Mona Fastvold, who co-wrote The Brutalist, as well as Corbet’s features The Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux, “We loved the partnership, friendship, and love story that developed between László and Erzsébet as we wrote the screenplay. These were the first sparks and ideas that became The Brutalist.”
The Foundation
Brutalist architecture came into style in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Minimalist constructions showcasing bare elements like exposed concrete or brick, Brutalism emphasizes structural elements over decorative design, as demonstrated in the works of Le Corbusier, Marcel Breuer, William Pereira, Moshe Safdie, Denys Lasdun, and
Alison & Peter Smithson.
Corbet and Fastvold became fascinated by Brutalist architecture for its physical and psychological resonance beginning in the 1950s. “For us, post-war psychology and post-war architecture — including Brutalism — are linked, something we bring to life in the movie through the construction of the Institute, a manifestation of 30 years of trauma in László Toth, and the ramification of two World Wars,” says Corbet. “We found it poetic that the materials that were developed for life during the war were then incorporated into residences and corporate projects in the ‘50s and ‘60s by the likes of Marcel Breuer and Le Corbusier.”
Corbet has made two previous features, both historical movies: The Childhood of a Leader (2015), the story of a young American in France who grows up to be a fascist dictator, was set between 1918 and 1940; his follow-up, Vox Lux (2018), took place between 1999 and 2017, tracking the rise of a female American pop star against a backdrop of gun violence and the 9/11 terror attacks.
Corbet’s features wrestle with defining moments of the 20th century. The Brutalist, his most expansive work to date, focuses mainly on the mid-century era in American and European life — the decade immediately following the two World Wars. “It’s a time period that has always fascinated me, primarily in the way that post-war psychology had this extraordinary imprint and influence on post-war architecture,” says Corbet.
While researching The Brutalist, Corbet consulted architectural scholar Jean-Louis Cohen, whose works on Le Corbusier and Frank Gehry are widely respected. Visiting him at Princeton, where he teaches, Corbet asked Cohen if he knew of a real-life figure in history who established an architecture firm in one part of the world, only to experience displacement and exile in the war that forced the designer to start over again abroad.
Cohen couldn’t name anyone, so Corbet and Fastvold set about creating the fictional components that became László and Erzsébet Toth. “The story chronicles 30 years in the life of an architect that was well established before the Second World War,” says Corbet. “He and his wife get stuck in the
quagmire of war and emigrate separately to America — László in the late ‘40s and Erzsébet in the late ‘50s. The Brutalist is essentially about László trying to re-establish himself in America after being separated from his wife for a decade.”
While a figment of Corbet and Fastvold’s imagination, László’s experiences in America reflect those of key artists of the Brutalist movement, including Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe, and most of all, the Hungarian-born Marcel Breuer, who designed the Whitney Museum in New York City, now the Met Breuer.
“The truth of the matter is that most Eastern or Central European Jewish architects that got stuck in
Europe during the war did not make it out alive,” says Corbet. “In Breuer’s case, he was a well-regarded academic who was invited to work with Walter Gropius in America in 1937.”
As they researched and wrote, Corbet and Fastvold became fascinated with Breuer’s relationship with his wife — not to mention his volatile relationship with his own critics, who were often merciless towards his work in both Europe and America. “In the latter part of his life, Breuer was not a particularly celebrated architect,” says Corbet. “Now he’s considered to be one of the finest
architects of the 20th century.”
The Brutalist is the story of how the American Dream becomes toxic in the eyes of both Toths after László meets and accepts the patronage of the wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren, in exchange for constructing a memorial to Van Buren’s late mother on the oligarch’s sprawling Pennsylvania property.
The Cast
One of the major challenges of the production was putting together an acting team skillful enough to meet the emotional and technical demands The Brutalist presented.
“There were so many in this one, with new groups of people arriving on set every day, but we got very lucky because we had an ensemble of performers who understood the material implicitly and came prepared,” says Corbet. “They helped make a difficult and seemingly impossible process come together smoothly.”
In a story that features multiple languages, dialects and accents, including Hungarian, with some monologs playing out across multiple pages in the script, lead actors Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones had to learn to speak Hungarian, a notoriously difficult language to master, and then incorporate Hungarian accents into their predominantly English-language dialogue.
