expectations for brutalist are high. Actor-turned-director Brady Corbett won the Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival in September. And now he's entering Hollywood's big awards season with seven Golden Globe nominations, including director of a motion picture, screenplay of a motion picture and drama motion picture.
brutalist is a historical epic based on Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a renowned Bauhaus architect who moves from Budapest to Pennsylvania after the Holocaust. There he meets the Van Burens, a wealthy family with vast resources – a family that could revive a talented architect's career. Although a series of events derail the initial work, László is resilient and, over time, he is invited to design a huge, ambitious community center.
After an intermission – yes, there is an intermission – we see Laszlo living on the Van Burens' land. He is even able to use his connections to reunite his family who were forcibly separated from him during the war. But if rooting for Laszlo seems easy, it's not. Because at the corner of every victory comes defeat. And it is alcohol, drugs and philandering that weakens him. Ultimately, brutalist departs from Pennsylvania for a marble quarry in Carrara, Italy for the film's most shocking scene.
I spoke with Brady Corbett, who wrote the screenplay with his wife Mona Fastvold, and we discussed his prickly hero, the film's nearly four-hour runtime, and why rich people feel they should owe artists more than their art. Need to collect.
Brink: In the heart of brutalist This story is about doing anything to survive during uncertain times. Why is this story so important to you?
Brady Corbett: I really always try to work with subjects that will remain relevant to me, no matter how long it takes to get them off the ground. when i made Childhood Or Vocal lux Or brutalistThey're films that are historically rich, thematically rich. This is rich content. When we got to page 173 or whatever and wrote the ending I suspected it might take a while to get off the ground.
And the film is dealing with themes of individualism and capitalism and immigration and assimilation, and these are all things that I think virtually any person who has any job has some real experience with. Obviously I know how much journalists struggle to cover what they cover and get a livable wage, and it's a lot harder for artists, writers, architects, filmmakers, you name it. It is done. I think it's something that anyone can relate to. And of course, as everyone is speculating how the new administration will handle immigration, certainly, I think that's especially uppermost in the audience's minds right now.
The moment when Laszlo says to Audrey, “I'm not who I expected” really speaks to this character's survival instincts. Can you talk to Adrien Brody about finding it?
Adrian is actually a very smart boy. And not to speak badly about the cast, but they seem unusually aware of what this film was doing in terms of its themes and really everything it had in mind. I think he really understood the material and he understood where to emphasize the syllables. And I think when I met him, he had this really beautiful quality, and he also reminds me of an artist from another era.
I'm so thrilled with the conservators that don't just want to collect the work. They want to collect artists.
To me, he's like Gregory Peck or early De Niro. As we're moving into an era where I find it very difficult to actually cast period characters, there are a lot of actors that I like who have had a lot of plastic surgery, and it's very difficult because you Can't cast someone who's had so much plastic surgery in a movie that's set before 1975. I really believe in these artists, men, women and young people, so many young people who are getting plastic surgery – like 18, 19-year-olds who are absolutely natural. And I think Adrian, he has the same pain. I don't know exactly where it comes from, but it is clear to me that this is a man who has lived a lot. He has squeezed a lot of juice from the lemon.
And I think that was all very attractive to me. I think, undoubtedly, his heritage was a factor. I knew about his background. I was aware of the fact that his mother had fled Hungary during the revolution in 1956. He was perfect for this role.
There is a special kind of wealthy person who likes to gather people. Guy Pearce's character, Harrison Lee Van Buren, is the pinnacle of a collector of people.
I'm so thrilled with the conservators that don't just want to collect the work. They want to collect artists.
Guy really understood this immediately. I think when he read the script, he understood the story completely. I would say the film was self-selected, because all the people who stuck with the project as it broke up came back together multiple times. They all had a really strong reference point for what it was about.
This is just such a special person. I see them everywhere.
It absolutely is. Listen, I think the sequence in Carrara, and that's when it really starts is when reality becomes fluid and it reaches Greek mythological status after two and a half hours. What was so important to me about Carrara was that Carrara marble is a material that shouldn't be owned, and yet it lines our kitchens and bathrooms. But the material – it will run out in 500 years. Those mountains will cease to exist. And it's incredibly troubling because they're certainly like Swiss cheese at the moment, and there's constant rocks shifting.
