The Brutalist

A captivating portrait of the immigrant experience, The Brutalist invites and demands emotional investment without an easy path to sympathy or catharsis.

This ambitious epic drama from director Brady Corbet (Vox Lux) is sweeping in scope but most powerful in its intimate, character-driven sequences, charting the elusive nature of the American Dream against a harrowing and volatile postwar backdrop.

Starting in the mid-1940s and covering more than a decade, the story follows the undulating highs and lows of Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) during his journey as a stranger in a strange land, when he becomes swept up in a complex maze of wealth and power.

Laszlo was an esteemed Jewish architect in his native Hungary when he was separated from his wife (Felicity Jones) and niece in an internment camp. Now he’s arriving at Ellis Island with hopes they will eventually follow him.

He struggles to assimilate, at first working for his cousin (Alessandro Nivola) at a Philadelphia furniture shop. A lucrative opportunity to redesign a library at the small-town mansion of industrialist tycoon Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) goes sideways, leaving him destitute.

The world might seem stacked against Laszlo, but he’s also doomed by his own impulses and addictions, which include a quick temper and a heroin habit. However, he’s a perfectionist with both humility and pride, especially when it comes to his work.

That’s what prompts Harrison to reconsider Laszlo, eventually inviting him back and entrusting him to design and construct his grand vision for a sprawling community center to honor his late mother. “I always thought it our duty to nurture the great talents of our epoch,” he explains.

However, Harrison’s enthusiastic support comes with condescending undertones, along with a dark secret. Years pass, tension simmers, and the project becomes more symbolic in nature.

The richly textured screenplay by Corbet and Mona Fastvold (The World to Come) — perhaps inspired in part by Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead — resonates across cultural and chronological boundaries with its broad themes of family, acceptance, kindness, and perseverance in the face of oppressive obstacles and unfortunate circumstances.

Brody and Pearce delve into their roles with conviction, conveying a riveting adversarial chemistry as two men whose partnership and mutual admiration is accented by socioeconomic differences and underlying jealousy.

Offering meticulously detailed period re-creation on a modest budget, The Brutalist is layered with contemporary relevance without turning heavy-handed.

Rated R, 200 minutes.