The Brutalist | The destiny of a misunderstood genius

In The Brutalistby Brady Corbet, crowned with the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival and three Golden Globes, including Best Actor, Adrien Brody plays a brilliant Hungarian architect who comes to try his luck in the United States at the end from the 1940s.

Whenever he has the chance to speak, Brady Corbet (The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux) recalls with emotion the seven years of hardship he went through with his wife and co-writer Mona Fastvold to complete his third feature film. And this, despite a limited budget of 10 million dollars, a derisory sum for a work of such magnitude, of disproportionate ambition, shot in 70 mm format, more specifically in VistaVision, a technology launched by Paramount in 1954.

However, did the whole thing, masterfully photographed by Lol Crawley, have to last more than three hours? That we impose a quarter-hour intermission on the public? Running out of steam in the second act, culminating in an abrupt conclusion, The Brutalist (The Brutalistin French version) would certainly have benefited from tighter editing on the part of Dávid Jancsó. Despite this, the result remains colossal.

His wife Erszébeth (Felicity Jones), brilliant journalist, and his niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), traumatized by the war, still unable to leave Hungary, László Tóth (Adrien Brody, of unusual intensity), architect graduated from the Bauhaus , immigrated alone to the United States at the end of the 1940s. Taken in by his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) in New York, László seizes the opportunity to showcase his talent the day Harry (Joe Alwyn) and Maggie Lee (Stacy Martin) set foot in the furniture store that Attila runs with his wife (Emma Laird).

The two young people order a library from Attila for the birthday of their father, the rich industrialist Harrison Lee Van Burren (Guy Pearce, who sometimes pushes the bill). Upon discovering the surprise, the latter becomes very angry. Years later, having understood the genius of László Tóth, the esthete as wealthy as he was tyrannical suggested that the architect design an institute in memory of his mother. In the meantime, an argument broke out between Attila and László, causing the latter to live in a homeless shelter. This is how he becomes friends with Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé), who, in addition to raising his son alone, must face racism.

Above all, we must salute the production designer Judy Becker, who, through her formidable inventiveness, manages to suggest that László expresses in reinforced concrete and Italian marble the oppression of religion and the trauma linked to the horrors of war. Honorable mention to the splendid library which Le Corbusier would certainly not have denied. As a counterpoint to the opulence of the Van Burren mansion and the imposing creations of László Tóth, Becker illustrates with the same brilliance the modesty and dignity of the low-income and the neglected.

In many respects, the portrait of America, the promised land par excellence, that Brady Corbet paints is hardly flattering. Through the toxic relationship between Van Burren, a narcissistic pervert, and László Tóth, a tortured artist, the filmmaker seems to hold up a mirror to today’s America, where the gap between social classes continues to increase. , where freedom of expression is undermined, where artists are at the mercy of the all-powerful. Should we see this as a metaphor for the film industry?

A true tour de force, a vibrant tribute to the geniuses of the Bauhaus who died during the Second World War having been partly inspired by Architecture in Uniformessay by the French architectural historian and urban planner Jean-Louis Cohen, The Brutalist offers a dizzying reflection on salvation through art, uncompromising creation and the power of money against a backdrop of the American dream. Like Brady Corbet himself, László Tóth, a fictional figure evoking the architect and furniture designer Marcel Breuer, appears obstinate, sensitive and unapologetic in the creation of his art. .

From January 17 at the Cinéplex Banque Scotia Montréal in 70 mm, in original version. From January 24 in certain theaters in Quebec in original version with French subtitles. In February everywhere in Quebec in French version.

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Drama

The Brutalist

Brady Corbet

Avec Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones

3 h 35

8/10