Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor and Bauhaus-trained architect László Tóth immigrates to the United States from the German port city of Bremerhaven after being forcibly separated from his wife, Erzsébet, and orphaned niece, Zsófia. As his ship enters New York Harbor, he sees the Statue of Liberty.
Part 1: The Enigma of Arrival
In 1947, László travels to Philadelphia, where he stays with his cousin, Attila, and Attila's wife, Audrey, while he looks for work. Attila reveals to a relieved László that Erzsébet and Zsófia are still alive but stuck in Europe. Although Attila offers him work with his furniture business, László is relegated to using a makeshift bedroom and a service bathroom. He discovers that Attila has assimilated into American culture, anglicizing his name and converting to Catholicism to marry Audrey. They are soon approached by Harry Lee Van Buren, who wishes to surprise his father, wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren, with a renovated library at his mansion near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Following a drunken night of merriment, Audrey expresses her disdain for László and suggests he live elsewhere. Back at the mansion, Harrison arrives home early, is enraged at the surprise renovation, and fires the men; Harry refuses to pay them their fee. Attila demands that László leave their home, blaming him for the failed project and falsely accusing him of having made a pass at his wife.
Three years later, László, now a heroin addict, works as a laborer loading coal and lives in charity housing with Gordon, an African-American single father, whom László befriended soon after immigrating. Harrison turns up to tell him the architectural community has lauded his modern library renovation, and that he has researched his past and discovered that László was an accomplished architect in Europe. He pays the money owed to László—which László and Gordon later spend on heroin—and invites László to a party in his honor, where he commissions a grand project in tribute to his late mother: The Van Buren Institute, a community center comprising a library, theater, gymnasium, and a chapel. Work begins immediately with László living on site and employing Gordon. Harrison introduces László to his personal lawyer, who expedites the immigration of László's wife and niece.
Part 2: The Hard Core of Beauty
In 1953, László reunites with Erzsébet and Zsófia and discovers that due to their wartime suffering, Erzsébet is confined to a wheelchair from osteoporosis caused by famine, and Zsófia is unable to speak. During construction, László clashes with contractors and consultants hired by Harrison, who depart from his design in an attempt to stay on budget. He agrees to work unpaid to make up for additional costs. Harry derides László as being merely "tolerated" and makes lewd remarks about Zsófia. László warns Zsófia to avoid Harry. Following the derailment of a train carrying materials and ensuing legal costs, a furious Harrison abandons the project and fires the workers.
In 1958, László and Erzsébet have moved to New York City, where he works as a drafter at an architecture firm, and she writes for a newspaper. Zsófia, having recovered her ability to speak, is expecting a child with her husband, Binyamin. They announce they are making Aliyah and moving to Jerusalem, much to the chagrin of László and Erzsébet. Harrison restarts the project and rehires László.
While visiting the mines of Carrara to purchase marble, Harrison rapes an intoxicated László, calling him a societal leech whose people invite their own persecution. Back on site, a traumatized László begins to unravel, becoming more belligerent and impulsively firing his crew and Gordon during an argument. Referencing Harry's and Audrey's prior contempt, he laments to Erzsébet that they are not welcome in America. After László almost kills Erzsébet by giving her heroin to soothe her pain, she proposes they move to Jerusalem and live with Zsófia and her family, to which he agrees. Shortly afterwards, Erzsébet, now using a walker instead of a wheelchair, confronts Harrison at his home and calls him a rapist in front of his family and associates. An enraged Harry violently pushes her out, before his sister Maggie intervenes and helps her leave. Unable to find his father, Harry organizes a search party and tries to locate him within the Institute. Harrison's fate is ultimately left unclear as an illuminated cross in the building shines upside down.
Epilogue: The First Architecture Biennale
In 1980, Erzsébet has died, and a retrospective of László's work is held at the Venice Biennale of Architecture. The exhibition showcases various projects built around the world during the ensuing years and includes the Van Buren Institute, finally completed after a decade's hiatus. Zsófia, accompanied by her young adult daughter and an aging László, gives a revelatory speech asserting that László designed spaces in the structure to resemble the Buchenwald concentration camp in which he was imprisoned and the Dachau concentration camp in which Erzsébet and Zsófia were imprisoned, and functions as a way of processing trauma. She ends by claiming that László once told her: "No matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey."