It's not as dangerous as it was 70 years ago, where people were literally cutting their hands every day, but it's still quite dangerous. There are helicopter pads there and they serve two purposes there. The first objective is to evacuate those who are badly injured. Another reason is that many buyers like to fly out and choose slabs for their home or statue or something else.
It's a VIP thing, which I find completely ridiculous and annoying. And to me, I think that theme of what can't be held and shouldn't be held. The visual metaphors in that place were very rich.
During the first act, you're immersed in all these romantic historical notions of Pennsylvania. Why did the story need to take place there? What was it about Pennsylvania that was important to you?
When the Bauhaus Dessau was closed by the Nazis in 1935, Walter Gropius was able to deploy many professors, pupils, artists, designers, mainly to the universities of the Northeast. That is why so many great people reached that part of the country. That's specifically why, but for me – especially because of Paul Rudolph and Louis Kahn – it was important to set the film in a place that was so architecturally rich.
i want to meet a fascinating stranger
And it was actually through the process of working on the film that I learned a lot about Pennsylvania history. And the interesting thing about making a film is that in order to make a film on the subject matter it is important that you have enough information, but at the same time, you also have to have some room to discover something because you are going to work. Work on this has been going on for so many years that it has to be made exploratory. I want to find something with the audience. I'm not interested in telling the audience or teaching the audience.
As a director, how do you build trust to stay connected with the audience throughout the runtime – intermission and all the rest?
I just think it makes intuitive sense. I see good things. I see bad things. I see everything. And at this moment cinema is a language in which I feel quite fluent. I feel quite accomplished right now. And I think it becomes second nature. All I keep saying about this film is that the film is long, but it is not sustainable cinema. There's a lot of extraordinary period cinema out there. I like the work of Lisandra Alonso or Bela Tarr or Miklós Jancso, who was also the father of my editor David Jancso. But with this film it was not part of its makeup or intention or design or editorial.
It's interesting because, and for some audiences, I think people can sometimes find it very frustrating because I intentionally leave out a lot of things, for me, I feel like most of the first 30 minutes of movies That's all there is to show for me. They're just giving you the background of these characters and what they've really been through. And I don't think that's very interesting. I want to meet a fascinating stranger.
And I want to get to know them during the film. I don't want to watch a movie where in the first five to ten minutes you know exactly how it's going to end. And that's almost everything.
Bliss is always accompanied by pain and vice versa
This is very, very rare. And what was interesting to me about it was in the context of subverting the classical structure, I said, “It's a natural place to end the film with a retrospective of this character's work.” But what's very unusual, beyond the fact that formally it's quite unusual – most of it was shot on DigiBeta, and that's a big adjustment to make the jump from 1959 to 1980 – is that Adrian K. The characters are not voiced in that order. He is physically present for his achievement, but perhaps he is not mentally present for his achievement. His wife is dead. And there's a great quote, and it's from one of the Southern Gothic writers. I don't know if it's Flannery O'Connor or Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy. This is one of them. But there is a great quote, which is, “The spirit of man grows weary at the peak of his achievement. Their noon time signals the beginning of midnight.
[Ed note: It’s Cormac McCarthy and the exact quote is “His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.”]
And I think that's absolutely true. It is interesting that to the public or to anyone watching from the outside, these moments appear to be moments of pride. You are usually too spiritually exhausted to really appreciate it in any way. And it was important for me to do something that, yes, it's absolutely classical in terms of A, B and C, but there's a real sadness in the quality and tone. And there's a lot going on at the end of the movie. Ecstasy is always accompanied by pain and vice versa. And it's important for films to represent that.
And then the last thing I'd like to say is that I think I've always been troubled by the way survivors are portrayed in cinema, which is that they're often altruistic. They are like saints. My problem with this is that it suggests that we can only empathize with someone if they are perfect. And for the character of Adrian, it was important to me that it was a love story. He loves his wife very much, but his eyes also keep wandering. He's a very mid-century man. He is a philanthropist. Still, both of these things may be true. We can sympathize with him even when he is behaving badly.
The high cost of making things really takes a toll on Laszlo and his entire family. Did you know that in the end – when we got to the epilogue – that it would be worth it?
I don't know if it's worth it for him. I don't know. I think something that's a little bit ambiguous about the conclusion of the movie is that when you talk to most people at the end of their lives, they usually say, “Take it from me, take it from your kids.” Spend more time together.”