Brutalist is full of surprises
Tale
When visionary architect László Toth and his wife Erzsébet flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their heritage and witness the birth of modern America, their lives are forever changed by a mysterious and wealthy client.. IMDb editor Arno Kazarian offers quick access to 12 films, which he screened at the 2024 New York Film Festival, including Anora and the dangerous, curiously erotic Misericordia. Laszlo Tóth was also the name of the man who defaced Michelangelo’s Pietà with a hammer.
Here is the situation of horror after the Second World War
The characters aren’t what you expect – not in the way that Scooby Doo has an ending, but in the more subtle, gradual ways that real people reveal themselves – unfolding over time, in a new context, or when forced by circumstance. Adrien Brody’s Laszlo, a Jewish architect who escaped the clutches of bloody Europe, makes his way into the arms of America. Or he is confronted with them – in a frenetic opening sequence that evokes the literal birth of the Statue of Liberty.
What follows from this?
His journey becomes one of constant traversal through a great variety of life’s horrors—existential, professional, interpersonal, intimate—never taking his eyes off the prize of great success and never evaluating the value of that prize at the outset. Is it a shameful realization that his success was born not in spite of the trauma, but because of it? Do we owe abuse?
Are our lives more meaningful than gasoline that burns and goes somewhere?
To the forces of culture, country, power and those who wield it in creating our brutal legacies? The movie is charming, looks cool, and isn’t boring (did you hear it’s long?). It appears to me to be based on an old mystery novel – a book I’d like to mine for some of the details the movie refuses to share.
But there is no novel
And any greater understanding of Lazlo’s arrival, the machinations of his family, his country, and his rootlessness, for better or for worse, is up to us to create.. See the full lineup for the 62nd New York Film Festival Fall.
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