Winner of the Golden Globes on Sunday for best drama, best direction and best male performance for Adrien Brody, and previously winner of the Best Director Award in Venice, The Brutalist (The Brutalist), by Brady Corbet, is well on his way to shining at the Oscars. A broad and intimate fresco recounting the fate of a Hungarian Jewish architect who emigrated to the United States after the Second World War, the film is the image of the building that the protagonist dreams of building in his home country. welcome: ambitious, unique and full of hidden meanings. In interview, the filmmaker returns to this project seven years in the making.
“It all started with my reading of a book entitled Marcel Breuer and a Committee of Twelve Plan a Church », Relates Brady Corbet during a telephone interview.
“It’s an amazing book, published by a very small publishing house, in which a monk recounts, from his very particular point of view, the construction from 1953 of the Collegeville Abbey, in Minnesota, by Marcel Breuer. »
After briefly thinking about recounting the life of this emblematic architect of the Bauhaus, a movement where functionality prevailed over showiness, purity of lines rather than flourishes, Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, his co-writer and wife in the city , changed their minds. However, their fictional architect retained many of Breuer’s characteristics: Hungarian Jewish origins; influence of Bauhaus and its more imposing relative Brutalism; exile, in the long term, in the United States…
This is because, before the writing stage arrived, Brady Corbet read a second book. Which book made him realize that he was dealing with a subject transcending the simple notion of biographical drama.
“This book is called Architecture in uniform. Plan and build for World War IIand he was instrumental in the conception of the film. The author, Jean-Louis Cohen, explains how post-war architecture is intrinsically linked to post-war trauma. In a way, Mona and I built our story around this idea. »
A fictional character, therefore, László Tóth (Adrien Brody) was nonetheless developed in such a way as to evoke, with many convincing details, a real person. In this, The Brutalist is in line with Brady Corbet’s previous films, namely The Childhood of a Leader et Vox Luxfictional biographies of a future authoritarian leader and a pop singer, respectively.
Mirror game
A word about the name of the hero: since the premiere at the Mostra, many theories have been circulating as to the meaning to be given to this choice of name, “László Tóth”, which some immediately took for a reference to Laszlo Toth, an Australian geologist born in Hungary who, in 1972, vandalized The Compassionby Michelangelo, with hammer blows.
“Yes, I saw that,” admits the director, laughing on the line. But no: I just wanted a very common Hungarian name, and it turns out that at the time, in Hungary, that of László Tóth was very common: it was the equivalent of John Smith. »
Speaking of the time depicted: we meet László in destabilizing, chaotic circumstances. Riveted to him, the camera follows him in the semi-darkness, in mazes and indefinite spaces. And here László emerges on the deck of a freighter: finally, the light.
After the horror of the concentration camps, László contemplates the Statue of Liberty, his eyes full of hope… However, with the help of perspective, the monument, a first landmark after the confusion, appears upside down: an omen of what awaits László. Mind-blowing, this opening sequence is representative of the brilliance displayed throughout.
Installed shortly after in Philadelphia, László was commissioned by the rich industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) to design a monumental architectural complex. Quickly, however, the relationship between László and his employer becomes toxic, in contrast to the beneficial one between him and his partner Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), also a survivor of the camps.
“Mona and I experienced this a bit, with financiers who basically wanted to “collect” us, because collecting our work was not enough for them. The film is also about that, about wanting to collect not only Art, but also the artist,” confides Brady Corbet.
The mirror game doesn’t stop there. In fact, after becoming fascinated with the figure of the architect through his readings, Brady Corbet came to truly recognize himself in her.
“You look at the architects of this period, those who left their mark on the Brutalist movement, like Breuer, Le Corbusier, Paul Rudolph, Louis Kahn… The great architects in general, basically… They were all notoriously difficult and stubborn beings. But did they have a choice, to create what they created? It’s the same for filmmakers. It is our lot to be difficult and stubborn. »
Indeed, by defending a vision that is singularly different from everything that has come before, are we not doomed to encounter opposition, even hostility, from the moment of conception?
“Sometimes making a film means being in conflict for years. Architect, filmmaker… these are professions that attract a certain type of person, I suppose…”
Art remains
Another point in common between the architect and the filmmaker, according to Brady Corbet: “As part of a project, we sometimes have to resolve to collaborate with people who do not share our moral and ethical values. But we consent to it, in the name of art. »
On this subject, the film offers a rich and nuanced reflection. Thus art, represented by László Tóth, can take off thanks to commerce, represented by Harrison Lee Van Buren. Except that after having made creation possible, this financial power paradoxically compromises its development. In The Brutalistcapitalism is a monster — literally, in view of a late development that will be kept silent.
“You know, Mona and I split our time between Norway, a “socialist” country, and I use quotes, and the United States, a capitalist country. We are able to appreciate the qualities and defects of these two social experiments. The fact remains that capitalism is so ingrained in us that it is easier to imagine life after death than life after capitalism. »
And it is also against this, through the rich Harrison Lee Van Buren, that László Tóth fights, with very unequal weapons. However, as the film’s epilogue suggests, those who, during their lifetime, are distinguished only by their wealth are willingly forgotten by History, since they are replaced by other tycoons. In short, the proponents of commerce vanish into the mists of time. Art and artists, on the other hand, remain.
The movie The Brutalist hits the screens in 70 mm print on January 17 at the Cineplex Banque Scotia in original version, then in limited release on January 24 in original version s.-tf, and everywhere in Quebec in February in French version
