

The Brutalist is a 2024 epic drama written and directed by Brady Corbet, the American actor turned filmmaker whose previous features A Song of Innocence and Vox Lux marked him as a singular and uncompromising voice in American independent cinema. The film tells the story of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to the United States in 1947, carrying with him the legacy of European Modernism and the weight of an unimaginable past. What follows is a sweeping chronicle of the American immigrant experience as seen through the particular prism of art, architecture, and the relentless pursuit of a transformative idea.
The film stars Adrien Brody in what critics immediately recognized as the performance of his career, opposite Felicity Jones as Erzsébet, the wife he leaves behind in war-torn Europe and strains toward across an ocean and years of separation. Guy Pearce plays Harrison Lee Van Buren, a wealthy American industrialist who becomes both László's patron and his most complicated antagonist. Joe Alwyn and Stacy Martin round out a remarkable ensemble. Cinematographer Lol Crawley shot the film in VistaVision — a wide-gauge film format associated with the Hollywood epics of the 1950s — giving the images an expansive, period-appropriate scale that frames László's architectural visions with the grandeur they demand.
The Brutalist premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2024, where Brody won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. The film went on to win three Academy Awards at the 97th ceremony: Best Actor for Brody, Best Director for Corbet, and Best Cinematography for Crawley. At three hours and thirty-five minutes — presented with an intermission — it is among the most ambitious American films of the decade, asking its audience to reckon with the American Dream, the nature of artistic genius, and the terrible cost of starting over in an adopted country. Critics placed it among the finest films of 2024.
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When I'm not writing about movies and series, I spend most of my time traveling the world and catching my favorite West End shows. My life is also full of interesting books and I'm addicted to cooking. I believe that words can change the world, and I use them to inspire my readers.
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