Hyde Park Pick: The Brutalist

It’s hard to go into a film called The Brutalist and not feel slightly daunted. This is especially the case then when from the start you know the film’s duration is around 3.5 hours. Whilst longer films aren’t uncommon these days, this one does stand out somewhat even by current standards.

On the flip side, we also know that The Brutalist is a major contender in the Oscars and Bafta’s race having already picked up significant wins including Best Picture and Best Director at the Golden Globes. And, it’s a film where the credentials of the creatives behind it carry a lot of weight. In particular, writer/director Brady Corbet. As an actor, Corbet’s CV includes working with some of the most influential and exciting directors of the past few decades including Michael Haneke, Greg Araki, Lars Von Trier, Olivier Assayas, Sean Durkin, Mia Hansen Love… the list goes on.

His directorial debut, 2015’s The Childhood of a Leader, was widely welcomed on release as the work of a bold and ambitious new voice in modern cinema. Almost ten years on in the context of a surging global far right it feels like a film to go back to, whose relevance may have grown rather than dwindled with the years. 

All of this is a way of saying The Brutalist is a hard one to go into without a lot of baggage and pre-conceived notions about the experience you are about to have. But, what I loved about it is the fact that film itself sets aside that weight from the start with some of the most compelling filmmaking I have experienced in a while. And compelling is the right word, this is a film that pulls you in from the very start.

The story the film is exploring is fundamentally a dark one focusing on a visionary architect and his wife who flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of the modern United States. The characters are imagined but the story is one we have seen so many times both. In cinema filmmakers like Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch all fled the grasp of the Nazi party and in turn helped shape the new Hollywood through landmark films like The Apartment and The Big Heat. In architecture it was many of the pioneers of the Bauhaus movement who were pushed out of Germany and to the US, and it’s their story The Brutalist particularly amalgamates into something new.

Despite this darkness, its lead, Adrien Brody, has been eager on the press tour to explain how he sees the piece as a fundamentally positive story. A reminder at a time when our refugee and immigrant communities are under constant threat from sanctions, violence and intimidation, legal obstacles and a barrage of negative opinions from some at the highest levels in the public sphere. Brody is championing The Brutalist as a reminder of the strength our countries can derive from both embracing and consciously building an international community here at home.

Aside from the importance of this messaging, it’s important to also say that The Brutalist is also a strangely enjoyable film. When I watched it, I was reminded of the Hollywood classics of old like Doctor Zhivago and Citizen Kane. The performances feel bold and defiant, Daniel Blumberg’s mesmerising score is like a heartbeat keeping the rhythm of the film, moving us forward always. Then there’s the aesthetics from the set design and costumes to the cinematography, every detail feels like a work of art.

Bring together these elements, The Brutalist feels like a version of ‘event cinema’ to me. It’s a film to be seen in the cinema, to be experienced at scale and then talked about, considered and pulled apart with strangers in the interval over a big glass of wine or a steaming hot coffee.

The Brutalist is showing at HPPH from Fri 24 Jan. You can book tickets here.