The Brutalist | God is in the Details

I once spoke to an old friend over a fire, over the invisible line between architecture and artistry. She spoke of her South-Asian travels in which sacred grounds were decorated with monuments, with pathways and steps built to make the next traveller’s journey that much easier. We could only speculate on the history of such artefacts and the length of their duration as time progressed, and so two significant questions emerged - is the role of an architect to create beauty, or to create purpose? And, what significance can our lives and legacy have in the grander scope of the world and its history?

If The Brutalist had not been filmed but was rather written, it would perhaps be referred to as the great American novel. Uncle Sam and the concept of immigration has almost certainly been the Jack and Jill of the United States since the establishment of the nation in 1776. After all George Washington’s great-grandfather was a Hertfordshire Hedgehog, who died in the colony of Virginia a mere 101 years before the Declaration of Independence was ratified. The 1868 14th Amendment of the Constitution enforces that “all persons born or naturalised in the United States… are citizens of the United States” and though this clause has come under heavy scrutiny and sharp debate in recent months, its existence and powers prevail to enshrine the United States of America as the land of opportunity. To Laszlo Toth, the sight of the Statue of Liberty provides an overwhelming sense of pride and relief. Brady Corbet’s filmmaking in this opening sequence captures the eye-watering emotion in a bottle, with the orchestral tubas of the soundtrack paired with a life that has quite literally been turned upside down. One is reminded of a similar sequence, though swapping Corbet’s visual flair for the more passive sensibilities of Coppola, towards the beginning of The Godfather II, in which a young Vito Corleone encounters the same statue having escaped his Sicilian past. Though half a century separates the two films, it is abundantly clear that depictions and deliberations of immigration are still firmly lodged within the consciousness of the Western world and its fading hegemony. In our current political climate, The Brutalist stands taller than a Toth design as a milestone of a changed nation, and yet also a delineation of just how we got here.

A film of two halves; critics and spectators alike have pitted The Enigma of Arrival and The Hard Core of Beauty against each other, when really any disappointment towards the end of The Brutalist is a matter of unmet expectation, and perhaps an inability to comprehend the aforementioned titles of either chapter. The former consists of glamorous idealism; the United States as a vessel to capitalist glory, in an era basking in post-war optimism and new-deal futurism. A country that is keen to overlook differences in language and ethnicity, and prioritise meritocracy whilst embracing those brave and bold. Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren is crucially introduced in a moment of rage and fury, berating an African-American (in which Van Buren’s words are far harsher and more dated) picking up glass on his lawn and chastising Toth and his cousin for their intrusion into his home and the ‘destruction’ of his library. Later in the narrative Van Buren simmers and, having fixed a financial dispute and applauded Toth for his work, Pearce’s Kane-like figure is redeemed, though his short fuse is never forgotten. Hence, moving through the acts and past the intermission, Van Buren’s philanthropy and interest in Toth’s pioneering vision is at first genuine and hospitable - enlisting his lawyer to expedite a family reunion, and employing the architect outright - but eventually exists as a ruthless mask that’s torn between establishing a legacy or withholding whilst expanding power, and maintaining a secret. In his autobiography, Malcolm X wrote “the white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way: the liberal is more deceitful… {and} more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power, but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the friend and benefactor”. Whilst the quote itself pertains to race and the divisions between black and white Americans, it also holds a degree of relevance in regard to the dichotomy between Toth and Van Buren - rather than an authentic endorsement of the Hungarian’s skills, the multi-millionaire instead seeks to manipulate. The Brutalist’s second divisive act is a work of genius, in that it illustrates and takes the physical and psychological toll that a working-class migrant artist endures to its exploitative extreme.

The debate within the United States as to immigration is a complicated topic for the founding of the nation and would not be possible without the mass migration and colonisation that came with the empires of Europe traversing the Atlantic Ocean but further, defining the original American culture itself poses a problem. One could point to Elvis, but what impact or legacy would ‘The King’ have without the influence of the black musicians who in turn were inspired by their West African ancestors and their tribal percussion instruments? Another argument could be French fries but well, you get the gist. Though it’s not in the name, as that style of chip came from Belgium. The late President Carter’s assertion that, ‘we have become not a melting pot but rather a beautiful mosaic’ holds firm, but asks another question of the modern day migrant. If the aim in migrating to the United States is to assimilate into the culture, then how can one integrate when cultural barriers are so difficult to define in the first place? Another tile in the mosaic becomes insignificant should one step back, and the intricacies and beauty of a specific and now integrated culture risks being lost. In The Brutalist, the question of whether Laszlo Toth can truly assimilate bookends the narrative. His cousin Attila changes his surname and invents children to give his business a fabricated all-American family-run authenticity, which in turn sacrifices his own cultural background. Later in the film as Toth’s artistic vision is questioned and as his stubbornness leads to scrutiny, the younger Lee Van Buren suggests that the architect is merely ‘tolerated’ as the walls within Toth’s Pennsylvanian sanctum begin to collapse. But is this due to a cultural or religious defiance? I think not. After all, in the blueprints for Van Buren’s ambitious institute, it is the cross of Christ that is erected and which harnesses the sun in creating a Christian shadow that Toth must operate within. Soon after, he ceases attending the Synagogue service. Although Laszlo Toth never quite loses his accent, I would argue that he does in fact assimilate to American culture, or perhaps in the customs and philosophy of the demeaning Harrison Lee Van Buren.

