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The Brutalist Is Half Of A Great Movie
A terrific Adrien Brody anchors this three-and-a-half-hour American saga whose ambitions end up exceeding its grasp.
We only gradually learn what a big deal László was in Budapest before the war, but Brody offers glimpses of the respected architect the man used to be in his blunt assessment of the furniture Attila sells in his store, in the care he takes when crafting his own designs, and in his indifference to anyone who doesn’t appreciate the value of his work. László has lost the love of his life, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) — not to death, as he initially thought, but to the snarls of bureaucracy and legal whims that keep his wife stuck at the Austrian border with his niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), who’s so traumatized by what she went through that she’s stopped speaking. His directorial debut, 2015’s The Childhood of a Leader, depicted the coming-of-age of a future dictator in post-World War I France, while his caustic Natalie Portman-lead pop star drama Vox Lux spanned a Columbine-like school shooting and September 11.
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