The Brutalist, director Brady Corbet's third feature, is a movie of such colossal size and scope it may well have been carved from marble; an epic paean to the immigrant experience in America in the wake of the Second World War.
'Monumental' has been the word of choice for a slew of critics who have been overwhelmed by the (fictional) story of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and flees to the USA.
After a euphoric glimpse of the Statue of Liberty (pointedly shot upside down in the culmination of a bravura opening sequence) Tóth is soon scratching out a hard-scrabble life in Pennsylvania when the well-heeled industrialist Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) commissions him to design and build a grand community centre in honour of his late mother.
Tóth, a student of Bauhaus, is an architectural purist – he forgoes his own salary to avoid changes to the project – but for Van Buren the building is merely an exercise in wealth and reputation. There is a fiery confrontation even at their first meeting as the pig-headed Van Buren refuses to countenance the immigrant before him. This clash, between egotistical benefactor and stubborn artist, is a key through-line for the movie's 215-minute runtime (relax, there's an interval).
Corbet has bristled at criticism of the film’s length but he needn’t have worried, The Brutalist is impeccably paced throughout; a propulsive odyssey with Toth at its centre, wrestling between America’s potential and its racism, but with the draw of the newly-created Jewish haven of Israel calling.
When Van Buren's oily son (Joe Alwyn) pitches Tóth on the project he tells him: "It’s ambitious. I thought you’d like that." The Brutalist is a film imbued with that same ambition. Corbet, who co-wrote the film with partner Mona Fastvold, is not satisfied with a simple tale of an immigrant's rise up the capitalist food chain.
Instead the Lady Liberty opening pointedly is a reminder of The Godfather Part 2 and the film shares a scope and anti-capitalist spirit with There Will Be Blood, with Brody's performance as the drug-addled Tóth every bit as nuanced and detailed as Daniel Day-Lewis' iconic Daniel Plainview.
Daniel Blumberg’s brassy, frenetic, gargantuan score, like the triumphant roar of an elephant, only adds to the scale of Cordet’s imagery – a sequence at an Italian marble quarry is among the most awe-inspiring in modern cinema.
Felicity Jones rounds out the cast as Tóth's wife Erzsébet, trapped in Europe for Part 1 (called 'The Enigma of Arrival'), she bursts into the narrative in the second swathe of the film, 'The Hard Core of Beauty', a strength for Tóth but also a fiery critic of his selfishness and an immigrant yet to be soured on the struggles of the American dream.
Corbet's own ambition in writing and directing The Brutalist (on a reported budget of just $11m and shot in 34 days) makes it hard to be mad at the film's flaws.
Newsreel inserts explaining the importance of Pennsylvania and the dangers of pain-killing opiates are heavy handed, Alwyn's accent is a bit ropey (Jones settles for a broad Eastern European lilt) and I'm not convinced the film really sticks the landing after three hours of sublime storytelling – but I am looking forward to sitting down for another three hours and 35 minutes to reconsider.
It is impossible not to recognise The Brutalist as anything other than a filmmaking triumph; Corbet's coming out as a serious director, a reminder of Brody's power and depth as an actor and a brutal parable for all immigrants and artists who struggle to sublimate themselves in the meatgrinder of America.
The Brutalist is in cinemas from January 24