Despite its period setting, Corbet concentrates on two central themes that fluctuate throughout his film and tie it to modern existence - the aforementioned debate of immigration, and the fine line between Jewish diaspora and assimilation. With brevity being the soul of wit, it is rather opportune that both go hand in hand. The Hebrew word for exile is ‘Galut’ and such expresses the Jewish conception of the condition and feelings of a nation uprooted from its homeland and subjected to alien rule. Subsequently, those who live in such exile are referred to as ‘Golah’, a community that Toth and his family are certainly a part of. With each word dating back to 733 BCE, the state of diaspora and question of assimilation has lasted thousands of years and with the post-Holocaust environment encouraging and achieving a resolution, the debate has shifted but is still nonetheless prevalent - particularly reignited following the events of October 7th 2023. The state of Israel and the philosophy of Zionism exists in order to provide the scattered global Jewish population a place to call home, that traces back through ancestry and delineates Abraham’s Promised Land. It exists in order to ensure that Jews worldwide must not be forced to assimilate, shred their identities in order to fit a mosaic or fear their displacement once more. However, the noise surrounding the promised region today depicts not a utopia, but a war-zone and rather a nation that welcomes those exiled and shunned instead defines, as per the definition in this very article, the native Palestinian people as ‘Galut’. To Palestinians, this is instead known as “Nakba’, or in English, ‘the catastrophe’. No matter their assertion of a right to self-defence, the actions of Israeli governance indicate an assimilation with the ethics of exploitation and imperialism. Lee Van Buren’s own pursuit of the American dream where legacy is the antithesis of defeat, and which disregards the well-being of those around him, be it his architect or even his own son, is reflected in the aftermath of American geo-political hegemony that Lady Liberty is slowly but surely losing grip of. There is a reason after all, why the United States and Israel vote almost identically at the United Nations. 

The epilogue of The Brutalist is set in Venice in 1980, and works to replace the horror and adversity of The Hard Core of Beauty. Now wheel-chair bound, Toth’s niece Szofia speaks for him. She, after all, is the first image we see as The Brutalist begins, being hounded by Hungarian border guards who ask ‘What is your true home? Help us to help you get home”, and is now Corbet’s conclusion. The final, defining line is uttered by her - 

‘Uncle, you and Aunt Erzsébet once spoke for me, I speak for you now, and I am honoured. “Don’t let anyone fool you, Zsófia,” he would say to me as a struggling young mother during our first years in Jerusalem, “no matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.”’

The Brutalist’s three and a half hour narrative throws it’s central characters from the horrors of Nazism and the systematic genocide of the Holocaust into the destruction of heroin addiction and the American abuses of capitalist exploitation and suggests that with Zionism, the victims of such may just be capable of perpetuating the same against someone else. In his article ‘About the Destination: The Brutalist & Israel’, Noah Kulwin writes "No Palestinian, of the hundreds of thousands displaced in 1948, has since been allowed home. It is not difficult to imagine that someone… has since been killed by the ongoing Israeli slaughter of the largest remaining concentration of Palestinians in the world. Perhaps in their memories of their homes, they remember when Zionist settlers built some of those Bauhaus structures’. 

To commemorate my 21st birthday, I took a trip to Dublin. My family’s heritage on my father’s side originates from Eire so I guess in some sense, it is a quarter of the homeland. Close to my accommodation, wedged between Dame Street and the River Liffey, was a building that almost reached the clouds. It was different in its stark design and grey colour when compared with the authentic pubs and vibrant shops alongside and adjacent to it, with the massive blocks of concrete, long beams of steel and abundance of exterior glass setting the unique building apart. I’m not sure exactly what happens in said building; whether it was a place of work, leisure or worship, or whether it was all at once. To those who existed and operated inside of it, the building was a place of purpose. For me, a stranger in a supposed homeland, it was only a work of beauty, and a sight of Brutalism. 

Written By Harry J. Wormald | IG: @harryjwormald