Among the several movies in contention for the 2024 Awards Season, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist stands out as one of the most mesmerizing – and long – movies of the year. Clocking in at 3 hours and 35 minutes, The Brutalist is a story that spans decades and tells the story of Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth ( Adrien Brody
), who leaves his home country to go to America and seek a better life for himself and his family. The film chronicles his attempts to achieve the American dream, and the cost of his work under the watchful and abusive eye of his wealthy client (Guy Pearce).
Many critics have praised the film’s direction, cinematography, and performances, especially that of Adrien Brody in the lead role. In an interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Brody talked about how he prepares for a role, and went on to describe why he hates the term “acting” and how essential it is to live in the context of the role, lest a performance suffer for lack of empathy and understanding for the character you’re playing:
“I always need to feel like the least amount of acting I can do, the better I can be if that makes sense. I hate the term “acting” because it’s so superficial and so surface. But to inhabit someone, the beauty of film is that you can have these moments of distilling another time and place and context of events and experiences in another individual. It can be shaped and form a life of a human being that isn’t yourself. And the only way to do that is to really find a way to connect in every one of those moments and not let one slip by.”
‘The Brutalist’ is Adrien Brody’s Ode to the Immigrant Experience
Integration into a new culture is no easy feat, and such a societal problem is explored in depth in The Brutalist, as Brody’s character László feels alienated and antagonized almost every step of the way. Immigration is something that’s largely been in public discourse over the past few years, making Corbet’s newest film feel exceptionally timely.
Related
Adrien Brody Reveals How ‘The Brutalist’ and ‘The Pianist’ “Speak to One Another”
The acclaimed Adrien Brody shares how both his Oscar-winning performance in ‘The Pianist’ and his latest leading role speak “within” him.
As for Brody, these themes and László’s struggle in this film, are something he could deeply relate to, as he would say that he “had the luxury of living it and living with an understanding of the immigrant experience, the yearnings of an artist, and the yearnings of, more specifically, my mother, being a Hungarian refugee who moved to New York, moved to America, and her aspirations and journey as an artist to leave behind something which parallel László’s experiences and this journey parallels my mother’s.”
Reading how intimately Brody understood the struggles addressed in the film helps to better understand how the actor was able to give such an astounding performance in The Brutalist. While the idea of hating the term “acting” may come across as pompous on a surface level, Brody’s words and process when it comes to breathing life into a character on screen is much more nuanced than one might think, and you can’t help but respect his craft more because of it.
Escaping post-war Europe, visionary architect László Toth arrives in America to rebuild his life, his work, and his marriage to his wife Erzsébet after being forced apart during wartime by shifting borders and regimes. On his own in a strange new country, László settles in Pennsylvania, where the wealthy and prominent industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren recognizes his talent for building. But power and legacy come at a heavy cost…
- Release Date
-
December 20, 2024
- Cast
-
Adrien Brody
, Guy Pearce
, Felicity Jones
, Joe Alwyn
, Raffey Cassidy
, Stacy Martin
, Emma Laird
, Isaach De Bankole
, Alessandro Nivola
, Michael Epp
, Jonathan Hyde
, Peter Polycarpou
, Salvatore Sansone
, Ariane Labed
, Jeremy Wheeler
, Jaymes Butler
, Matt Devere
, Natalie Shinnick
, Stephen Saracco
, Peter Linka
, Robert Jackson