In The Brutalist, Hatred Is the American Way

"They don't want us here."

These words, spoken by the architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) in a fit of paranoid rage near the end of Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, have stayed with me since I saw the nearly four-hour epic. At this point in the film Tóth, a Hungarian Jew trained by the Bauhaus, who once designed grand public buildings in Budapest before the Nazis declared his work degenerate, has escaped the extermination camps and come to America. He has struggled with poverty and familial betrayal. His chance at creative and professional redemption, an ambitious community center funded by Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) — a gruff, egotistical Pennsylvania industrialist — has become a costly boondoggle. And he has even been degraded in ways as brutal and depraved as anything he might have faced in the camps.

Who exactly does he mean by "us?" Immigrants? Jews? Artists? Intellectuals? Tóth is all of these things at once, and in Corbet's bleak vision of the American experience, any and all of these attributes suffice to make him a pariah, for the American way of life detests them all in equal measure. In the immediate aftermath of a world war, in a country that did not suffer its deprivations but claims victory nevertheless, few can possibly understand what he's been through, even if they wanted to. The collective attitude is summarized by one venomous invective delivered by Van Buren's son Harry (Joe Alwyn), who introduced the architect to the family in the first place but now finds his presence unbearable: "We tolerate you."

Nobody knows what to do with László and his high-minded modernist ideas when he arrives in Philadelphia to stay with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), a middling furniture dealer who has disguised his heritage for the sake of assimilation. He's anglicized his surname and married a blonde, blue-eyed Catholic shiksa who lambasts László's designs and finds him disgusting. He builds them a chair out of aluminum tubing — "It looks like a tricycle," she declares.

Relations worsen after the first encounter with Van Buren; Harry hires László and Atilla to redesign his father's study, but the old man hates the elegant renovation so much that he fires them in a fit of rage. He only comes around after getting compliments and media attention that he can claim for himself.

Van Buren, a stoic WASP so Old Stock American that his last name is Dutch, represents America's elites, who erroneously believe that money and power will buy them good taste and respect. He resents and envies the creativity and intellect of the artist he patronizes, and tries (and fails) to hide his ignorance. During a Christmas party, he recounts a story in which he humiliates his single mother's neglectful parents. It hints at his domineering personality. Moments later, he listens as László describes his modernist ideals, his desire to make monumental buildings capable of "sparking the upheavals that so frequently occur in the cycles of peoplehood." The businessman has no response beyond a banal stock phrase: "intellectually stimulating."
Both Pierce and Brody give extraordinary, career-best performances in the film, but Brody, whose role here complements his Oscar-winning performance in The Pianist, transmits László's anguish and tarnished pride with incredible power. He takes heroin to dull the shame of his wartime traumas. He experiences impotence, failing to perform both with a prostitute after he arrives in New York and, later, with his wife Erszébet (Felicity Jones), who arrives disabled after the camps. In bed with her that first night, he vents his pain to her as she tries to initiate a long-desired erotic reunion: "I cannot bear it!" The filmmakers depict the couple with a complexity that Holocaust survivors are frequently denied; they may have lived through incomprehensible horrors, but they don't want to be defined by their victimhood. They want their lives back, sex included, and when they eventually do re-consummate, it comes at a great cost.

That desire for autonomy only increases as the Tóths' dependence on Van Buren grows. Immediately after the Christmas party, the industrialist moves László into his guest house Sunset Boulevard-style, his luggage already in his room when he wakes, to work on the Van Buren Institute. He also pulls strings to bring Erszébet and his niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), rendered mute by the camps, over from Europe. The building is a white elephant in the making, combining a library, auditorium, and gymnasium with a prayer room tacked on to satisfy the locals. Buyer's remorse sets in almost immediately as László resists his attempts at cost-cutting, seeing them as an imposition on his artistic autonomy. Stops and starts occur, and eventually, after Van Buren shows his true darkness in a shocking and unexpected manner, the building transforms into a forbidding concrete edifice, a manifestation of László's tortured mind.

Corbet and partner Mona Fastveld, with whom he co-wrote the film, are used to chronicling the evils of humankind. The director's debut feature, The Childhood of a Leader, detailed the upbringing of a future fascist dictator while also letting him work out stylistic tics he would use for The Brutalist. He and cinematographer Lol Crawley, who also shot Childhood, imbue this film with similar darkness and foreboding, using long follow, tracking, and oner shots to effectively build and release tension. That includes the bravado of the opening sequence where László arrives in America, clambering out of the dark recesses of his ship to look at the Statue of Liberty. The monument juts out from the top of the frame, the great idol of freedom and opportunity flipped on its head, declaring that László's expectations of the country are about to be turned upside down.

And it's not just America that's under the microscope. The presence of Israel, a country just being established in the period the film depicts, serves as a siren, constantly beckoning the characters away from the struggles and suffering they face here. Corbet sets a montage of László working to audio of David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, declaring its independence. Later, Zsófia, now married and having recovered her voice, reveals she intends to make Aliyah, befuddling László and Erszébet with Zionist bromides about "going home."

It's this thematic inclusion that makes the film difficult to divorce from its contemporary context. Though the question of Palestine does not figure in the film itself, a gesture that feels broadly accurate given the period and characters, it is at the front of our minds today. Much speculation has been made over Corbet's position toward Israel and the ways it supposedly manifests in the film; for the record, last week, the director publicly threw his support behind the documentary No Other Land, which has yet to find a company willing to release it in America due to its anti-occupation subject matter.

For me, at least, Corbet's supposed politics are secondary to the story he tells, and Israel's presence is simply a piece of the film's overall examination of America. Whether the Tóths finally heed the siren's call is left ambiguous, but their mistreatment in America is doubtless. Their refuge from extermination in Europe reveals itself as just as hateful — "this country is rotten," in Erszébet's words — causing them to consider a second flight away from their newfound home. "They don't want us here," László cries. It's true, they don't want him here — they want him somewhere else, where they can mold him and the Jewish people into a form that suits their aims.

The film's epilogue seems to bear this out. Taking place years later, it features an older Zsófia delivering a speech about her uncle's work that folds it into a narrative centering on his experience in the Holocaust. She interprets the cavernous concrete edifice of the Van Buren Institute as a manifestation of the camps, folding it into a Zionist narrative that uses the Holocaust to justify Israel's existence. It's a philosophy completely unrelated to what László espoused to Van Buren himself years earlier, a clean resolution that does not mesh with the complicated person that he actually was and the beliefs he actually held, but one that László himself is now powerless to counter.

The Brutalist is an ambiguous film, one that refuses to mold itself into one simple idea. Yet it is also a great one, crafted with passion and skill. Much like the brutalist style itself, born out of modernist ideals and responding to the needs of a postwar society remarkably different from our own, it dares you to misinterpret it. It's perhaps ironic, then, that if there is any lesson in the film, it is that truly great artists will always be misinterpreted.

The Brutalist. Starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Isaach de Bankolé, and Alessandro Nivola. Written by Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold. Directed by Brady Corbet. 215 minutes, including intermission. Rated R. Opens locally Wednesday, January 15.