Overwhelming in production and in plot twists, beautiful in its cinematography, engrossing in its subject matter and performances, The Brutalist lingers in the theater-goer’s mind.
The film is garnering a new round of attention due to its three Oscars—for best actor (Adrien Brody), outstanding musical score (Daniel Blumberg), and exceptional cinematography (Lol Crawley), all richly deserved. Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold were rightly nominated for the screenplay, and Corbet for directing, and Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones for supporting roles.
Given this memorable if cynical film’s powerful effect upon critics and the culture, its messaging demands analysis, particularly by those interested in the depiction of religion in general and of Jews and Judaism in particular.
Woven throughout its fabric is every conceivable trope that might be expected formula for a socially aware epic film — capitalist exploitation, mistreatment of immigrants, racism, dismissal of the disabled, rape, drug-pushing, misogyny, anti-Semitism, “Christian Nationalism,” the Holocaust.
Hungarian-Jewish architect, Laszlo Toth (Brody), a Holocaust survivor, is exploited and rejected by family members, violated by his unlikely WASPish patron, the pretentious Harrison Van Buren (Pearce) after being cheated by the man’s son (Joe Alwyn). He is uplifted by news of the survival of his wife Erzsebet (Jones) and niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy), but challenged by his Oxford-educated wife’s wounds, abilities and stances. While initially repulsed by Toth’s home library commissioned as a surprise by his children, Van Buren learns of Toth’s fame in Europe from a Look magazine piece touting that library and hires him to design a community center in memory of his mother.
Though leading characters are Holocaust survivors, The Brutalist bypasses possible Holocaust allusions. A significant scene features a train running and then caught in an explosion. Anyone who knows Holocaust history understands the key role of cattle cars in transporting victims to the crematoria and the repeated hopes of survivors that the Allies would bomb the railroad tracks. For these reasons, architect Stanley Tigerman incorporated train tracks and a car into the design of the Illinois Holocaust Museum. I wondered at first whether this scene was a wishful flashback to the hope that the Allies would bomb the train tracks. But in this film the train as symbol of Holocaust misery seems to give way to a suggestion of deaths caused by the obsession of a Holocaust survivor to enlist particular materials as a response to his sufferings.
The film insists that its protagonist possesses the genius to utilize Brutalist architecture to build a meaningful response to his suffering. But hardly a word is said about that school of architecture. The Van Buren home library design is beautiful but so is the old mansion in which it is built. Does the shattering of a Tiffany dome suggest that whatever beauty is in Brutalist architecture can be destructive of what came before? We gradually learn that Laszlo’s goal is to repurpose the exact dimensions of concentration camp buildings for positive, constructive and good uses.
Such retrofitting of building dimensions does have roots in Jewish tradition. (Did the writers know?) The ideal was for Moses’s portable Tabernacle to fold permanently into Solomon’s Temple. American-born synagogue architect, professor and city planner, Percival Goodman (1904-1985) patterned Temple Hesed in Scranton, PA after regional coal breakers in order to symbolize the hope for better lives for workers.
Yet Lazlo’s rising structure comes across as a hazardous albatross.
As regards Jewish community, identity and spirituality, The Brutalist shows little interest. There is not one reference in it to Jewish organizations that helped thousands and thousands of immigrants. Laszlo finds no Jewish community except for a cousin who ejects him. Any semblance of Jewish fellowship is omitted or erased, except the Jewish lawyer in Van Buren’s employ who offers to fight red tape to free Laszlo’s wife and niece, and that lawyer’s kind wife, a convert to Judaism.
The plot forces Laszlo to wait in church soup kitchen lines, where he befriends a Black widower and his son, who become his only friends and family (and even co-workers) for a while. But they seem to be present to highlight Van Buren’s racism and Laszlo’s erratic fits. We learn about Van Buren’s family background, including his cruel revenge on his grandparents for rejecting him and his mother. But nothing is said of Laszlo’s parents or of his home Jewish community.
True, Laszlo does attend synagogue on Yom Kippur where he chants the Ashamnu (“We have sinned”) prayers with a cramped congregation. Yes, this comes across as an effort to hold on to Jewish religious identity. But the more powerful scene is that in which Erzsebet tells Laszlo that she is aware of his sins because she knows what he has done through her own visionary powers, sharpened by her suffering. What brings him to tears is not prayer in the synagogue, not that God knows, but that she knows and declares that she will continue to love and support him.
