Brady Corbet’s historical drama ‘The Brutalist,’ starring Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, stuns at the Venice Film Festival with its ambitious narrative and retro filmmaking style.
Bollywood Fever: The Venice Film Festival is abuzz with excitement over director Brady Corbet’s monumental historical drama The Brutalist, which stars Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce.
Although the film won’t officially premiere until Sunday night, it has already garnered significant attention following its initial press screenings, with many festival-goers speculating that it could be the frontrunner for this year’s Golden Lion.
The Brutalist is an epic in every sense, with a 3.5-hour runtime and a ten-minute intermission.
The film delves into the historical trauma and artistic vision that led to the emergence of mid-century American Brutalist architecture. It chronicles the journey of Hungarian-born Jewish architect László Tóth (played by Brody), who emigrates to the United States in 1947 in pursuit of the “American dream.”
Initially struggling in poverty, Tóth’s life takes a dramatic turn when he secures a contract with a mysterious and wealthy client, Harrison Lee Van Buren (played by Pearce), altering the course of the next 30 years of his life.
Felicity Jones co-stars as Tóth’s wife, Erzsébet, while Joe Alwyn portrays the mercurial son of the rich industrialist. Corbet co-wrote the film with his wife, Norwegian filmmaker and actress Mona Fastvold.
Despite its detailed historical setting, The Brutalist is a work of fiction. Corbet consulted with renowned French architect and historian Jean-Louis Cohen, who passed away in August 2023, during the film’s development.
Corbet explained that the film was dedicated to the many Bauhaus architects whose dreams were lost to the ravages of war.
“This movie, unfortunately, is a fantasy film. It’s a virtual history. This is the only way for me of accessing the past,” Corbet said, adding that the film honors artists who “didn’t get to realize their visions.”
An auteurist project at heart, The Brutalist took over seven years to bring to fruition, with numerous false starts and financial challenges along the way.
The film was shot on 70mm film stock using the mid-century VistaVision format, a retro approach that required the filmmakers to transport 26 reels of film weighing around 300 pounds to Italy for the world premiere.
Corbet drew inspiration from classic films, citing Hitchcock’s Rope and other VistaVision films as influences. “We did our best to try and evoke a bygone style of filmmaking,” Corbet explained.
Guy Pearce, who stars as the enigmatic Harrison Lee Van Buren, found the experience of filming with old-school equipment invigorating.
“For those of us who have spanned the era of working on film and now working in the digital realm, it’s really lovely to work with machines that you know are actually working and have a sort of a time limit… There’s an organic process that belongs there, and you feel like a part of that,” Pearce remarked.
Corbet became emotional during the press conference, reflecting on the challenges of bringing The Brutalist to life.
“This was an incredibly difficult film to make. I’m very emotional today because we’ve been working on it for seven years, and it felt urgent every day for the better part of a decade,” he said. He defended the film’s lengthy runtime, comparing it to the varying lengths of literary works: “It’s like criticizing a book for being 700 pages versus 100 pages… For me, it’s just about how much story there is to tell.”
He also highlighted the unique nature of The Brutalist, emphasizing that the story centers on “a character that flees fascism only to encounter capitalism,” a narrative he believes cannot be easily told within the Hollywood system.
The Brutalist marks Corbet’s return to the Venice Film Festival, where he previously made a strong impression with his debut film The Childhood of a Leader, which won the festival’s award for best debut film.
He followed it up with Vox Lux, starring Natalie Portman and Jude Law, which also premiered in Venice’s main competition.
Corbet concluded the press conference by expressing gratitude to the Venice Festival for supporting his films and offered special thanks to his wife and collaborator, Mona Fastvold, for her unwavering support throughout the film’s arduous development process.
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