Brody was no stranger to historical material and Eastern European accents, having won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003 for playing Polish-Jewish composer and Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist. Says Brody, “For me to inhabit László Toth, I had to build a character based on a foundation of truth. I pulled from two profound influences in my life - growing up the son of a
Hungarian refugee, and representing Wladislav Szpilman’s memoirs as recounted in The Pianist; Although they are two entirely different characters, the months spent researching and connecting with Szpilman‘s past, and the horrors of that era, still haunt me and offered an emotional understanding to the harrowing experiences and loss that inform László’s journey coming to America as a refugee.”
Brody’s connection to Hungary preceded the film. His mother was born in Budapest and was forced to flee as a young girl amidst the Hungarian revolution in 1956. She became a refugee and emigrated to America, and much like László, pursued her dreams of becoming an artist. “I saw The Brutalist as a story of quiet perseverance and the need to strive for excellence,” says Brody. “Even when the ground has been ripped out from underneath you.” Adds Brody: “It’s wonderful to have a storytelling approach that allows enough time with a character
to see and experience a life in total, which is what Brady and Mona have achieved in The Brutalist.
Oftentimes you jump into the action and things happen in a story, but you don’t know the person you’re on the journey with. This film encompasses a 30-year span of one man’s life.”
Felicity Jones felt a similarly strong connection to Erzsébet Toth as soon as she read The Brutalist. “I engaged with this one right away and thought it felt like it came from another time, but it also had this contemporary, razor-sharp feel to it,” says Jones, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Jane Hawking in The Theory of Everything. “The story also charts how surviving life in a concentration camp carries waves of repercussions across the years,” Jones continues. “There’s a lot of violence in the movie — both emotional and physical — but it was the combination of violence, humanity, and romance, that really locked me into The Brutalist.”
“Erzsébet appears at the mid-point of the movie after having been separated from László for many years,” says Jones. “When they see each other at the train station, it’s an extraordinary moment because it’s her love for him that has helped her get through the years of trauma she suffered in the Holocaust.”
Jones spent months mastering the character’s Hungarian accent and delving into the darkest corners of Erzsébet’s life to bring to life on screen her overwhelming pain and suffering. But it was the deep and loving bond between László and Erzsébet that helped her create such a complex and nuanced character.
“She has such an unflinching honesty and she’s so observant in the way she takes everything in after she arrives in America and reunites with her husband,” says Jones. “Over the course of the movie you see her become healthier and more confident and spirited. There was a huge amount of range to explore and play in her. The love she and László share enables her health to physically improve.”
“Felicity is such a gifted actor, she brought a beautiful quiet strength and truth to the character that served as pillar of support for László,” says Brody. “She represents the powerful force of a partner who can hold the family together under the most extreme duress, all the while enduring the turmoil of a very passionate artist as he strives to leave behind a body of work. Erzsébet manages to support Lazlo in spite of her own suffering, and Felicity brought something very truthful and moving to that.”
In her absence from László, Erzsébet focuses her energy on protecting his sister’s child, the delicate young woman Zsófia, played by Raffey Cassidy. “Erzsébet relies on Zsófia and both women serve as emotional crutches for each other, more so Erzsébet than Zsófia,” says Jones. “The two women have a communication and language that is special between them — something that goes beyond
speech.”
Returning to the Corbet fold after a dual role in Vox Lux, playing Natalie Portman’s character in her early years, as well as Portman’s daughter in later scenes, Raffey Cassidy has come of age in the works of Brady Corbet. “She had the lead role in Vox Lux, split with Natalie, and it’s interesting seeing her six years later as an adult, tackling this very challenging character that has so much depth and darkness to her,” says Fastvold. “It’s wonderful to see that transformation.”
Darkness is the common denominator in many of the characters in The Brutalist, but the character who hides his darkness in plain sight is the suave and mercurial industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren, played with debonair menace by veteran actor Guy Pearce. Outwardly a progressive businessman who is building his legacy on a sprawling estate in rural Pennsylvania, he becomes both Toth’s savior
and tormentor over the course of a story that spans multiple decades.
“One of the things I enjoy most about acting is that tightrope you walk between different personality traits and psychologies,” says Pearce, who brings a shifting temperament to the film’s most ferocious and symbolic character. “He’s a man of a particular era who is smart, driven and has a passion for success; he knows what it means to be a man in a powerful world.”
