If you’re going to see just one ambitious, largely metaphorical film this year about a legendary architect who dreams of designing buildings that will define the future, pick “The Brutalist.” In other words, pick “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbett’s third feature, over Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” an hour-long, entertaining architectural epic that descends into a far-from-great idiocy. Why did Coppola, the great old classicist of New Hollywood, convince himself of his avant-garde visionary status? “Megalopolis” is a film that crashes into brilliant fragments.
But with “The Savage,” Brady Corbett takes the opposite direction. His first two films, “Childhood of a Leader” (2015) and “Fox Lux” (2018), were filled with moments of brilliance amid a sea of indulgence. But “The Savage” comes close to “The Savage” (2018). being A classic of old. At three hours and fifteen minutes long, it's a joyously paced, action-packed, and emotionally charged film – the story of Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who travels from Budapest to America after World War II, as if Corbett were making a biopic of a real person.
If the hero’s name sounds familiar, it’s because László Tóth is the Hungarian-born Australian geologist who hammered Michelangelo’s Pieta into the ground in 1972. Corbett’s naming of his hero after this madman seems like an inside joke, but to the extent that the reference resonates, it’s more serious. It’s the film’s way of suggesting that the all-powerful creator is always, in some ways, a destroyer.
I may be the only one who wasn’t blown away by Adrien Brody’s Oscar-winning performance in The Pianist. For me, he was blown away by the role, but the movie itself was mostly not. But in The Savage, Brody plays another Holocaust survivor—Lazlo arrives by boat, passing through Ellis Island—and his performance, even in its quietest moments, is tinged with turbulent emotion.
At first, Brody portrays Laszlo speaking in a heavy accent, coming across as grim, hesitant, and somewhat harmless: a desperate refugee just trying to keep his head down and get on with his life. But from the start, there’s nothing out of place in the filmmaking. Corbett gives us a gripping side shot of the Statue of Liberty as Laszlo emerges from the dank, crowded interior of the ship. A disturbing sex scene ensues (not because Laszlo hires a prostitute, but because Corbett films their encounter with a touch of brutal candor). “Your face is ugly,” she says. “I know it is,” Laszlo replies. Their encounter suggests the life force buried within him, but also something else, in a perverse way. Laszlo suffered a broken nose, and on the trip to America took heroin to dull the pain. He’s still using drugs, and as it turns out, he’ll remain a secret (and functional) addict for the rest of the film. It suggests something inside him that’s both selfish and self-destructive.
He has come to Pennsylvania to find his footing by staying with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), a con man who owns his own furniture store. He puts Laszlo in a guest room in the back of the store, and for a time Laszlo forms a domestic unit with Attila and his wife Audrey (Emma Laird), who turns out to be the film's first symbol of betrayal.
Soon after, they get a furniture design job: Harry Lee (Joe Alwyn), the wealthy son of a local tycoon, wants to take his father’s old, dilapidated reading room and renovate it into a modern library. (It would be a surprise gift.) Laszlo is the man to do it. At this point, we’re still unclear about his background (the gradual filling in of details is a Corbett touch), but the library Laszlo designed, with its slatted shelves, a gleaming skylight, and a central chaise longue that looks modern enough to have been designed by Mies van der Rohe, adds up to a stunning vision of architectural beauty.
When Harry's father, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), arrives at the estate and sees what has happened to his beloved reading room, he explodes in anger. Laszlo and Attila are evicted from the house and don't even get their full pay. But it turns out that Van Buren just likes to control everything (and he's in a state of shock because his mother is dying). The new library is a design landmark (it got a spread in Look magazine), and Van Buren soon asks to meet Laszlo. He wants to pay him, and more than that, he wants to partner with him. To build a building. To design the future.
Pierce is often an impressive actor, but it’s been a long time since he’s been in a role the way he is here. With his thick, wavy hair and mustache, and speaking with an irresistible, powerful swagger, he’s a Clark Gable who played Charles Foster Kane. The relationship between Laszlo and Van Buren is many things at once: artist/patron, Jewish immigrant/blue-collar American, subservient/exploiter, and ultimately something darker. “I find you intellectually stimulating,” Van Buren says, fixing his fascinated gaze on Laszlo. Rarely has a compliment carried such disturbing undertones.
For all the expansiveness of “Brutal,” Corbett tells us, in ways big and small, that he is making a bold art film. The opening credits are the most austere since “Tarr.” The film is divided into chapters with titles like “The Riddle of Access,” and there’s a 15-minute intermission, accompanied by a modern piano solo. But for the first half, the story is mostly about success, as we learn that László was a towering figure in Hungary—a Brutalist Bauhaus designer. His massive concrete buildings were boldly new and built to last, which is exactly what Van Buren wants to build here: a conference hall, a gym, a library, and a church, made of concrete and Italian marble, that will be a lavish monument to the Bucks District of Doylestown. It will cost $850,000 (more than a king’s ransom in the 1950s).
The second half of the film begins with the arrival of Laszlo’s wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), who is confined to a wheelchair, the result of osteoporosis brought on by starvation in a concentration camp. Laszlo longs for her, but Jones plays her with a powerful burst of old-world arrogance that hits the film like a slap in the face. The marriage was no oasis, and from this point on Laszlo’s life is complicated.
The drama surrounding the building’s construction feels straight out of The Fountainhead and There Will Be Blood. It’s not just a building. It’s an American campaign, one that’s both beautiful and dangerous. Money is running out; Laszlo’s willingness to sacrifice his salary is the first sign that he’s getting too involved. His niece, Zofia (Raffey Cassidy), has come along with Erzsébet, and when Van Buren’s son Harry takes a liking to her, it’s a sign of trouble. Laszlo and Van Buren’s relationship, meanwhile, evolves into an increasingly confrontational symbiosis, culminating in their visually stunning visit to the marble mines of Italy, where Van Buren commits a crime that is both horrific and highly metaphorical.
Maybe a little also Figuratively. What is the theme of “The Savage” after all? It is TRUE– An American story about immigration and ambition, and about what it means to be an artist. But it’s also a story about what it means to be Jewish in a world that treats Jews with extreme ambivalence. This aspect of the film feels overblown, if only because the era in which it’s set was one of intense assimilation. Corbett clearly made this film because he wanted it to have a profound meaning. Perhaps that’s in the eyes of the viewer. Mostly, “The Savage” makes you feel like you’re watching a man’s life pass before your eyes. Maybe that’s enough.
