The 2024 New York International Film Festival programmed “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbet’s critically-lauded three-and-a-half hour Jewish immigrant historical epic, for three 70mm screenings in a row on Oct. 12 — two showings during Yom Kippur, one immediately after. When these all sold out, an additional screening was added on Oct. 11, right before Kol Nidrei. The festival programmers knew exactly what they were doing. For those Jews who spend more time in the cinema than the synagogue, “The Brutalist” arguably counts as a Yom Kippur service.
One scene takes place on Yom Kippur, cross-cutting between the architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) attending services and a train accident that will derail his construction project. The recitation of the Vidui, the portion of the service confessing the community’s sins, blends together with the ominous jazz of Daniel Blumberg’s score. Like Toth’s big commission — a hybrid community center/library/gymnasium/church — “The Brutalist” is many things, but what interests me most is that it is, in essence, a Vidui for America.
“We are guilty, We have betrayed, We have stolen, We have spoken incorrectly, We have committed immoralities, and We have done bad things.” – Vidui, translation by Naomi Scorcher-Lerner
In its exploration of the American Dream in the 1950s and the way it maintains interest over its enormous runtime, “The Brutalist” is drawing many comparisons to “The Godfather” films — that Yom Kippur scene plays like a riff on “The Godfather”’s baptism scene. The retro stylings and anti-capitalist messaging makes for another common comparison point with “There Will Be Blood.” The way Adrien Brody’s performance has tricked some viewers into thinking his fictional artist was a real person evokes what Cate Blanchett pulled off in “Tár.”
One important difference between “The Brutalist” and the films it’s most often been compared to: László Tóth is not a villain protagonist like Michael Corleone, Daniel Plainview or Lydia Tár. He’s a troubled figure, but his greatest sins — in the first act, anyway — are primarily self-destructive ones. Even his uncompromising approach to his art, which evolves into a bigger problem for those working under him as his situation deteriorates, begins as an issue of making things harder for himself: He forgoes his own meager salary to make sure the community center is built to his exact specifications. Even his most objectively awful action in Act 2 is, from his perspective, an attempt to help his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) deal with her chronic pain. He’s not “the villain” of this story, so much as he is “his own villain.”
“We have been presumptuous, We have been violent, We have framed with lies, We have counseled badness, We have lied, We have scorned.”
“The Brutalist”’s big villains are László’s clients, the WASP industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) and his son Harry (Joe Alwyn). László’s work at his cousin’s furniture company — said cousin (Alessandro Nivola) has changed his name and converted to Catholicism, it’s worth noting — attracts Harry’s attention. Harry hires László to redesign his father’s study as a surprise birthday gift. Harrison does not react kindly to this — he later claims he hates “surprises,” but it’s telling that the “surprise” that spurs his anger is the sight of László’s Black friend and coworker Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé) on his property.
Harrison later decides he actually loves his new study and gives László his big community center commission. Harrison doesn’t think of himself as antisemitic — he has a Jewish lawyer! — and continually praises how “intellectually stimulating” his talks with László are, but the immigrant’s acceptance by his benefactor is conditional. “We tolerate you,” Harry spits with undisguised venom.
“We have rebelled, We have blasphemed, We have revolted, We have been immoral, We have transgressed, We have oppressed.”
Over the years, László and his family face increasingly worse abuse from the Lee Van Burens. After one particularly horrific sequence of events (to discuss in detail would require both a spoiler warning and a trigger warning), Erzsébet notes in voiceover that László has stopped going to shul. What does it say that surviving the Holocaust did not break his faith, but surviving American capitalism did?
László barely speaks about his time in Buchenwald. The subject is only discussed in depth in the film’s years-later epilogue… and there, it isn’t László speaking, but his niece Zsófia (Ariane Labed in the epilogue, Raffey Cassidy in the rest of the film). Zsófia’s explanations for how her uncle’s trauma influenced his art make sense, but are these his actual intentions or her interpretations? László in the epilogue is a severely disabled old man who can no longer speak; as he watches on, one wonders: Is she putting words in his mouth?
“We have been stiff-necked, We have been bad, We have corrupted, We have done the abhorrent, We have gone astray, We have caused others to stray.”
This is where we get into the aspect of the film I fully expect to attract the most annoying discourse on all sides: its handling of Israel. After László spends all of Act 1 working to get Erzsébet and Zsófia safe passage to America, Zsófia decides halfway through Act 2 to make aliyah to Israel. At first, László and Erzsébet have no interest in uprooting the life they have created in America, but later on, Erzsébet decides she also wants to make aliyah on the grounds that America is too “rotten.”
Already I’ve seen social media reactions calling the film “Zionist propaganda,” while others have argued the nuances of the epilogue are delivering a subtle anti-Zionist message. I’m honestly not sure what Brady Corbet thinks about Israel — if a Jewish filmmaker like Jonathan Glazer received so much hatred for criticizing the Israeli occupation last awards season, I can only imagine a gentile like Corbet would rather have his art speak for itself. The message I think is clearest in “The Brutalist,” whether read as pro- or anti-Zionist, is an explanation for why Zionism became so appealing to American Jews in the first place. America’s sins and Israel’s are forever intertwined.
