{"id":1719,"date":"2025-02-26T17:25:03","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T22:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2025-02-28T17:31:05","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T22:31:05","slug":"the-machine-of-the-american-dream-the-brutalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/2025\/02\/26\/the-machine-of-the-american-dream-the-brutalist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Machine Of The American Dream: The Brutalist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Cambridge Dictionary defines Brutalism as \u201ca building style in which buildings are large and heavy-looking, and often made from concrete<\/em>\u201d. From my semester-long class History of Architecture<\/em> that I took eons ago, I find this definition shallow and clunky. It misses the essence<\/em> of the movement. Brutalist architecture came around after the end of the second World War as an ethos to rebuilding Europe. After the war, the incredible amounts of aid dedicated to healing a devastated continent gave way to a heightened sense of optimism in democracy and the future. Schools such as the Bauhaus promoted a \u201creturn to function\u201d philosophy that promoted utilitarianism and permanence, where towering concrete symbolized power, resistance, functionality, and hope. Brutalism went out of favor not long after, with many seeing it as harsh, cold, and depressing. With the rapid industrialism of the world, permanence and functionality was discarded for designs that favored advancing technology. They designed buildings as if we had reached the utopia that brutalism looked to grasp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Directed by Brady Corbet, The Brutalist <\/em>follows L\u00e1szl\u00f3 T\u00f3th (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor hoping to bring his radical designs to the US and support his wife, Erzs\u00e9bet (Felicity Jones), back in Europe. He comes across a wealthy businessman, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who takes interest in T\u00f3th\u2019s work, as he hopes to be a part of creating something the next great thing. This movie spares no expense, and just as the movement this movie takes its name from, Corbet lays L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s disorienting experience as an immigrant bare. From the soundtrack to the cinematography, to the dialogue, to the acting, everything feels monumental and imposing to the point of inducing agoraphobia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movie itself is split into two parts, with a 15-minute intermission in between. The first part moves slowly, but presents an ambitious and hopeful face. When I saw the movie in theaters, a fellow moviegoer described it as \u201clush.\u201d I couldn\u2019t get the term out of my mind. It follows L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s rise from a homeless coal miner fresh off Ellis Island to a visionary architect commissioned to design a masterpiece. It\u2019s inspiring, opulent, and full of heart. Yet few understand the vision L\u00e1szl\u00f3 truly aims for. Many meet his designs with confusion and dismay, but L\u00e1szl\u00f3 remains true to his vision and refuses to compromise. In homage to his boldness, wealthy magnate Lee Van Buren comes in and commissions L\u00e1szl\u00f3 for a church\/gym\/library. Van Buren, a considerably wealthy man, only takes L\u00e1szl\u00f3 into consideration after L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s designs garner media attention and praise. Earlier in the movie, we watch as a prior commission from L\u00e1szl\u00f3 sends Van Buren into cataleptic rage. In The Brutalist<\/em>\u2019s cosmology, Van Buren\u2019s shallowness and envy embody all the hollow pomp of postwar America. Erzs\u00e9bet can see right through him as a superficial man who only cares about his image.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whereas the first part feels grand and hopeful, the second half comes in and tears you down. Here The Brutalist<\/em> introduces us to Erzs\u00e9bet and Zs\u00f3fia (Raffey Cassidy), L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s niece. Where Van Buren and his friends merely acted as L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s family, his real family returns and exposes the fa\u00e7ade that Van Buren and others have built around L\u00e1szl\u00f3. “We tolerate you,” one of Van Buren’s pampered children spits after L\u00e1szl\u00f3 dares to challenge him. Erzs\u00e9bet shows just as much talent as L\u00e1szl\u00f3, having studied at Oxford, and despite her condition, she provides the passion and love L\u00e1szl\u00f3 has missed. Despite her return, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 undergoes setback after setback and struggles to find solace in Erzs\u00e9bet.\u00a0 Everything the first part set up gets capsized and the ugliness of power and wealth come up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the incredible tone of the first half, and Felicity Jones\u2019s excellent performance, the second part struggles with pacing, its beats landing like hairpin turns on some melodramatic rollercoaster. Five years\u2019 time feels like a week in the movie\u2019s scale. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 gets fired and returns in what seems like a couple days.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After L\u00e1szl\u00f3’s firing, the movie sets to work methodically tearing down every last shred of optimism built in the first half. It hits you with event after event that leaves you feeling devastated and isolated in the cold world that The Brutalist <\/em>depicts. It\u2019s beautiful, haunting, and devastating, and the second part\u2019s ending leaves you astonished when everything culminates with Erzs\u00e9bet fighting for her family. I did find the shift of tone in the movie’s epilogue a little cheap. The reverse from the incredible drama of the second part into a cheap travelogue, replete with tinny 80\u2019s techno-pop, felt jarring. But I appreciated the opportunity it provided to reflect on the movie. It carries an ambiguous tone that leaves you reminiscing on L\u00e1szl\u00f3, the work he leaves behind, and the journey that went along with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like the brutalist monuments of our past, The Brutalist<\/em> stands triumphantly amongst its peers. It will be remembered as an American epic, in the vein of There Will Be Blood<\/em> and Upton Sinclair\u2019s novel, The Jungle<\/em>. It overcomes its issues with pacing through its engaging story and overwhelming narrative, and yet subverts all that we thought we knew with its ambiguous epilogue. The Brutalist<\/em> resonates with haunting imagery. Backed by a menacing score and aided by powerful acting, it all culminates in a marvelous movie that depicts a foreign talent getting chewed up and spat out by the machine of the American dream. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cambridge Dictionary defines Brutalism as \u201ca building style in which buildings are large and heavy-looking, and often made from concrete\u201d. From my semester-long class History of Architecture that I took eons ago, I find this definition shallow and clunky. It misses the essence of the movement. Brutalist architecture came around after the end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":1720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[35,27,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1721,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions\/1721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}