CONCRETE EMOTIONS: HOW ‘THE BRUTALIST’ REBUILDS CINEMA’S NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE
In the ever-evolving landscape of prestige streaming debuts, this weekend marks a watershed moment for cinephiles and fashion-forward viewers alike. Brady Corbet’s visually sumptuous, Oscar-decorated epic “The Brutalist” makes its highly anticipated streaming premiere on Max—a moment that merits rearranging one’s weekend social calendar with immediate effect.
The post-World War II saga, which captivated Venice Film Festival audiences last September before its December theatrical unveiling, arrives Friday at the bewitching hour of 3 a.m. ET, bearing its considerable critical weight and trio of Academy gold statuettes. For those preferring appointment viewing, HBO will showcase the visual feast Saturday evening at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Adrien Brody—whose performance secured him a second career Oscar in a role that demanded nothing less than transcendence—embodies László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect whose immigration journey unfolds across decades of American promise and peril. The narrative’s exquisite tapestry interweaves his professional ascension with the intimate complexities of rebuilding a marriage to his wife Erzsébet after wartime separations inflicted by Europe’s violently shifting landscapes.
Guy Pearce delivers a performance of calculated precision as industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren, creating a magnetic tension with Brody’s Tóth that drives the film’s emotional architecture. Their fictional relationship, crafted from Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s imagination rather than historical record, explores the savage beauty of artistic patronage and its inevitable corruptions.
While “Anora” claimed the ultimate prize at March’s 97th Academy Awards ceremony, “The Brutalist” did not depart empty-handed. Beyond Brody’s career-defining performance, the film’s haunting original score and breathtaking cinematography rightfully earned recognition, cementing its place in the cinematic pantheon of 2024.
Critics have genuflected before Corbet’s ambitious vision, with USA TODAY’s Brian Truitt bestowing a perfect four-star rating, describing it as “a toxic tale of the immigrant experience and a gripping narrative of love and hope tested through vice and struggle.” The film’s visual grammar speaks volumes about displacement, the immigrant gaze, and modernism’s sharp-edged promises—themes that resonate with alarming currency in today’s discourse.
What distinguishes “The Brutalist” from mere period drama is its unflinching examination of antisemitism, exploitation, and the immigrant struggle for authentic expression in an often hostile landscape. The architectural metaphor extends beyond Tóth’s professional endeavors, becoming instead a meditation on what we build and what builds us—the invisible structures of prejudice, resilience, and ultimately, reinvention.
While not based on specific historical figures, the film’s three-hour-plus runtime creates a universe so meticulously realized that the boundary between historical fiction and emotional truth becomes gloriously blurred. Corbet’s directorial vision, following his work on “Melancholia” and “Vox Lux,” continues to establish him as cinema’s most fascinating architectural auteur, constructing emotional edifices as complex as any physical structure.
For those who have patiently awaited this streaming moment—perhaps unwilling to commit to theatrical pricing—the wait has unquestionably been worthwhile. “The Brutalist” demands to be experienced in one uninterrupted viewing, preferably on the largest screen available, with attention paid to every shadow, every texture, every whispered revelation.
This is cinema that refuses disposability—a brutalist structure in its own right, imposing and uncompromising, yet impossible to look away from.
