The Brutalist

Director Brady Corbet (Vox Lux, TIFF ’18) returns to the Festival with another bold vision — an American epic, starring Adrien Brody as a Jewish Hungarian architect who flees Europe at the end of the Second World War to rebuild his life in an unfamiliar land.

László Toth (Brody) arrives in America with barely anything to his name, eagerly hoping to soon be joined by his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones). Settling in Philadelphia, he has a not-so-gracious run-in with Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a wealthy businessman, after he becomes an unwitting client for a home renovation scheme. This serendipitous encounter leads to a more complex undertaking, as Van Buren and his son (Joe Alwyn) enlist László’s brilliance for a monumental new project. It’s a dream that he never thought he could relive, but it comes with a dark cost, as László sacrifices more and more of himself to complete his exacting vision.

Presented in 70mm at the Festival, this is the most ambitious project of Corbet — working again with frequent co-writer Mona Fastvold — to date. Brody gives a potent performance as a man trying to reconstruct his life, his love, and his home, all as part of the same process. The Brutalist takes us on a journey that asks some stark questions about how the march of time impacts us, how certain events give shape to our lives, and how much of ourselves we put in our work.

JANE SCHOETTLE

Content advisory: depictions of sexual violence; sexual content