This film is impressive in many respects.
Director/co-writer Brady Corbet ambitiously tackles an overwhelming, quite possibly unattainable endeavor much the way this story’s protagonist does.
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| Immigrant architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) has an uphill battle, persuading old-money movers and shakers that his cutting-edge structure will be an asset to their community. |
From the very first frame, this film Calls Attention To Itself. Lol Crawley’s cinematographic choice is 70mm VistaVision, a throwback logo and widescreen variant long discarded since its 1950s debut. Sebastian Pardo’s title credits design mimics the shape and style of the Brutalism architectural movement that erupted in Europe and — as in this story — Pennsylvania during that same decade.
Further mimicking this Old Hollywood approach, Corbet’s film opens with an overture, then proceeds with a first act — “The Enigma of Arrival” — a 15-minute intermission (with a clock that counts down against a key photograph), followed by a second act — “The Hard Core of Beauty” — and an epilogue.
Daniel Blumberg’s wildly eclectic score often clashes — deliberately — with the cacophonous “slabs of noise” from Andy Neil’s sound design. The result is jarring, startling and disorienting, reflecting the central character’s professional, mental and emotional journey.
It often feels like this saga is based on actual events, and actual people, but no; aside from acknowledging the post-WWII Brutalism movement itself, Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvoid’s entirely fictitious story and characters are merely suggested by Brutalist architects Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph and Ralph Rapson, with a narrative arc that owes much to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and a soupçon of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane.
László Tóth (Adrien Brody) is introduced in a confusing blur of motion: a Hungarian Holocaust survivor newly arrived in the United States, on a ship laden with fellow immigrants. Tellingly, his first view of the Statue of Liberty is upside-down, and then sideways, as he emerges from the ship’s bowels: a warning that America’s promise of opportunity is skewed.
That, coupled with the preceding Goethe quote — “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free” — promises that László’s subsequent journey will not end happily.
He’s greeted by his cheerfully welcoming cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who bears the good news that László’s wife Erzsébet and niece Zsófia are alive, albeit stuck back in Europe, due to unspecified bureaucratic lunacy. Brody’s performance in this scene is wrenching, the man’s delight, relief and anguish displayed in equal measure.
Attila brings László back to his Philadelphia home, and gives him a job in the furniture shop he runs with his wife, Audrey (Emma Laird). The shop’s name? Miller & Sons; Attila has abandoned his Jewish heritage in order to placate his Catholic wife. (One wonders how they met in the first place.)
Audrey takes an immediate dislike to László, for reasons left unclear: by no means the only time Corbet and Fastvoid fail to explain or justify the subsequent behavior — or fate — of several key characters.
Lodging in a back room apparently doesn’t include steady meals; László meets Gordon (the quietly regal Isaach de Bankolé) in a bread line, and the two become fast friends.
The story’s core plot is set in motion when the wealthy Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) hires Attila and László to remodel his father’s library, as a surprise, while that individual is away. László views this massive open space — in the Van Buren’s ostentatious, old-money estate — as an opportunity for something truly stylish, and successfully brings it to fruition.
It's a stunning showpiece.
Alas, the elder Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) returns home prematurely, hates surprises as much as he instinctively loathes the black-skinned Gordon, and orders everybody out of his house. Without paying them.
Attila unfairly blames László, likely at Audrey’s insistence, and turns away from his cousin. László and Gordon — along with the latter’s young son — then enter the purgatory of charity housing, soup kitchens, day labor and heroin addiction.
The latter detail is another narrative misfire, because László apparently manages his addiction, as events proceed ... which, frankly, is ludicrous.
Three years pass. Harrison tracks László down, apologizes, pays the previously withheld fee for his library, and confesses that he loves it.
With a new proposal in mind, Harrison invites László to join his family and friends for dinner that evening. (It’s less an invitation, and more of a command.) László obliges, and finds himself the uncomfortable center of attention among insufferably stuffy, condescending and faux-polite blue-bloods who regard him the way they might check the finer points of a horse. Even when being solicitous, their antisemitism is blatant.
This is but one of the ways that László soon realizes — despite his genuine architectural talent, well-respected back in his native Hungary — that he’ll never be accepted by those who insist upon “collaborating” with him. It’s a crippling display of dynastic wealth and rapacious capitalism at its most brazen, determined to sabotage cutting-edge artistic freedom.
Harrison wishes to build a community center on a hill that overlooks both his estate and the nearby town. The project quickly expands to serve multiple demands, including library and chapel. Harrison intends this to be a long-standing tribute to his late mother; László has an entirely different inspiration in mind, as he proceeds with what becomes a massive, blocky, deliberately challenging edifice.
Its subsequent construction becomes the white whale that will devour both men.
Pearce, also deservedly Oscar-nominated, makes Harrison imperious, aggressively formal, and plain-spoken to a fault. His bushy mustache is as much a character as his clipped vocal cadence; his slightly rotund figure results from too much Courvoisier, a parallel to László’s heroin addition.
The dynamic quickly becomes clear: Harrison admires László’s talent, but does not respect his new colleague. Worse yet, Harrison is quietly enraged by his own artistic inabilities, and misses no opportunity to demean László, even while praising him.
This level of hypocrisy climaxes with the ultimate debasement, toward the end of the second act.
László, although by no means a saint, certainly doesn’t deserve such treatment; he becomes a metaphor both for America’s assimilation failures, and the boorish aristocratic preference for living in the past, rather than embracing a potentially novel and exciting future.
Along with controlling their “lessers” by any means necessary.
Brody charts László’s descent into personal hell quite persuasively, initial bewilderment and confusion soon replaced by frustration and, ultimately, rage.
The latter is where Corbet loses control of his film.
László spends the entire first act exchanging loving, hopeful letters with Erzsébet... and yet when Harrison helps arrange for her (Felicity Jones) and Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy, quietly vulnerable) to join them, László all but ignores his wife. His behavior is oddly hostile, much to her dismay (and ours).
Jones makes Erzsébet spunky, self-assured, talented in her own field (journalism), and ferociously loyal to a husband who hardly deserves it. She’s also a badly wounded sparrow, which should make her more sympathetic ... and yet Corbet and Fastvoid never properly define her character.
Zsófia, mute due to her Holocaust traumas, catches the eye of Harry Lee. Alwyn already has shaded him as an opportunistic cad — who enjoys stoking the friction between his father and László — but Harry Lee’s true colors are even more loathsome.
Late in the second act, László and Harrison visit the stone quarries of Cararra, Italy: an interlude given breathtaking grandeur by Crawley’s establishing shots. This sequence climaxes the ongoing artistic battle between László (who prefers the simplicity and cost-conscious use of concrete) and Harrison (who insists upon marble, even if it might bankrupt him).
But the downhill slide from here leaves hanging chads as massive as László’s community center. It’s jarring when Zsófia suddenly talks, toward the end; what changed? And what becomes of not just one, but two key characters?
On top of which, the “triumphant” epilogue demands all manner of explanation; it’s an outcome wholly unsupported by previous events.
On a minor note, yellow was a terrible choice for the frequent subtitles, because they’re unreadable against white and light-colored backgrounds.
Corbet deserves credit for energetically shooting the cinematic moon so bravely and spectacularly ... but the result has too many flaws to be considered epic.
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