12/14
It is mentioned in the film “Close-up: why do we need the Venice Film Festival?” (2024)
Synopsis
When in 1947 visionary architect Laszlo Toth and his wife Erzebet flee post-war Europe to restore their heritage and witness the birth of modern America, their lives change forever because of a mysterious and wealthy client. IMDb editor Arno Kazarian offers a brief overview of the 12 films he screened at the 2024 New York Film Festival, including Honor and the dangerously erotic Misericordia. Laszlo Toth was also the name of the man who desecrated the statue of Michelangelo “Pieta” with a hammer.
“Brutalist” is full of surprises
The characters are not what you expect – not in the Scooby-Doo ending, but in the more subtle, gradual ways that real people are revealed – they are revealed over time, in a new context or under the pressure of circumstances. The circumstances here are horrors after the Second World War. Adrian Brody’s Laszlo, a Jewish architect who escaped the clutches of bloody Europe, falls into America’s welcoming arms—or collides with them—in a frantic opening sequence that evokes associations with being literally born by the Statue of Liberty.
What is the lesson?
His journey becomes a journey of constantly overcoming various horrors of life: existential, professional, family, intimate – never taking his eyes off the prize of great achievement and never assessing the value of this prize from the very beginning. Is it a shameful discovery that his success was born not in spite of his trauma, but thanks to it? Do we owe violence?
Or should we build resentment in their shadow?
By the forces of culture, country, power and those who own it, creating our cruel heritage? Are our lives gasoline that burns on the way to some more meaningful place? The film is charming, cool and not boring (did you hear that it’s long?).
But there is no novel
It feels like it’s based on an old novel — a mysterious tome that I’d be happy to get my hands on for some of the details the film refuses to share. The search for meaning in this aging person becomes ours. And any greater understanding of Laszlo’s arrival, the machinations of his family, his country, and his lack of roots, for better or for worse, seems to depend on us.
