The Brutalist - the title says it all. Great film near you

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper

Michael Commane

At the outset let me emphatically state I am by a long shot no film critic.

Some weeks ago I went to see ‘Conclave’, the film about the election of a pope. It is based on Robert Harris’ book of the same name. I enjoyed both the film and the book. Indeed, I’d recommend both. 

Some time after the film’s release American bishop Robert Barron advised people not to go to the film. 

I’m still asking myself what the man was on about. But I imagine I’m being biased as many of his comments annoy me.

Last week I went with two friends to see The Brutalist. Before going I knew nothing about the film, not true, I knew it was a long film, over three hours, 15 minutes, indeed, so long, there was an intermission. It meant we left the cinema after 11pm and I was getting up the next day at 6am. I’m not a great night person and had had a busy day. 

I was not prepared for the film. Leaving the cinema I was asking myself why was it so long and I was also somewhat irritated. Was it that I did not fully understand the film? It’s now over a week since I saw it and I’m still thinking about it. 

As the days pass I’m seeing more angles and corners to it. The film is about young architect László Tóth, a survivor of Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar. He emigrates to the US, leaving his crippled wife and orphaned niece behind, and lands in Philadelphia, where he stays for a short time with a cousin. Later his wife and niece join him in America.

He hits on hard times until he meets up with super rich industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren, who commissions him to build a gigantic community centre in honour of his mother. 

The venture begins with great gusto and excitement, hope too. But it turns sour. The building is abandoned. We learn in the epilogue that the community centre was completed, albeit many years later.

We see László as a drug addict, down and out. The super rich Lee Van Buren, behind all his wealth and show is a nasty piece of work, whose extravagant wealth has done nothing for his soul, indeed, it may have been a powerful ingredient making him in to the nasty person he becomes. 

While László hits bottom, in the end he and his architecture win out. I see the film as a metaphor or allegory of our lives. Of course we need money to survive but our obsessive chasing after money and power, our craving to have the big house, the newest car, whatever it is, is like sand slipping through our fingers. 

Beauty, goodness, talent win out. Doing things well, may have their ups and downs but they always win out. We see the nasty and mean side of sex but we also see the all-empowering beauty of sex and love.

The American dream, is just that, a dream.

Brutalist architecture emphasises materials and was fashionable in the 1950s and ’60s

It might look harsh on the outside but may be beautiful inside. A story for our times?

Go see it.