Pearce was also drawn to the tenderness in Harrison Van Buren, which is only viewed in small glimpses, and which the actor likened to a little boy. But it was the character’s mercurial nature, combined with a thirst for power and control, that gave Pearce the most to work with when he was creating his performance.
“Part of his power is to be charming and win people over,” says Pearce. “He’s troubled, but there’s also a big heart in there, someone who is willing to financially support a struggling immigrant like László, whose architectural talent he recognizes. He’s got taste, and if he has power over everyone around him, everything is OK. His entire façade is constructed around that.”
In the relationship between Harrison Van Buren and László Toth, The Brutalist also confronts the uneasy question of who enables art — and the impact the patronage system can have on an artist and his vision. “We were interested in telling a story about an investor or benefactor and the artist he hires to create,” says Fastvold. “And how complicated that relationship can be.”
To bring to life the complexities of Van Buren, Pearce had to understand the nature of appearances in the rarefied world of a mid-century American industrialist of the oligarch class. Outwardly accommodating, but prone to bouts of rage and violence, Van Buren becomes a symbol for capitalism’s most egregious excesses.
“The way in which someone like Van Buren presents himself in dress and demeanor is very telling, and Kate Forbes’ costumes were stunningly tailored, because there’s a flair to him,” says Pearce.
“Hair and makeup artist Gemma Hoff fashioned a wig and mustache for me, and we used a shock of silver hair that aged the character up and gave him a certain authority. There’s a dapper and old-fashioned film-star quality that goes with Van Buren’s charm, strength and power. When I put the costume on, I was thrust into the character.”
Playing Van Buren’s adult children, Harry Jr. and Maggie, actors Joe Alwyn and Stacy Martin bring contrasting ambiguity to a deeply complex family. Both adult children strive to please their father in different ways, in a desperate bid for his affection and respect. “Stacy Martin is an actress we’ve worked with now on multiple projects and it’s wonderful working with people over and over again
because you can give them a gesture and they know exactly what to do,” says Fastvold. “Joe Alwyn is someone we worked with for the first time, and when I first started watching dailies, I saw an almost Trumpian quality to his performance.”
The Institute
The Brutalist deftly re-creates rural and urban American life in mid-century Pennsylvania, requiring a production design that was specific to both era and setting. It also required creating the towering and heavily symbolic architectural vision known as the Institute, which László builds in fits and starts on a Pennsylvania hill over the course of many years.
Production designer Judy Becker already knew mid-century America having designed Todd Haynes’ Carol, which begins in mid-century New York City and continues into the 1980s. The Brutalist follows a similar trajectory.
“I was pursuing this project before I even got the script because for a designer, making a movie about an architect is a dream come true,” says Becker. “I also happen to love Brutalist architecture, and the major challenge with this one wasn’t simply designing period-specific sets and locations, but constructing the Institute, which symbolizes László’s lived history and struggle.”
Becker had to create a design that not only looked authentically Brutalist, but resembled something a Bauhaus-trained architect might have concocted in real life. The construction also had to be achievable within the production without being an actual building — which required no small amount of movie magic on the design team’s part.
“The crux of the movie is the problems László runs into in the course of designing and building the Institute, but it’s not strictly a question of architecture, design or construction, because it relates to bigger issues,” says Becker. “When someone is paying your way, like Harrison Lee Van Buren is funding László’s vision, how much power do they actually have over you?”
To build the Institute, Becker researched Brutalist and Modernist architects and their commissions, but also relied on people, things and events specific to her background. “The structure needed to relate visually to a concentration camp, so I studied images of the camps, which was upsetting but necessary to understand László’s history,” says Becker. “When I was a child growing up in New York, I
remembered our local synagogue, which featured a Star of David overhead that you couldn’t see from the ground. It was a huge moment for me when I realized that the Institute should be in the shape of a cross, towering above the building’s lower feature, which look like concentration camp bunkers.”
László’s design skills in The Brutalist are first showcased through the furniture he creates for his cousin Atilla’s Philadelphia business. Planning how those items looked again fell to Becker. “I had to wear many hats on this project which I’ve never worn before, even beyond designing buildings as an architect would,” says Becker. “László also designs a huge cabinet system for Van Buren’s library,
which became a chance for me take all my sources of design inspiration and bring them to life in the movie.”
The Brutalist is out in theatres 24th January 2025.
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