The screenplay makes a point of emphasizing that Erzsebet converted to Judaism. Is she depicted as having brought New Age-like powers that somehow usurp Judaism? Or is this meant to intimate that Erzsebet will rise to prophecy within the context of Judaism, when she declares that she has encountered God in life and death (referring, it seems, to the Holocaust) and, especially, in a near-death experience during an overdose? Clearly, she is depicted as more spiritual than anything the synagogue can offer when she tells Laszlo that she met God Who allowed her to speak His name. Are there competing leap-frog-ing spiritualities presented here.
At one point Erzsebet does rise, almost miraculously, to speak terrible truth to power. But is she being “prophetic” or simply frustrated when she declares privately to Laszlo, regarding the United States of America: “This whole country is rotten”?
The film holds up no hope of redemption in architectural Brutalism, or even in religion. Laszlo is caught off guard, and even feels excluded by Van Buren’s vision of a Christian chapel adorning the community center’s auditorium, library and gym. Still, as a driven architect who wants the building to be completed in any form, at any cost, he incorporates the chapel and makes it the jewel of his vision of high ceilings capturing light from above, even, or especially, in small rooms. It is almost as if some rooms, including the chapel itself, need to be prison-like, constricting, excluding, in order to beckon the light. Do the filmmakers combat a conjured up “Christian nationalism” by suggesting that an imposed chapel can only provide light when lumped together with other constricting spaces that require a cleansing, universal, and perhaps healing light?
We learn that Laszlo will, in the course of his career, design at least one church and one synagogue, both architecturally acclaimed. Are these buildings intended to be his response to Van Buren’s statements to him that Jews are “societal leeches,” and to Harrison Van Buren’s blaming of the victims for their persecution: “It’s a shame to see what your people do to yourselves”? Van Buren’s abuse begins with throwing pennies at Laszlo and with hiring another architect to nickel-and-dime the project to the point that Laszlo offers to forfeit much of his salary in order to keep the original dimensions.
Corbet and Fastvold do rail against Harrison’s anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-Italian, and misogynistic comments — and those of his son, who ominously declares, “Laszlo, we tolerate you,” and is even more ominous when alone with Laszlo’s niece, who is mute due to Holocaust trauma. The writers (unintentionally?) bring up conflicting canards of anti-Semitism--namely, that Jews are lecherous and that they impose unattainable moral standards. Harrison becomes most abusive of Laszlo (who is no angel and who is thrust into sexual situations by the writers) after the latter shows restraint and marital fidelity during a design-related trip in Italy.
But Van Buren’s abuse of Laszlo goes beyond anti-Semitism. Neither architecture, nor anti-Semitism, nor Judaism, nor Jewish identity is central to the film’s message.
The plot pits artist Toth against financier Van Buren and does come across as denunciation of capitalist oppression. But the back stories of both characters suggest non-ideological “human nature” messaging, for all the film’s cinematic bells and whistles (and lighting) and tropes: Bullies will dominate, especially when it comes to the haves and the have-nots. A victimized individual can fall victim again to evil even when his country and circumstances change. Hurt people hurt people, but they can be distracted by artistic creativity (as creator or benefactor), family, and work, though the cycle of abuse and of being abused affects all domains. People will act out when they are oppressed — or oppressing. Indeed, the filmmakers suggest a cycle of abuse both within the privileged family and in their outward dealings.
Is such messaging adequate when the protagonists are Holocaust survivors? And can the evils with which this broad-screened movie deals be treated without attention to the bigger picture of global evils and global pockets of good?
To its credit, the film does not deny the uniqueness of Jew-hatred and presents Zionism and the State of Israel as understandable and even necessary alternatives to life in hostile or ambivalent environments.
Granted, life in America can be difficult, even hell, for immigrants, who can be subject to exploitation and to the whims of the wealthy.
But how does the film’s unrelenting disparagement of the American dream help with its stand against evils and evil? There have been enough good people of all races and ethnicities and religions (including orthodox and evangelical religionists) who have done well and who have generously and graciously endowed the arts and medicine and every worthy endeavor, both in America and far beyond. Where would the world be without the United States and its power? One thinks of Bill Clinton’s memorable observation: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel is the Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Rodfei Zedek in Chicago. He has been film and television reviewer of the "National Jewish Post and Opinion" since 1979. His books include What Jews Know About Salvation and Over the Top Judaism: Precedents and Trends in the Depiction of Jewish Beliefs and Observances in Film and Television.