Guy Pearce as Harrison Lee Van Buren, a wealthy, handsome, snobbish industrialist who becomes László's primary client, but is envious of his artistic creativity
Joe Alwyn as Harry Lee Van Buren, Harrison's entitled and pompous son
Raffey Cassidy as Zsófia, László's orphaned teenage niece, who has become mute after surviving the Holocaust, also at Dachau
Cassidy also briefly as Zsófia's young adult daughter
In September 2018, Deadline reported that director Brady Corbet had chosen the period drama The Brutalist as his next project following the world premiere of his second feature film, Vox Lux.[9] New York-based Andrew Lauren Productions (ALP) developed the screenplay with Corbet and financed the film.[9] Corbet co-wrote the screenplay with his partner Mona Fastvold, with whom he co-wrote the 2015 film The Childhood of a Leader and the 2018 film Vox Lux.[10] The film was originally announced as a co-production between Andrew Lauren and D.J. Gugenheim for ALP, Trevor Matthews and Nick Gordon for Brookstreet Pictures,[11] Brian Young's Three Six Zero,[9] and the Polish company Madants,[12][13] and executive produced by Christine Vachon, Pamela Koffler, and David Hinojosa of Killer Films.[11]
On September 2, 2020, Deadline announced that Joel Edgerton and Marion Cotillard had been cast as the film's leads, László Tóth and Erzsébet Tóth, respectively, and that Mark Rylance was cast in the role of László's mysterious client.[11]Sebastian Stan, Vanessa Kirby, Isaach De Bankolé, Alessandro Nivola, Raffey Cassidy, and Stacy Martin were also announced in unknown roles.[11] Corbet described The Brutalist as "a film which celebrates the triumphs of the most daring and accomplished visionaries; our ancestors", and the project which is so far the closest to his heart and family history.[11] Protagonist Pictures presented the project to buyers at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival.[11] The film takes place in Pennsylvania and was shot in English, Hebrew, Hungarian, and Italian.[10][11]
Director of photography Lol Crawley, editor Dávid Jancsó, and costume designer Kate Forbes were announced on March 9, 2023.[14][15] Production designer Judy Becker was announced on April 11, 2023.[8]Daniel Blumberg composed the film's score.[16]
On April 11, 2023, it was announced that Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Jonathan Hyde, Emma Laird, and Peter Polycarpou would star in the film, while Edgerton, Cotillard, Rylance, Stan, and Kirby were no longer attached.[8] It was also announced that the film would be co-produced by the US-based companies Andrew Lauren Productions and Yellow Bear along with the United Kingdom's Brookstreet and Intake Films, and Hungary's Proton Cinema,[8] and financed by Brookstreet UK, Yellow Bear, Lip Sync Productions, Richmond Pictures, Meyohas Studio, Carte Blanche, Cofiloisirs, and Parable Media.[8] CAA Media Finance handles US sales with Protagonist Pictures handling international sales.[8]Focus Features subsequently acquired international distribution rights to the film.[4]
Corbet dedicated the film to Scott Walker who died in 2019, and scored his previous films.[17]
Writing
Corbet had long had an interest in architecture. His uncle is an architect who studied at Taliesin West, which Corbet frequented as a child, while Fastvold's grandfather was a mid-century designer.[18][19] Corbet stated that the film is about the parallels between the artistic experience and the immigrant experience, and that brutalism, in addition to its highly cinematic nature, would work as the perfect visual allegory for exploring post-war trauma.[18][20] Fastvold's own experience as an immigrant from Norway also informed the writing of the film.[18] Furthermore, Corbet considered architecture and filmmaking to be similar processes, as they are both "forms of artistic expression that require an extraordinary amount of participation from other people, collaboration and lots of money".[18]
The character of László Tóth was inspired by several real-life architects and designers, including Marcel Breuer, Paul Rudolph, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy, Louis Kahn[20][21], and Ernő Goldfinger[22]. During their research, Corbet and Fastvold consulted architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen (who died in 2023); Cohen noted that no actual examples of architects that emerged from the war with a career like Tóth's in fact existed.[23] Alongside Cohen's Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War, Hilary Thimmesh's Marcel Breuer and a Committee of Twelve Plan a Church: A Monastic Memoir, a book chronicling the construction of Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota by the Hungary-born, Bauhaus-trained Breuer, was an additional point of reference.[23][24] Corbet further cited the writings of W. G. Sebald and V. S. Naipaul (whose novel The Enigma of Arrival lends its name to the first part of the film) as influences.[20]
Filming
Cinematographer Lol Crawley discussing The Brutalist at the 2025 IFFR
Corbet shot the film's epilogue in Venice in September 2020. Principal photography, scheduled to start in Poland in December, was postponed due to COVID restrictions.[25] Further delays occurred as a result of the war in Ukraine as well as several pregnancies (including that of lead actress Felicity Jones) and deaths in the families of the film's cast and crew.[25][26][27] Corbet ultimately elected to shoot in Hungary to take advantage of its tax credits, the presence of multiple film labs in Budapest, as well as his own familiarity; both Corbet and Fastvold had experience filming in the country.[26]
