THE BRUTALIST

With the exception of one particular scene that I thought was really on the nose & unnecessary but also strangely important to the story, I thought The Brutalist was very good. It deals with a few things that are directly attached to my life. Now…there’s nothing I hate more than when someone makes personal relatability to a movie the determining factor as to whether it’s good or not, but architecture & design has been an integral part of the majority of my life. In addition to having an unhealthy obsession with cinema, I’m also an architectural draftsman. I’ve worked as an interior designer, furniture specifier, architectural assistant and a CAD operator but at the end of the day it all comes back to drafting (it’s also just easier to tell people that I'm a draftsman as there are a lot of parts to my job/career that are long-winded and unnecessarily complicated). I say all that to say there’s an additional layer of understanding I think I might have over the average viewer. Not to sound too gatekeep-y, but it would be odd if I didn’t mention my background in architecture & design.

It’s also sometimes incredibly frustrating reading about architecture & design from the perspective of people that don’t know what they’re talking about. Specifically modern architecture and practical add-ons. Anyone can have an opinion on whether they feel a building is ugly or not. But sometimes their opinions are a little uninformed. I come from the practical side of architecture & design so it’s difficult to listen to some people wax poetic about how they would have made the Barclay’s center better when they haven’t taken a class on space planning or city planning (although in fairness - I’m not a fan of the Barclay’s design myself).

Modern architecture is vilified now more than ever. Anything new or sleek-looking that doesn't have a thousand little gothic details is always associated with something evil or bad. Whenever something isn’t a dusty cluttered Brooklyn brownstone it’s considered an eyesore or ugly. People have no clue that the reason a large (sometimes out of place) HVAC unit is attached to the side of a building is partially to blame on the original design and there’s no other choice but to put a large blue metal unit on the exterior because it’s the only way to provide heat to a school...

The Brutalist does sometimes have an outsider’s surface-level romanization of what architecture & design can be, but I’ve come to the realization that’s always going to be the case and it’s just unavoidable. It is what it is. People want to see beautiful buildings and someone hunched over a drafting board with beautiful sketches and deep contemplative thoughts. No one wants to sit through a 3-1/2 movie about code violations, drafting techniques and failed inspections. I do acknowledge this criticism is kind of unfair. I know most folks don’t want to see a boring procedural movie about anything. People want to see the pretty final product. Totally understandable.  

The film’s lead character studied at the Bauhaus institute and we see a good amount of Mies Van Der Rohe-style furniture designs in the first section of the story (van der Rohe was a former director at the Bauhaus).

I know I’m being overly nitpicky towards the architectural side of the story because this is the closest I get to feeling authoritative towards something. But keep in mind I’m not even a licensed architect and I have a lot of personal resentment towards the career path I’ve chosen. Truth be told, I came in to this movie with preconceived notions ready to hate but I was pleasantly surprised). Try to remember that I led with calling this film very good. And to be fair, the film dedicates a good amount of the story to the sketching, planning & red tape that comes along with the construction process (it does take two decades for the film’s main architectural project to reach completion). There are a few scenes where our lead architect throws a fit because of a code-related change to his original design. Adrien Bordy's Laszlo Toth is a complicated man. One minute he's an egomaniac and the next minute he's a helpless child. 

Architecture & design aside, this movie is kind of a one-sided twisted made up love story that’s all in the mind of the film’s antagonist. Without spoiling too much, Laszlo Toth isn’t “The Brutalist”. It’s Guy Pierce’s Harrison Van Buren. Like I eluded to earlier, the character of Van Buren is very on the nose and the relationship between he & Laszlo is an almost elementary school level metaphor on the relationship between America and how they treat immigrants (it’s also very clear that Van Buren is weirdly in love with Toth but expresses it in a very…brutal way).

Brady Corbett’s story of an immigrant coming to America in hopes of a better life is nothing new. Only his approach. I’m also in shock that this thing was made for only six million dollars. It has the same grandiose scale of a Christopher Nolan film but with a bit more “soul”.

This film certainly passes the look test. A movie like The Brutalist has to be at least visually pleasing. Thankfully it is and then some. A good chunk of the the movie feels like an architectural exhibit and I’m honestly not mad at that (the movie does end with a literal architectural exhibit dedicated to Toth's work). No matter how naive I feel the film’s approach towards architecture & design can sometimes be - it’s clear Brady Corbet has a genuine love & respect for the craft. This is probably the best modern film dealing with design since Peter Greenaway’s The Belly Of An Architect.