From newcomer director Brady Corbet, The Brutalist is a three-and-a-half hour magnum opus centered around architecture. The monumental film earned ten Academy Award nominations for: Actor in a Leading Role, Actor in a Supporting Role, Actress in a Supporting Role, Cinematography, Directing, Film Editing, Music (Original Score), Production Design, Writing (Original Screenplay), and, the most anticipated award, Best Picture.¹ The film finds itself in good company among the nominees for Best Picture and was one of the most nominated films of the year, along with Wicked and exceeded only by Emilia Pérez. Despite critical acclaim and its architectural focus, I’ve been hard pressed to find any friends who have seen the film. With a whopping three-hour and thirty-five minute runtime and a built-in intermission, it’s understandable that many have not found themselves rushing to the theater since its December 20th release date. The film also competed with Nosferatu’s Christmas Day release (which, even I admittedly made time to see before watching The Brutalist in the new year). With that said, this discussion will contain significant spoilers for The Brutalist. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend you find some local arthouse cinema (I went to Alamo Drafthouse in Denver) and hunker down - Brady Corbet earned his three and a half hours. 

The Brutalist was filmed using VistaVision, a higher resolution film process developed by Paramount Pictures in the 1950’s that runs 35mm film horizontally through the camera, rather than vertically.² Cinematographer Lol Crawley explains that VistaVision originally helped lure audiences into the cinema as home televisions became more popular, drawing parallels to today where simultaneous theatrical and streaming releases for films have become more common (The Brutalist is rumored to be withheld from streaming services until February 25th, so go to a theater).³ This filming process creates uniquely cinematic vantage points and high resolution that’s tangible throughout the movie. Director Brady Corbet explained that VistaVision also lends itself to a film about architecture, since the unique film format can capture an entire building in one frame. 

The film follows fictional Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) as he immigrates to America post-WWII. The film is separated into two parts, with a prominent fifteen minute intermission. The intermission is built-in to the film and becomes part of the viewer’s experience, with an accompanying composition by Daniel Blumberg and pianist John Tilbury included in the original score. Part Two is punctuated by László being reunited with his wife and niece, who were separated from him in Budapest. This is the first time we actually see László’s wife in the film, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), who is revealed in a wedding photo. 

With the introduction of Erzsébet in the second half of the film, the role of women in The Brutalist is brought to the forefront. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t tell you if it passes the Bechdel Test in the entirety of the film’s runtime. For those who aren’t familiar, the Bechdel Test examines how women are portrayed in media and is based on three simple rules: 

1. The movie has to have at least two women in it,

2. who talk to each other,

3. about something other than a man

Unsurprisingly, many films do not meet these basic criteria. As a woman working in the field of architecture, I loved The Brutalist - I found it to be a nuanced examination of the persona of the artist/architect, power dynamics, and the notable influence of post-war immigration on American architecture and design. With this said, we should examine what might be considered as the persona of the architect, conjuring images of a (typically white) man with a sense of unwavering, artistic genius. Men like Frank Lloyd Wright or Le Corbusier become the ideal of the architect, and in this way The Brutalist perpetuates this outdated vision through László Tóth, while many women in the film lack characterization. 

In the first half of the film, women seem to be merely a presence (or a distraction). We get bureaucracy-laden letters from Erzsébet, the overbearing presence of Harrison Van Buren‘s late mother (who we never meet), and László’s cousin’s uptight, disapproving Protestant wife, a blonde woman with an American drawl that contrasts with László’s Hungarian accent. László’s cousin and his wife allow him to graciously stay in a windowless storage closet, and she offers that she has “a friend to fix his nose;” later, her insecure lie gets László kicked out of the storage closet. Eventually, we meet sister Van Buren, whose character turns out to be a flash in the pan, a spark that fizzles out as the film goes on and she loses her nerve. We are supposed to grow into her a bit towards the end of the film when she helps Erzsébet stand back up into her walker after her brother, Henry Van Buren, assaults her, but she quickly reassesses her alliances when Daddy is pronounced missing. 

When we meet Erzsébet in Part Two, she is a complex, independent character who complements László’s artistic vision and demeanor. We learn that Erzsébet is a talented writer, caretaker, and survivor, but her art is not a part of the film. Her artistic merit is expressed in her passing approval of László’s design for Van Buren’s community center. In an interview, actress Felicity Jones described Erzsébet as “defiant and quite confrontational,” which surprised me.⁴ I would’ve more readily described László with these adjectives, but these qualities align with the perception of a male artist and if attributed to a woman, they become interrogated. 

