The Brutalist turns a monumental building commission into a test of what art can carry: exile, ambition, family history and the power of the person paying for it. Brady Corbet’s three-act epic is visually commanding and anchored by Adrien Brody’s intense performance, though its vast scale and heightened confrontations can make the drama feel as imposing as its architecture.
What is The Brutalist about?
Set in the years after World War II, the film follows László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect who emigrates to the United States in 1947. He struggles to rebuild both his life and career, reconnect with his family, and navigate a consequential commission from wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren. The project offers the possibility of artistic recognition, but it also binds László to a patron whose money and authority shape what can be built.
That tension gives the architecture its dramatic purpose. The building is not merely a symbol of László’s inner life: its creation depends on negotiations over labor, status, taste and control. At the same time, the film asks whether one monumental work can make visible a history of displacement and trauma that its creator cannot simply leave behind.
Does the architecture become more than a metaphor?
Director and co-writer Brady Corbet has described the Institute as “a manifestation of 30 years of trauma in László Tóth, and the ramification of two World Wars.” It is a bold frame, and the film is strongest when the building’s material presence and the relationships around its construction make that idea felt rather than merely announced.
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Brutalism’s exposed structural materials offer a fitting visual language for a story about what is carried openly and what remains unresolved. Yet the film’s design is not a simple illustration of suffering. The commission is also a professional opportunity and a patronage arrangement, which means its beauty and scale are inseparable from the unequal power behind it. The central question is not only what László wants to make, but what the terms of making it will cost him.
How do the performances shape the story?
Adrien Brody as László
Brody gives László a consuming artistic drive and the guardedness of someone whose past has been violently disrupted. In the production notes, Brody calls the story “a journey of a refugee connected to his past who has also been stripped of his past.” That contradiction is the character’s engine: he is trying to recover a place in the world while living with losses that cannot be undone.
Rank #2
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Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones
Guy Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren represents the allure and danger of patronage: he can open doors for László, but he is not a neutral facilitator. Felicity Jones plays Erzsébet, whose relationship with László brings the private costs of his ambitions into view. Mona Fastvold has said that the partnership, friendship and love between the couple were among the screenplay’s first sparks. Their connection gives the film an intimate counterweight to its public, monumental project.
The ensemble also includes Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Emma Laird, Isaach De Bankolé and Alessandro Nivola. The performances help give the story a social world beyond the architect and his patron, even as the film’s scale and emphatic confrontations can sometimes push its people toward larger-than-life positions.
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Does the three-act epic justify its length?
The Brutalist is structured in three acts, with an intermission separating the long stretch of story. Venice lists the running time as 215 minutes. Kodak describes a 216-minute version, while the Guardian reports 215 minutes plus a 15-minute intermission; the published figures therefore differ by a minute, and the interval is part of the intended theatrical experience in those accounts.
The form gives the story room to let artistic aspiration, family ties and patronage evolve rather than resolve at once. That breadth suits a film about building something over time. It also creates a real test of attention: the episodic design and heightened dramatic turns do not always sustain the same momentum. Corbet has resisted treating duration as a flaw in itself, telling the Guardian that it is “quite silly to have a conversation about runtime because that’s like criticising a book that has 700 pages instead of 100 pages.” The more useful question is whether the experience earns its length scene by scene; viewers may find that its ambition and accumulation do, even when its pacing feels uneven.
Rank #4
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How do the cinematography and music serve the film?
Cinematographer Lol Crawley shot on Kodak 35mm film, chiefly using VistaVision, according to Kodak’s production account. That capture format should not be confused with a universal presentation format: Venice’s listing separately records Corbet’s intention to bring the film to the festival in 70mm, which does not mean every screening used 70mm.
The images give the building and the people who move through it a substantial, tactile presence, linking the film’s visual scale to its concerns with labor, memory and public recognition. Daniel Blumberg’s music contributes to the emotional pressure without making the architecture feel like spectacle for its own sake. The result is a film whose craft makes its ambitions tangible, even when its storytelling occasionally feels as monumental and unwieldy as the project at its center.
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Is The Brutalist based on a true story?
No. László Tóth is fictional. The production notes say Corbet and Fastvold developed the character after consulting architectural scholar Jean-Louis Cohen, who could not identify a directly matching historical figure. The period, immigration story and architectural references invite historical interpretation, but the film is not a biography of a real architect.
What to know before watching at home
A24 lists the film in standard HD Blu-ray and 4K UHD Blu-ray editions. Its product page specifies a 215-minute presentation in 1.66:1, English audio, English SDH and Spanish subtitles, plus extras including a cinematographer commentary, a making-of featurette and architectural postcards. The 4K UHD disc requires a compatible 4K Blu-ray player and will not play in a standard Blu-ray player. These are the listed physical editions; streaming availability varies by territory and is not established here.
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