'The Brutalist’ Breathes Dramatic Life into the Past

“The Brutalist,” a new film by director Brady Corbet, has a seriousness of purpose that seems to stir from the first few moments it flickers to life on the screen. On its surface, it is a tale of how a Hungarian Jewish survivor of the Holocaust named Lazlo Toth survives the nightmares of World War II and comes as a poor immigrant to America to achieve success.

He is described as a Bauhaus trained apostle of the new 20th century modern movement in architecture. The vision he brings to his buildings is an architecture that revels in pure form. It is solid and somewhat fortress like.

Toth builds with poured concrete, with careful attention to how light enters the building. To get a good idea of the style that he dedicates himself to, have a look at the Whitney Museum on Manhattan Upper East Side. It’s a stark concrete form designed by architect Marcel Breuer that has an almost sculptural quality, particularly when it is compared to the many traditional buildings that surround it.

Locally, we have the main library building of the Atlanta Public Library on Margret Mitchell Square, downtown. That’s Breuer, too. That’s Brutalism.

In fact, it could be argued that this film takes much of its inspiration from Marcel Breuer’s life. Although the Jewish architect was not a poverty-stricken immigrant when he came to America in 1937, in his personality, and in his emotional nature as well and in much of his artistic outlook he is not unlike the fictional Toth.

As the Brutalist in this film, Adrian Brody, gives a mesmerizing performance as he rises from a penniless, stateless arrival in America to become a restless, artistic genius with a maniacal commitment to the creative moment. Even though the film runs over three-and-a-half hours, you are likely to be carried along without much notice to that.

It’s easy to be absorbed by the strong and sensitive performances of Brody, Felicity Jones as his wheelchair-bound wife, and Guy Pearce who appears early in the film as a very rich, very gentile patron of these two very Jewish Jews.

The film is largely set in that decade-and-a-half after the war, from 1945 to 1960 when a prosperous and powerful America was leading the world into a new age. Corbet and his collaborator on the film, the Swedish actress and screenwriter Mona Fastvold, with whom he shares a child, have done a remarkable job of crafting a story that’s thoughtful, believable, and deeply moving. For this, Corbet has, so far, earned the Silver Lion Award at this year’s Venice Film Festival and earlier this month, a Best Film Award at the New York Film Critics Awards. Brody was honored as Best Actor during the same evening.

In a major sweep at the 2025 Golden Globes, the film was named Best Motion Picture, Corbet won for Best Director and Brody was named Best Actor. The Rotten Tomatoes rating website gives it a 93 percent score among the 170 reviews it has compiled to date. The picture opens in Atlanta on Jan. 17.

The story has Pearce as the wealthy Harrison Lee Van Buren plucking the Toth character out of poverty and obscure misery to give him total artistic freedom to design and create a monumental structure on a hilltop in Pennsylvania.

A great local example of Brutalist architecture is the main Atlanta Library building by Marcel Breuer on Margaret Mitchell Square.

The building is said to be a tribute to the rich tycoon’s recently deceased mother, but it could just as easily stand as a tribute to the dedication by a single individual, to an artistic vision that captures his soul.

In wrestling with the completion of his sprawling work, Toth comes in conflict with almost every life that touches his, from his temperamental and sometimes unpredictable patron to his wife and daughter.

The building of this memorial edifice can also be seen as a tribute to the extraordinary accomplishments of an entire generation of European Jews who rose from the ashes of the Holocaust to achieve greatness in this, their adoptive nation. Just like this building, their plight was not recognized overnight. It took three years, after the end of the global conflict for America, to finally recognize the plight of the many Jews who survived the death camps.

In June of 1948, Congress finally passed a bill authorizing the immigration of 200,000 of what were referred to as displaced persons. They and their children have made an immeasurable contribution to history. In their story and in this great film, they are finally remembered.