Featured in The 7PM Project: December 10, 2024 episode (2024)
Scenario
When visionary architect László Toth and his wife Erzsébet flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern America, their lives are forever changed by a mysterious, wealthy client. Filming lasted a total of 34 days between March 16 and May 5, 2023. It was shot in Budapest, Hungary and Carrara, Italy. Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.: When dogs get sick, they often bite the hand of those who fed them until someone mercifully puts them to sleep.
The Brutalist is full of surprises
The characters aren’t who you expect — not in the Scooby-Doo ending kind of way, but in the subtler, gradual way that real people reveal themselves — they unfold over time, in a new context, or as circumstances dictate. Here, the circumstances are post-World War II horror. Adrien Brody’s Laszlo, a Jewish architect who escaped the clutches of bloody Europe, sneaks into — or is confronted by — America’s open arms in a frenetic opening sequence that literally recalls giving birth next to the Statue of Liberty. His journey becomes one of constantly navigating life’s various horrors: existential, professional, familial, intimate — never taking his eyes off the reward of a great achievement, and without even appreciating the value of that reward.
What is the lesson?
Is it the shameful discovery that his success came not in spite of his trauma, but because of it? Do we owe anything to the abuse? The forces of culture, land, power, and those who wield them, in building our brutal heritage (and our homelands)? Are our lives gasoline burned on the way to a more meaningful place?
But there’s no novel
The film is charming, looks cool, and isn’t boring (did you hear it’s long?). It feels like it’s based on an old novel—a mysterious tome that I’d love to dig through for some of the details the film refuses to give away. This aging man’s search for meaning becomes ours, too. And any better understanding of Lazslo’s arrival, the machinations of his family, his country, and his uprooting, for better or for worse, is up to us.