Principal photography eventually began on March 16, 2023 in Budapest.[8][28][29] The Hungarian capital and surrounding countryside doubled as 1950s Philadelphia and rural Pennsylvania in the film, while the Andrássy Castle in Tóalmás stood in for the Van Buren mansion.[25][30] Production then moved to Carrara, Tuscany, on April 29, 2023.[31][32] Filming took place in the Bettogli and Bombarda quarries in unexpected thick fog, and in the town of Carrara itself.[30] A small camera unit filmed exteriors in New York City, as well as the Statue of Liberty reveal featured in the opening scene.[33] Principal photography wrapped after 34 days on May 5, 2023.[34]
The film was shot using the VistaVision process and cameras equipped with Leica-S lenses. It involves shooting horizontally on 35mm film stock, which was then scanned, with the intention of also making prints for a 70mm film release, which has the same height and was the most practical format to show the original size of the VistaVision frame when projecting film.[33] The idea for VistaVision arose while Corbet and director of photography Lol Crawley were scouting the quarries in Italy. The format was originally intended for big vistas, but ultimately the vast majority of the film was shot on VistaVision.[33] Corbet explained that "the best way to access [the 1950s] was to shoot on something that was engineered in that same decade",[35] while Crawley stated that the format, with its wider field of view, allowed filmmakers to photograph architecture without using distorting wide-angle lenses.[36] Crawley also used Arricam ST, LT and Arriflex 235 35mm cameras equipped with Cooke lenses for the shoot. An Arriflex 416 16mm camera equipped with Zeiss Superspeed lenses was used to shoot documentary-style footage, while the TV footage in the epilogue was filmed using a Digital Betacam.[33]
The Van Buren Institute, which was only constructed in portions and as a scale model, was designed by production designer Judy Becker based on the notes of Fastvold and Corbet, who tried to be as descriptive as they could about its features in the script.[23] Not an architect by training, Becker looked to the designs of concentration camps, real-life brutalist buildings, the work of Marcel Breuer and Tadao Ando, Louis Kahn's Salk Institute, Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Headquarters and James Turrell's skyspaces for inspiration.[37] She also cited Breuer's Westchester Reform Temple, a synagogue she remembered as a child in Scarsdale, New York that had a Star of David overhead, as a point of reference.[23][38]
The film's score was composed by English musician Daniel Blumberg, who had previously worked with Corbet on the short film Gyuto (2019). The two worked together on the film over a span of seven years.[39][40] The album containing the score was released through Milan Records on December 13, 2024.[40] Blumberg and Corbet wanted continuous music for the film's first 10 minutes, resulting in the opening sequence of The Brutalist being choreographed and shot to Blumberg's demos.[39] The overture features pianists John Tilbury, Sophie Agnel[fr], and Simon Sieger, trumpeter Axel Dörner, and saxophonist Evan Parker, all of whom appear throughout the soundtrack.[39] Synth-pop musician Vince Clarke plays the synthesizer on "Epilogue (Venice)".[40]
The experimental "Construction" was the first track Blumberg wrote for the score; an early demo was composed on a prepared piano at London's Cafe Oto to create a sound similar to construction noises.[40] "Erzsébet", one of the score's themes, was played by Blumberg live on a piano since Corbet wanted the actors to hear the music while shooting; the train noises from the scene were eventually incorporated into the track's final version.[40]
Post-production and AI controversy
Editing was completed by Hungarian editor Dávid Jancsó.[41] In an interview with RedShark News, Jancsó revealed that artificial intelligence (AI) tools from Respeecher, a Ukrainian software company, were deployed in order to improve the authenticity of Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones's Hungarian dialogue.[42] Both actors received dialect coaching, but the filmmakers wanted to perfect their pronunciation "so that not even locals will spot any difference."[42] Unsuccessful ADR work prompted them to record Brody and Jones's voices into Respeecher; Jancsó, a native Hungarian speaker, also fed in his voice to "finesse the tricky dialect".[42]
Director Brady Corbet issued the following statement to Deadline Hollywood after Jancsó's interview sparked backlash on social media:[43][44]
[Brody] and [Jones]'s performances are completely their own. They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents. Innovative Respeecher technology was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy. No English language was changed. This was a manual process, done by our sound team and Respeecher in post-production. The aim was to preserve the authenticity of [Brody] and [Jones]'s performances in another language, not to replace or alter them and done with the utmost respect for the craft.
