Brady Corbet's The Brutalist has sparked controversy among architects and historians, questioning its portrayal of Marcel Breuer and Brutalism itself. Despite criticism, the film remains a frontrunner for Best Picture at the Oscars.
The Brutalist, an epic drama loosely inspired by the life and work of architect Marcel Breuer, is one of the favorites for Sunday’s Oscars.
However, the film has drawn scorn from design experts, who accuse it of glaring errors and question whether its main character is even a Brutalist architect.
Here are five things to know about the film, which is up for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture:
Who was Marcel Breuer?
Director Brady Corbet has said his protagonist, Laszlo Toth, is an "amalgamation" of several famed architects, most notably Breuer.
Like the fictional Toth, Breuer was born in Hungary, honed his skills at interwar Germany's influential Bauhaus school, and later immigrated to America.
Both designed iconic chairs before turning their focus to grand buildings. Born Jewish, each was commissioned to construct giant Christian buildings in remote parts of the United States that became their masterpieces.
Corbet has said that a book about Breuer’s work on Saint John’s Abbey in rural Minnesota was a key inspiration for the film.
Breuer is also known for designing parts of Paris’s UNESCO headquarters, New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Pirelli Tire Building in Connecticut.
What is Brutalism?
Brutalism is a polarizing architectural style that emerged during the post-war reconstruction of Europe in the 1950s.
It is recognizable for its exposed, unembellished concrete and bold, geometric forms.
The term is believed to come from béton brut, French for raw concrete.
Surprisingly, almost no Brutalist architecture appears in The Brutalist—until the audience glimpses Toth’s completed masterpiece at the very end of the three-and-a-half-hour film.
In a podcast episode titled Why The Brutalist is a Terrible Movie, design critic Alexandra Lange remarked that the filmmakers "say they read all these books on Brutalism, but absolutely none of that is used to any dramatic purpose or really seems to have been absorbed."
Victoria Young, a professor at the University of St. Thomas, told AFP that the building shown at the end is not even Brutalist but early modernist.
"I’m like, ‘You’re kind of missing the whole timeline here,’" she said.
What about the timeline?
Experts have pointed out other ways in which the film distorts history.
In the film, Toth is depicted as a Holocaust survivor who struggles to find work and stands in bread lines upon arriving in post-war America, before his talent is eventually recognized by a wealthy benefactor.
In reality, Bauhaus alumni like Breuer and Walter Gropius crossed the Atlantic in the 1930s, before World War II. They arrived as globally renowned professionals and were welcomed into prestigious positions at institutions like Harvard University.
Modernist architecture was already deeply established and fashionable in the United States long before the film’s setting.
"As an architectural historian, my head is still spinning after watching that movie," said Young.
Additionally, Toth is portrayed as a devoutly religious heroin addict, whereas Breuer was sober and secular.
Any other controversies?
The Brutalist editor David Jancsó stated that artificial intelligence was used to create renderings of Toth’s buildings and blueprints. (AI, which is both increasingly utilized and controversial in Hollywood, also helped refine the actors' Hungarian accents.)
Corbet quickly clarified that the blueprint designs were actually hand-drawn.
However, he admitted that AI was used to generate "intentionally poor digital renderings circa 1980" for the film’s epilogue.
Will it matter?
The Brutalist remains a frontrunner for Best Picture.
And the criticisms surrounding it pale in comparison to the storm surrounding Emilia Perez, due to its star’s controversial social media posts.
Robert McCarter, an architect and author of the monograph Breuer, said the film’s occasional historical distortions "don’t bother me."
"They're just using his biography conveniently... I think it's fine," he told AFP.
But what about the monks who pray each day at Saint John’s Abbey, the movie’s supposed inspiration?
Alan Reed admitted that the so-called Brutalism in the film’s title reminds him more of "Russian modern buildings… that look like gun parapets" or "a bunch of boxes piled up" rather than his extraordinary church.
Still, he said, his fellow monks are "quite excited" by the extra attention their home is receiving.
With AFP
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