The Brutalist
“The Brutalist only depicts Blackness through stereotypes.”
Title: The Brutalist (2024)
Director: Brady Corbet 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Brady Corbet 👨🏼🇺🇸 and Mona Fastvold 👩🏼🇳🇴
Reviewed by Ro Moore 👩🏾🇺🇸
—SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 4.5/5
In the historical fiction drama by writer-director Brady Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist follows László Tóth (Adrian Brody), an impoverished Hungarian-Jewish architect and post-WWII refugee who emigrates to the United States. After surviving the Buchenwald concentration camp, he longs to reunite with his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), both still detained in Europe. One person can make this happen: the rich and well-connected Harrison Van Buren, played captivatingly by Guy Pearce, who takes an interest in László’s skill and hires him to design a community center. Over the course of Corbet and Fastvold’s staggering, 215-minute long epic, audiences watch as László navigates the highs, lows, and increasingly harrowing circumstances of what it means to “make it” in America.
From an aesthetic standpoint, cinematographer Lol Crawley and sound designers Andy Neil and Steve Single create a finely calibrated visual and auditory experience. Their fluid use of light, color, and sound is so successful, the end result becomes a mesmerizing character all its own. But if there is a weakness in The Brutalist, it's pacing. This immigrant’s tale spans forty years and excavates capitalism, antisemitism, legacy, addiction, ambition, and performative altruism. Yet Corbet often lingers too long on images instead of providing enough context clues for better worldbuilding. Corbet assumes viewers are equipped to interpret themes without assistance. All the while, narrative gaps get wider, and harder to bridge, especially when the film inexplicably speeds up after a jump forward in time. Thankfully, Brody’s primary scene partners, Pearce and Jones, are powerhouse performers. The trio ably compensates for the script’s restraint.
Additionally, the film’s structure mirrors an epic poem or opera, complete with overture and an intermission. That creates sign posts and gives viewers space to digest the gritty plot points. Just as the film lulls you into believing it’s leading in one direction, the story switches onto an entirely different track. By the time a crucial late-movie reveal happens, you’ve fully invested in the slow burn.
Gender: 2.75/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES, but barely
Most of the women in The Brutalist are nameless wives, mothers, daughters, maids, partygoers, and sex workers. They exist in the background unless there’s a need to highlight a controversy that revolves around a man. It’s telling that the first woman who has any dialogue in the film is not only a sex worker—she talks while on her knees.
Audrey Miller (Emma Laird) is the wife of Attila Miller (Alessandro Nivola), László's cousin and a furniture store owner in Philadelphia. Audrey gets only the slightest bit of character development, portrayed as standoffish, passive-aggressive, and antisemitic. The script lazily turns Audrey into the reason Attila cuts ties with László, and the best part of her role at all is its brevity.
Not until the introduction of Jones' Erzsébet do gender dynamics shift for the better. Erzsébet is a fully developed character. She’s calm, measured, smart, and pragmatic. She’s a survivor, unafraid to have hard conversations with her husband. Though she exists first as the faceless narrator of letters to her husband, once she arrives in America, women overall get a bit more screen time and development. For example, Erzsébet talks to another woman about working; she also speaks to, and on the behalf of, her nonverbal niece Zsófia. That said, Erzsébet remains narratively tethered to her husband, keeping this category grade at middling.
Race: 2.25/5
The Brutalist has an almost entirely white cast. There are no significant characters of color besides László’s friend Gordon, played by renowned Ivorian actor Isaach De Bankolé. Gordon is a single father and also a post-war immigrant. His story arc follows a familiar narrative about Black veterans trying to survive in America as he experiences difficulty in finding work, homelessness, and substance abuse—a narrative that’s explored in far more depth in works like Dead Presidents (1995). Gordon’s son, William (Charlie Esoko as a boy; Zephan Hanson Amissah as a teen), makes a few brief appearances along the timeline and then disappears.
Gordon and William exist solely as virtue signaling. László proves he isn’t racist to the viewer by talking to Gordon while they stand on line at a soup kitchen, kindly letting him cut in front to try and feed his young son. We don’t see Gordon again until László becomes unhoused, at which point we do learn a little more about his circumstances, but again—it’s only to highlight László’s current plight, not to increase Gordon’s importance to the plot. In short, if it doesn’t reveal something about László, we don’t see or hear about it.
Insignificance aside, perhaps the biggest problem with how The Brutalist portrays Black characters is how they’re shown in negative contexts. For the majority of the movie, white characters only refer to Black people with slurs. They also only appear during scenes involving drugs, alcohol, housing insecurity, or as subordinate workers. De Bankolé makes the most of very little, but it’s not enough to uplift a script that only depicts Blackness through stereotypes.
Bonus for Religion: +0.75
Neither Corbet nor Fastvold identify as Jewish, but main characters like László and Erzsébet are Jewish. Judaism also plays a crucial part to the story, with overt discussions of faith and assimilation taking place. A prominent example involves Attila, László’s cousin, who proudly explains his decision to anglicize his last name from “Molnár” to “Miller,” and to convert to Catholicism (like his wife) in order to give his business a better community connection. It’s a common enough story device to contrast immigrants who have chosen to assimilate (such as Attila) against those who cling more strongly to their heritage (László, Erzsébet, and Zsófia), but it remains an interesting dynamic to watch unfold. In addition, Jewish characters are well-rounded. László isn’t defined by his religion; he’s also quietly confident, kind-hearted, and occasionally reckless.
Bonus for Disability: +0.50
When Zsófia first appears in the film, she’s presented as nonverbal, with Erzsébet largely speaking for her. We later find out that Zsófia had taken a vow of silence after enduring the Holocaust at Dachau concentration camp, and years later, she readily converses without issue. While this “magical cure” could’ve felt gimmicky, her character’s backstory makes the selective mutism feel rational, rather than prop-like.
Similarly, Erzsébet uses a wheelchair due to osteoporosis and chronic pain derived from famine. The film handles her disability with sincerity, showing treatments and other assistive devices as her health improves. Though Erzsébet does eventually walk, there's no sudden or “inspirational” framing around this ability. That said, the film does employ the distasteful trope of taking away her assistive device in order to create drama during a key scene.
Overall, The Brutalist’s depiction of disability—including its subplot about heroin addiction—makes sense both within the story, as well as how they’re portrayed by the actors.
Deduction for LGBTQ: -0.50
Harrison and László harbor a love-hate fascination with each other that can read as sexual tension, particularly when Harrison confesses kinship with the architect during one-on-one conversations and heaps praise upon László in group settings. But there are no outwardly queer characters in the film, and the only same-sex incident is an act of violence that has more to do with power than sexuality.
Mediaversity Grade: C+ 3.42/5
While The Brutalist is immersive from start to finish, the pacing stumbles after the intermission when Corbet abandons much of his tension-building character explorations. The script also relies on too many tropes, with writers coming across as unable, or unwilling, to do more than skim over a few of its more controversial themes. But shortcomings aside, this transfixing ensemble, led by Brody, absolutely delivers.
Like The Brutalist? Try these other titles set against the backdrop of forced relocations.
The Zone of Interest (2023)
The Bones of Crows (2022)
The Terror: Infamy