Additionally, it was said that generative artificial intelligence was used to conjure a series of architectural blueprints and finished buildings in the film's closing sequence.[42] In a 2022 Filmmaker article, production designer Judy Becker claimed the film's architecture consultant used Midjourney "to create three brutalist buildings quite quickly."[45] However, Corbet denied this in a subsequent interview: "Judy Becker and her team did not use AI to create or render any of the buildings. All images were hand-drawn by artists. To clarify, in the memorial video featured in the background of a shot, our editorial team created pictures intentionally designed to look like poor digital renderings circa 1980."[46] The director concluded by saying "The Brutalist is a film about human complexity, and every aspect of its creation was driven by human effort, creativity, and collaboration. We are incredibly proud of our team and what they've accomplished here."[43]
It was screened in IMAX theaters two days prior to its limited theatrical release for New York and Los Angeles before being screened in IMAX nationwide throughout January.
As of March8,2025[update], The Brutalist has grossed $16.1million in the United States and Canada, and $29.2million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $45.3million.[6][3]
The Brutalist made $266,791 from four theaters in the US in its opening weekend, and then $211,164 in its second weekend and $244,341 in its third.[59] In its fourth weekend, the film expanded to 68 theaters and made $1.38 million. Its figure was noted as outperforming Better Man, which made $1.1 million from 1,291 theaters over the same frame.[60][61] The following weekend it grossed $2 million from 338 theaters (and a total of $2.4 million over the four-day MLK holiday).[62] After earning 10 Oscar nominations, the film expanded to 1,118 theaters, and made $2.9 million over the weekend.[63]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 316 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.7/10.The website's consensus reads: "Structurally beautiful and suffused with Adrien Brody's soulful performance, writer-director Brady Corbet's immaculately designed The Brutalist is a towering tribute to the immigrant experience."[64]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[65]
The film received a five-star review from The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, who called it "an amazing and engrossing epic". He continued: "The Brutalist obviously takes something from Ayn Rand, but also from Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow in its depiction of the US immigrant adventure and the promise of success – but maybe Corbet and Fastvold go further and faster into how dizzyingly sensual and sexual it all is". Bradshaw concluded: "It is an electrifying piece of work, stunningly shot by cinematographer Lol Crawley and superbly designed by Judy Becker. I emerged from this movie light-headed and euphoric, dizzy with rubbernecking at its monumental vastness."[66] In a review for Vogue, the cinematography, score, costumes, and production design were described as "sumptuous", "impressively stylish", and possessing a "staggering ambition".[67] Some reviews criticized the film, including The Ringer's Adam Nayman[68] and The New Yorker's Richard Brody, with the latter writing that "Brady Corbet's epic takes on weighty themes, but fails to infuse its characters with the stuff of life."[69]
↑ "Q&A with Brady Corbet". Le Cinéma Club (Interview). December 20, 2024. Archived from the original on December 22, 2024. Retrieved February 2, 2025. on a budget of 9.6 million dollars
↑ "The Sync Report | Brady Corbet". audioboom.com. August 11, 2022. Archived from the original on February 8, 2023. Retrieved March 21, 2023. Corbet starts talking about The Brutalist at the 1:11:48 mark.
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