The Brutalist

On February 28, 9 TIC members & guests visited the movie The Brutalist in Cinecitta. The movie tells the story of an architect who belongs to the so called Brutalism style school (massive, intimidating, mostly raw concrete), that was popular during 3-4 decades after World War 2. (see an exemplary picture)

The Hungarian Jewish architect, Lásló Tóth, flees from Nazism to the USA (environment Philadelphia) without his wife, who follows him later. He has a difficult start in the US and it takes a while before he is discovered by a rich American business man, who gives him the assignment to restore his private library and to build a big community center/church in Connecticut. Lásló has many conflicts and obstacles because of his fugitive background in an environment with competitive architects, the bourgeois protestant community, his Jewish background, his addiction to heroin and his arrogant and unreliable patron/client. This patron even rapes him. The movie shows an artist who cannot handle social opposition very well and who is basically meek with moments of understandable frustration and temper. He fights for what he believes in with mixed success. When he is very old and in a wheelchair he finally gets recognition at the Venice Biennale for Architecture.

The movie is long, slow and comes close to the personal emotion and problems of Lásló. Therefore, the TIC group gives the movie quite mixed qualifications: depressing, too long/slow, intriguing and informative. We agreed that the movie was beautifully made especially taking into consideration the extremely low budget (10 million).

Interesting fact to add is that Adrien Brody, who portrayed the architect, Lásló Tóth, won the Oscar for best actor 1 week after we saw the film.