The Brutalist 4K 2024 Ultra HD 2160p

1947. Hungarian architect Laszlo Toth moves from post-war Europe to the United States. His life changes rapidly after he meets the overbearing van Buren.

User Review

After surviving the Holocaust, Hungarian architect Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), emigrates to America at the end of World War II, leaving his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zofia (Raffey Cassidy) behind in Europe in hopes of a speedy reunion. Initially forced to eke out a miserable existence in poverty, he unexpectedly receives a contract from a wealthy businessman, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), that will change his life forever.

The first half of the movie is truly astounding. Laszlo Toth's journey to the United States in search of the American dream is exciting and mesmerizing from the first frames of the film. Laszlo glimpses the Statue of Liberty for the first time while aboard a ship arriving at the immigrant reception center on Ellis Island in New York Bay. A sense of genuine joy and gratitude to fate is instantly transmitted to the viewer, but the Statue of Liberty is turned on its side in his eyes, largely symbolizing the events to come, as the American dream proves to be decisively compromised, if not illusory.

The second half of the movie, however, is utterly ruthless. The director too often loses his narrative grip, and the story doesn't so much coalesce as pile up a series of bizarre events, overwhelming the already heavy-handed narrative to the breaking point. It seems like the unresolved issues of Laszlo's marriage, his drug addiction, his financial problems, and his resurgent career will be explored in detail in the movie's second act, but Korbe lets most of it disappear behind the scenes.

Laszlo shows kindness and generosity even when he has nothing, initially eliciting sympathy from the viewer, but his story soon begins to resemble a roller coaster ride with numerous questionable choices that steadily undermine his integrity. Successes and failures are tightly intertwined in the story, but the tragedies never seem significant enough to allow Laszlo's story to rise to the level of the films from which the director occasionally borrows ideas, including Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather.

Things start to go downhill when Laszlo and Harrison travel to Italy in search of marble. The brutal act that Harrison commits against a drunken Laszlo is not so much vulgar as it is emotionally manipulative. The message behind this act is so obvious and forced that it is impossible not to understand the metaphorical purpose of this scene in the context of the entire movie.

However, the worst part of this downward spiral occurs in the film's finale, in which Korbe chooses to once again reinforce and explain the themes and ideas that have been explored throughout the film, subjecting the viewer to an excruciating secondary narrative of how great Laszlo is, how beautiful the buildings he designed were, and ultimately how he was able to overcome anti-Semitism and xenophobia as a Jewish immigrant.

The movie, which began as an epic narrative and didn't talk down to its audience, leaving the story and characters open to interpretation, ends on a very arrogant and smug note.

“The Brutalist,” clocking in at three hours and thirty-five minutes, is an imposing structure, marveling at the cinematography and grandiosity of the musical accompaniment. Yet even with its exceptional length and expansive time frame, spanning from 1947 to 1960 and jumping forward to 1980, it feels unfinished. With its clean lines and precise assembly, it is almost devoid of fundamental practical aspects and thus remains an idea for a movie, an outline for a drama that is still in search of its characters. As the narrative unfolds, the movie collapses - first gradually and then all at once - literally folding under its own weight, turning ambiguity into obviousness and archetypes into clichés and the whole thing feels like an endurance test, and a completely tasteless one from which there is absolutely no escape.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (55.9 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1

Info Audio

#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
#French (Canada): Dolby Digital 2.0

Info Subtitles