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Adrien Brody made a highly notable return at the Venice Film Festival with The Brutalist, a monumental 3.5-hour film that revisits the American dream of integration and its flaws through the journey of a Holocaust-surviving architect.
Competing for the Golden Lion, The Brutalist explores the psychological trauma on Holocaust survivors and those around them as well as the broader influence on their work and the world they shape. Adrien Brody, who won an Oscar 20 years ago for his role as a Warsaw ghetto survivor in Polanski’s The Pianist, resumes a narrative that picks up nearly where it left off, at the end of World War II.
Photo Credit: Alberto Pizzoli / AFP
In The Brutalist, directed by Brady Corbet, Brody portrays László Toth, a fictional Hungarian architect inspired by several historical figures from the Bauhaus movement, who manages to emigrate to the United States shortly after the war.
Starting with nothing and struggling with poverty and addiction, Toth eventually meets a millionaire from the suburbs of Philadelphia, played by Guy Pearce, who provides him with sustenance, housing, and commissions him to design an imposing building—a project that spans years.
As László finally glimpses the possibility of achieving his share of the American dream, and bringing his family, who remain trapped in Europe, to join him, the fabric of his new life begins to unravel. The film, which skillfully uses architecture as a metaphor for human institutions, made a significant impact during its presentation at the Lido.
“There are so many talented Bauhaus architects whose visions we never got to see, whose imagined futures were never realized,” director Brady Corbet explained at a press conference.
“This film, unfortunately, is a fiction. It is the only way to revisit that past,” added Corbet, a 36-year-old more renowned for his acting career including Mysterious Skin, Funny Games. The film, a product of seven years of work, is dedicated to the artists who were unable to fulfill their visions.
Despite being inspired by a challenging theme; “the physical manifestation of 20th-century traumas in architecture.” The Brutalist is driven by a narrative energy and character focus that keep it from ever feeling heavy-handed.
The film holds particular significance for Adrien Brody, who “immediately felt an understanding and empathy for the character.” “My mother, Sylvia Plachy, is a New York-based photographer, but she’s also a Hungarian immigrant who fled Hungary in 1956 and found refuge in the United States. Much like László, she had to start over and pursued the dream of becoming an artist,” the actor shared.
“This is a fiction that feels very real. It’s very important to me to bring the character to life,” he continued. “The film not only represents the past but also serves as a reminder of that past and what we must learn from it for our present.”
With AFP