László’s niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) is actually the first character we meet in the film’s opening scene, where she is mute as a result of the war. In the film’s epilogue, a now-adult Zsófia is mysteriously body-swapped with another actress, while the original actress who played her younger self, Raffey Cassidy, now stands in the background as her daughter. Zsófia now speaks confidently about the impact of her uncle’s work at the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale, and László is wheelchair-bound. The new actress has the unintended effect of giving the viewer a sense of unfamiliarity - who is this woman? In The Brutalist’s closing scenes, Adrien Brody has the pleasure of portraying László at a later age, but Zsófia is confusingly recast. 

Despite The Brutalist’s shortcomings with female characterization, the film is poignant in its emphasis on power dynamics: architect and client, working class and old money, Jewish and Protestant, immigrant and well-established American “royalty.” As an American viewer, the client Harrison Van Buren’s name evokes wealth and a clear association with the eighth president, Martin Van Buren, and a direct line to one of America’s earliest leaders. This contrasts with László and Erzsébets’ Hungarian names, which are certainly misspelled and mispronounced by their neighbors at Van Buren’s elaborate dinner party. As a client, Harrison Van Buren is a violent man who also places the most faith and support in László’s artistic vision. He stands behind László’s monumental, brutalist design in the face of his community and sons’ disapproval, but not when faced with a press scandal and financial threat due to the train derailment. In this way, The Brutalist also deals in architectural losses. In the design of the community center, László must relinquish his own fees in service of his artistic vision to achieve the rooms’ high ceilings, and he must return to work in New York as a draftsman when Van Buren halts construction of the community center. Additionally, László was a successful architect in Budapest before immigrating to America, and his cultural and civic work was destroyed in the war. Once again, power dynamics come into play when Van Buren, the wealthy patron, locates images of László’s work that he himself didn’t know existed, and László is moved to tears when he is reunited with photos of his work and asks to keep them. To Van Buren and the viewer, the photos serve as proof of László’s qualifications and merit as an established architect from another country with a Bauhaus education. Now, we can imagine his architectural education in Gropius primary colors, and his minimalist redesign for Harrison’s personal library early in the film is justified. 

Although the film purportedly traces the life of a fictional architect, there are distinct parallels between László Tóth and architect Marcel Breuer. Breuer was Hungaran-Jewish architect who received a Bauhaus education and immigrated to America in 1937, and was once tasked with designing a Catholic church as a Jewish architect. In contrast with The Brutalist (and to the ire of some architectural critics), Marcel Breuer immigrated to America prior to the start of WWII and had a successful architectural career in the states.⁵ This story holds true for many of Breuer’s contemporaries as well, including Walter Gropius, Richard Neutra, Eero Saarinen, Rudolf Schindler, and Mies van der Rohe. Meanwhile, László’s architectural career in America hinges on a single patron, without whom he is shoveling coal or designing bowling alleys.

At the film’s conclusion, László loses the ability to speak for himself both literally and figuratively. Erzsébet and Lászlós’ intimate heroin bender revealed the violent truth of Harrison Van Buren‘s assault on László, and it is Erzsébet who boldly confronts the Van Buren family (and a shrunken table of embarrassed dinner guests). Harrison Van Buren disappears in the chaos, presumed suicide but unaccounted for; he is lost to the viewer in the mausoleum intended for his mother. László is not pictured again until the epilogue in Venice, where he is wheelchair-bound and it is now his niece Zsófia that speaks for him - a reversal of roles as she adjusts a microphone from wheelchair-height to her own standing-height.
Overall, I found that The Brutalist is an imperfect, but monumental film. I can’t wait to see more from Brady Corbet - and maybe a female architect can consult on the next one.

---

Aryana Leland is a designer based in Denver, Colorado. She studied Architecture + Art History at Cal Poly Pomona, and her current interests are public transportation and The Lord of the Rings.

---

¹ “The 97th Academy Awards | 2025.” Oscars | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, January 31, 2025. .

² McGovern, Joe. “What Is VistaVision? How ‘the Brutalist’ Revived a Beautiful but Cumbersome Film Format.” TheWrap, December 23, 2024. .

³ Lammers, Tim. “Did Oscar-Nominated Epic ‘The Brutalist’ Already Get a Streaming Date?” Forbes, January 31, 2025. .

⁴ Letterboxd. “The Brutalist: Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, and Felicity Jones on the Construction of Their Characters.” YouTube, January 9, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErTUFRabM9M&t=263s.

⁵ Wainwright, Oliver. “Backlash Builds: Why the Architecture World Hates The Brutalist.” The Guardian, January 29, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/29/architecture-the-brutalist-marcel-breuer.