REVIEW: The Brutalist’s Shades of Grey
REVIEW: The Brutalist’s Shades of Grey
Still from The Brutalist | Taken from Rappler Philippines
I’m no stranger to the isolation of living in a foreign land. Despite the large and boisterous community of Filipinos residing in Doha, my surroundings were often filled with the sight of people I’d never come across before and the sounds of a language I couldn’t comprehend. I transferred to an international school well into my teen years, and while it wasn’t a difficult transition, I eventually came to miss the safety net of code-switching from English to Tagalog or the shared joy from inside jokes that really only made sense with the context of Filipino pop culture.
Fast forward to the present, where I’ve been living and working in the Philippines for the past 5 years, I’ve been introduced to a sense of comfort I didn’t realize I was missing out on. No longer am I so self-conscious of who I am and how people around me might treat me differently; I simply relax my shoulders and let myself be. In that sense I can identify with our main character, László Tóth (Adrien Brody), as he arrives in America alone, with only the promise of freedom by his side.
We meet Tóth as he staggers out of the dark of a ship’s cramped underbelly while his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), details her experience at Dachau concentration camp through narration. He finds his way into the light and breaks into a fit of unbridled joy at the sight of it — the Statue of Liberty, upside down. The score booms into a triumphant horn section as Tóth beholds this historic monument of sovereignty turned on its head, a looming symbol of what the next 30-plus years of his life in America would look like.
The first act of the film sees Tóth make his way down to Philadelphia to stay with his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola). Attila’s strides to assimilate into American life are made obvious by his barely noticeable accent, anglicized surname, and gentile wife. A conversation between the cousins reveals that Attila had converted to Catholicism during his stay in the country. While Tóth doesn’t outwardly remark on this discovery, the brief silence that follows is enough to suggest some tension in the air. A tension, a panging strain, only exacerbated by the introduction of Attila’s long-time client, Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), son of business magnate Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce).
After a surprise library renovation gone awry, Harrison berates Tóth and Attila for gutting his home. The strain is forced taut, and Attila decides to cut ties with his cousin. False accusations of Tóth making passes at his wife are thrown in to rub salt in the wound. In one swift motion, our main character is left alone once again. Without family, a comfortable place to rest, and an outlet for his creative pursuits, Tóth turns to a reliable source to ease him of pain and worry — heroin.
This is the enigma of arrival, as the title of the first act suggests — the paradox of being welcomed with open arms into unfamiliar territory, only to be jilted at the slightest misdemeanor (whether true or not). This disorienting feeling is a shared experience among immigrants or non-native residents like László and me. Like crossing a never-ending tightrope to unceremonious applause, we serve the whims of onlookers in hopes that they’d let us through unscathed.
Unfortunately for Tóth, the American elite has taken a liking to him, deeming his talents too precious to waste. Harrison Lee Van Buren digs his unrelenting claws into our main character in the form of a business proposal. An architectural project beyond his wildest dreams, with a lawyer who can expedite his wife and niece’s immigration process as a cherry on top. They dangle this expensive and exhaustive opportunity in front of him until he succumbs to their flowery propositions. László Tóth will finally break ground.
Our main character’s unrelenting pursuit of greatness is admirable as it is exhausting. “There, it’s mine again,” he remarks as he draws a straight line across a blueprint. A thin, red line that proclaims utter dedication to his talent and vision and frank refusal of outsider input. This simple act succinctly displays Tóth’s distinct point of view. He weeps at the sight of his behemoths of concrete slabs, as they function less as physical spaces and more as symbols — a tangible reminder that he existed and will continue to do so, even after he’s left. They aptly represent the hard core of beauty, which the second act is titled after. Even after time has passed and ideas have shifted, the large expanse that his buildings occupy towers and looms over those who come across it. A solid center that cannot easily be cast aside as Tóth has been during his time in America. He’s made himself immortal.
The epilogue sets us up almost 30 years into the future at a retrospective of Tóth’s work. Erzsébet has long passed, while Zsófia is all grown up with children of her own. Tóth is now mute and confined to a wheelchair, the same way Erzsébet and Zsófia once were, in some strange twist of fate. He sits and watches his niece narrate his triumphs and struggles to the crowd at the Venice Biennale of Architecture as a slideshow of his greatest work plays behind her. In her speech, she reflects on their struggles as Holocaust survivors and succinctly wraps up their shared trauma with a piece of advice that he had always told her: “It is the destination not the journey.”
As the credits rolled to an ‘80s synth track, I couldn’t help but feel conflicted about what I had just experienced. While I was in genuine awe of the stellar cinematography and affecting musical score, a part of me still felt dissatisfied —especially since I saw my own struggles with isolation in parts of László Tóth. On all technical levels, what I had just watched was a masterpiece, a beacon of light in this increasingly dull age of cinema. However, despite the masterclass performances of everyone involved, I simply wasn’t moved.
The Brutalist promises an underdog tale of an immigrant man defying all odds and coming out on top, and while it carries the essence of that premise, the finished product comes out quite hollow. The first act, the stronger of the two, is brimming with allusions to Tòth’s struggles in making a life in America, and while he certainly doesn’t have it easy, life-changing opportunities seem to fall into his lap either way. This is a recurring issue I found within the film.
So often is the audience told of how difficult our main character has it, but we are rarely allowed the time and space to sit with him and peer into how these troubling circumstances affect him. I recognize that this may have been intentional to subvert tropes commonly found in films about overcoming the American dream. And to the film’s credit, it succeeds in the balancing act of portraying Tóth as a sympathetic character without infantilizing him. But while I praise it for refusing to portray him as a one-dimensional sob story, it unfortunately still falls short in its approach.
Tòth expresses his feelings either through sudden bursts of anger or in breathy confessions during intimate moments. His wife allows him to be vulnerable in ways that no other relationship gives him space to. A warmth rarely present within the film stretches out onto the screen during their brief moments of tenderness. But even then, these are fleeting. Merely a footnote in the grand scheme of things. Lest his emotional state distract him or the audience from the work that needs to be done.
On what could’ve been a complex story about a man’s odyssey onto foreign territory, it evolves into a long-winded romp to an abrupt stop. I left the cinema with only a faint idea of who our protagonist is beyond the monuments that he builds. His characterization and Brody’s undeniable on-screen charisma make for an entertaining watch, but this unfortunately doesn’t distract from the film’s more confounding aspects. The most glaring example being its prevalent and distracting use of sex (and in one case, assault) as a means to comment on power and loneliness. I understand its purpose; I don’t care for its execution. I don’t recall a time I grimaced harder in the cinema than when I was forced to sit through Tóth’s humiliation.
The film aspires to be as massive and domineering as the architectural style it names itself after, but it falls short on an emotional core. Even Zsófia’s last line, meant to be a cruel gut punch of irony, wasn't enough to neatly tie its themes together. Like the halls of the unfinished Van Buren Institute, it is grand but desolate with only small windows of light peeking through. Beyond that, you’re just left to stare at high ceilings of grey areas.
The Brutalist is currently showing in cinemas nationwide.
