32/32
Featured on The 7PM Project: Episode 10 December 2024 (2024)
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 and wealthy client. Filming lasted a total of 34 days between March 16 and May 5, 2023. It was filmed in Budapest, Hungary and Carrara, Italy. Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.: When dogs get sick, they often bite the hand of their handlers until someone mercifully puts them down.
Brutalist is full of surprises
The characters are not what you expect, not in a Scooby Doo style ending, but in the more subtle and gradual ways that real people reveal themselves: they reveal themselves over time, in a new context, or when circumstances force them to. This is about the terror after World War II. Laszlo (Adrien Brody), a Jewish architect who escaped the clutches of bloody Europe, approaches – or faces – the welcoming arms of America in a frenetic opening sequence that literally evokes being born next to the Statue of Liberty. Their journey becomes a constant navigation through a series of life’s horrors: existential, professional, familial, intimate, never taking their eyes off the prize of great achievement and never assessing the value of that prize.
What is the lesson?
Is it a shame to discover that her success was born not in spite of the trauma, but because of it? Do we owe abuse? With the forces of culture, land, power and those who wield it, in the construction of our brutal heritage (and homelands)? Are our lives gasoline used up on the way to somewhere more meaningful?
But there is no novel
The movie is charming, looks cool and isn’t boring (have you heard it’s long?). It seems to be based on an ancient novel, a mysterious book from which I would like to extract some details that the film refuses to share. This elderly man’s search for meaning becomes ours too. And any further understanding of Lazlo’s arrival, the machinations of his family, his country, and his eradication, whether good or bad, feels like it’s up to us to build.