On The Brutalist

Lazlo Toth is perhaps the antihero of our times. The one we deserve but not the one we need.

What is the quality that we, the viewers, are meant to admire in Lazlo? Is it his perseverance? He never tries to find his own architectural work — to the contrary it seems he loses every opportunity he gets to receive it. Is it his devotion? He leaves his wife at home, philandering without hesitation. Is it his kindness to others? One of the great “A-ha” moments of the film comes when Laszlo puts down a practically minded American architect simply doing his job, calling him, “ugly, stupid, and cruel”. Is it bonds of friendship? Laszlo abandons his one friend Gordon in a moment of anger.

A character’s inner conflict is key to a compelling story, and a character’s negative traits are what drives his inner conflict. But what are Laszlo’s positive traits? An inexplicable genius for modern architecture drives Laszlo and in turn the plot of the film. But Laszlo never makes a hard choice between his pursuit of beauty and his human commitments. Or rather, he makes the wrong choice at every turn, abandoning both his human commitments, and his architectural ones in pursuit of his narrow pride.

You might respond that the point of the movie is precisely the conflict between Laszlo’s pursuit of “Hard core beauty” and these human values. But what good is hard core beauty if it’s not at all in accordance with “human values”? Wasn’t this the exact legacy of modernism and brutalism? Do we want brutalism or harmony? Le Corbusier’s imposing industrial ideology or ? Trellick Towers and Unite d’Habitacion or Mont-Saint-Michel and St Michael’s Mount? Are not these all mixed-used, centrally planned, urbanist developments? The only difference being that the latter were built in devotion to God and the former in spite of Him.

And that’s the problem with the Brutalist. It is “grappling” with the “complex” legacy of modernism, brutalism as a form, but what more is there to grapple with? Is the jury still out on the impact of these forms? Has not the human soul been sufficiently repressed from 75 years of high-modernist thought that we need another 3.5 hour soliloquy in 70mm to drive the final nail into the cross? Does this film intelligently contribute to the synthesis of the dialectic between brutalism and humanism?

This film and its filmmakers have no obligation to “say” or do any particular thing, and in so far as it is a film that intend to wrestle with these “challenging issues”, it is fine. But here is where my optimism betrays itself, and where I ask — is a more forward-looking film not possible?

Where are the the films about heroes? About men who struggle, and ultimately succeed, in accomplishing a noble ideal. Not a struggle of resentment, pretention, faux-humility, and sanctimony, but one of sacrifice, joy, adventure, and love. Not a character whose own addiction leads to his wife’s overdose, who rages against those who offer them him their charity, who prematurely resigns himself to failure after force majeure, and who embodies, at all times, a deeply misanthropic vision of beauty divorced from humanity, but one whose ambition, courage, and spirit of friendship creates previously unknown expressions of humanity.

Perhaps this is not a film of our age and I am remiss and even delusional to want such a film. But such heroes can exist in storytelling and, I believe, in reality.

As I recently watched Lawrence of Arabia, I can’t help but compare these two films. Both are beautifully shot epic narratives (with epic runtimes) of a man in a foreign land and his quest in pursuit of his apparently noble goal. Lawrence is a leader of men: his persistent courage leads him to the face of death time and again where he earns the trust and respect of a foreign people in order to overcome their narcissism of small differences and unite a tribe. He does so with verve, vigor, and lust for life. His motives are mysterious, but undeniably rooted in humanity. Laszlo is not in charge of even his own temperments. He divides people and distances himself for his lack of adaptability. He is stubborn in his pursuit of what he perceives to be beauty - full of faux-humility in failing to acknowledge his Bauhaus background but devoid of the real humility to listen to those around him, assured that his brilliance is unmatched.

In the end, Laszlo’s crowning architectural achievement is designing the absence of a cross in a ceiling. Could not the stained glass masters of Saint Chapelle or Chartres have thought of such an ingenious architectural device? If only they had realized that two cuts in italian marble could hold all the symbolic power of their volumes of stained glass, would they not have forgone their wasted energies and built such a simple cross?

The only positive valence in which Laszlo can be viewed is in relation to the cartoonish villainy of the robber baron Van Buren family. I doubt Upton Sinclair wrote more comical industry titan villains. Harry, the son, is a walking embodiment of every punchable, “wait till my father hears about this” spoiled brat known western media. Harrison, the father, is portrayed as capricious, miserly, and lacking for any semblance of intellectual depth as his deepest utterance is — “I find our conversations stimulating”. Ultimately his faults culminate in an inexplicable and gratuitious rape that serves as the (anti)-spiritual climax of the movie. Precisely why is Harrison so embittered at Laszlo after legally supporting his family to immigrate to the United States and giving Laszlo “generous” pay, housing, and food. Is it all because of a “train crash”? Why is this animosity still present 8 years later'?

It is only this bizarre synthesis of refugee point and industrialist counterpoint in Laszlo and the Van Burens that earns pity for Lasazlo at all. It is the powers that be, acting against him, not at all his character or his courage, that servees to earn the audience’s sympathy but not their admiration. But as the Van Buren’s are written so inexplicable and yet banal in their evil, even this pity for Lazlo is hardly created, so much as a confusion for such clumsy writing in an otherwise coherent film.

And this leads me to my final consideration. Brady Corbet, I’m sure, is a more considered artist than I, certainly with a bigger budget than I. With this in mind: was he not consciously aware of every word I would write, and was this film, The Brutalist, not a stronger case for heroism than any Lawrence of Arabia, in its perverse examination of the antithesis of the hero? Far from ignoring the legacy of Brutalism was it not a scathing and Straussian metaphorical critique of brutalism, modernism, and it’s proponents? Are the first and last shots of the films – the inversion of lady liberty and the cross, respectively – not overt criticisms of America, but rather, deeply veiled critiques of such criticisms themselves? Perhaps they are both at the same time, but for lack of a more admirable protagonist, I am left wondering…