Even in a year this stacked with masterworks of indie cinema (i.e. Anora and The Substance), The Brutalist has stood out for the rapturous reaction it’s getting from serious moviegoers.
The 3.5-hour epic premiered at the Venice International Film Festival earlier this September and has been making the rounds with festival crowds in New York and Toronto ever since.
Along the way, a suitably insane mythology surrounding it has developed: from the notoriously hard-to-transport VistaVision stock the movie was shot on to the critical consensus about lead actor Adrien Brody’s performance.
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Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw described Brody’s work here as a “career-best” for the Academy Award winner (The Pianist); while Rolling Stone straight-up writes that The Brutalist is a “New Great American Masterpiece.”
And as an added mark of confidence, A24 — every cinema bro’s favourite indie studio — is reported to have acquired the film’s US distribution less than a week after it premiered for around US$10 million: no doubt hoping to turn it into its own suitably nihilist take on the ‘Great Man’ epics of the 20th century.
Chances are, if you enjoyed There Will Be Blood or Oppenheimer, there’s more than enough bleak character drama for you to feast on. Or, to crib from the wisdom of one particularly astute YouTube commenter: “What Megalopolis would look like if it was good.”
A24 gives a synopsis of The Brutalist‘s plot below:
Escaping post-war Europe, visionary architect László Toth (Adrien Brody) arrives in America to rebuild his life, his work, and his marriage to wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) 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 (Guy Pearce) recognizes his talent for building. But power and legacy come at a heavy cost…
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Brody co-stars alongside Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola, Isaach de Bankolé, Stacy Martin, along with Australia’s own Guy Pearce. The film is directed and written by Brady Corbet (Vox Lux), who shares screenplay credit with his wife and creative partner Mona Fastvold (also Vox Lux).
The Brutalist is slated to arrive in Australian theatres on January 23rd, 2025 — check out the full official trailer above.
