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Brady Corbet’s engrossing epic drama ,,Brutalist” – premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2024, where Corbet was awarded the Silver Lion for Best Direction. It received critical acclaim and was named one of the top ten films of 2024 by the American Film Institute. It won three awards at the 82nd Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama. ,,Brutalist” – the movie about the design of postwar America and what was mixed into its foundations at the building stage. According critics, it is about antisemitism and the capitalist adventure, about the unassimilated immigrant experience and about American can-do naivety versus the tragic, painful depths of European culture and expertise. 

,,This is not a political movie. This is a movie about the circumstances of a man and the time period and the time frame. But unfortunately, there’s a lot that. Is very relevant, and I feel the beauty of making a movie like this is that. It’s very hard to convey in words. The struggle of people and the beauty of this is that it allows you to have time alone, to experience someone else’s journey that is full of hardship, that you can find parallels in your own life or can at least relate to what must be overcome.”, – told Adrien Brody who plays a post-World War II Hungarian Jewish refugee architect in the U.S. in director Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, reflected on how personal the film was to him given how his mother and grandparents fled Hungary in 1956. In the movie, Brody’s architect finds lucrative work for an acerbic real estate tycoon played by Guy Pearce.

What according to you, does this movie say about American identity?

Well, I think it speaks to the complexity of life. Complexity of a great nation like America. And I think much of the film is about this disconnect of the hopes and dreams of and the hardships of being an immigrant fleeing oppression, coming to the United States with those hopes and dreams. And the disconnect of the myth of what that American dream is, and the kind of harsh realities of what life is anywhere. And. There are opportunities. And even in the film it depicts that a great opportunity can materialize. But  there’s a great deal of toiling through poverty for the character and through all of this through all of his journey. And I think it’s I think the film really represents that complexity. It’s just I don’t know if life has gotten easier for people. It’s different. And there were tremendous hardships amidst World War two. But there are immense hardships throughout the world. And there is an immense need, not just to America, but people to to find a home that they’re not persecuted and the hardship of that immigrant experience is is still very present.

What was the reason for you accepting this role and challenging yourself?

Well, first of all, it’s beautifully written script. And there are many reasons, I’ve been yearning to find a role of this caliber for many, many years. And not just the role, but a filmmaker who will tell a story with such breadth and and nuance. And I think when I read it, I felt profoundly moved by it. And there are also many parallels that I relate to personally. I don’t know if you know, but my mother is a Hungarian immigrant. She fled Hungary with her parents in 1956 during the Revolution and emigrated to the United States. Although her journey is different from my character’s, it was a deeply insightful to be raised with the presence of all of that and how it has deeply affected my mother and my mother’s work. How her work has influenced from hardships and traumatic experiences of the past. Her life as an artist and dedication to leaving behind a body of work speaks so much to the quest of my character and frankly, to me in the work that I hope to leave behind in my own life and career, and to leave behind more meaningful. Films that live on and can tell stories of other times, and struggles that are relatable and resonate for future generations to come. So, all of that was very moving and inspiring to me, and almost a responsibility to tell it with a sense of truth that honors that immigrant experience and honors, that truthfully conveys a Hungarian man out of his element there, someone completely committed and obsessed to his work, numerous things. So there were many things that really spoke to me about this, and I’m so grateful that it came my way and that I helped be a part of such an achievement. I really am very proud of the work that everyone’s done on this film, especially Brady’s work and what it stands for in independent film. And I’m very moved by having had the opportunity to be a part of something like this.

You speak about relating to nowadays, especially with the, unprecedented anti-Semitism all over the world that Jews don’t belong where they shouldn’t be. I want to talk about that aspect for you.

Yeah. I mean, it’s frightening how the lessons from our past don’t seem to teach us enough and that habits and the fact that you can tell a story because this is not a political movie. This is a movie about the circumstances of a man and the time period and the time frame. But unfortunately, there’s a lot that. Is very relevant, and I feel the beauty of making a movie like this is that. It’s very hard to convey in words. The struggle of people and the beauty of this is that it allows you to have time alone, to experience someone else’s journey that is full of hardship, that you can find parallels in your own life or can at least relate to what must be overcome. But it’s an ongoing. Thing that we have to find solutions to, unfortunately.

I was surprised to hear that it was shot in 33 days. Can you talk a little bit about how you prepared for the role? 

It required a lot of homework partially because we had very limited resources, which means limited time. And also shooting on VistaVision with film. There’s just limits to what you can do. Very few takes. There are a lot of elaborate longer takes that were required in the storytelling. So everybody had to be very focused. But there’s sometimes I’ve done a lot of independent movies. It’s not new to me. Those burdens. And sometimes they yield a different level of creativity because you have to problem solve. But there was a lot of work to prepare. I guess the dialect work and just like anything. It all takes a great deal of homework, but a lot has to be credited to Brady’s storytelling ability and his leadership as a director and how his purity of vision and his capacity for understanding of of so many layers of life and struggles and yearnings as an artist are conveyed and supported in this movie. And it’s really a great work. It’s an amazing thing to convey all of that with such honesty and feeling again, speak to hardships that are so painful for so many.

What was the most difficult while shooting for you personally?

I don’t look back. I don’t try not to think about that. I think the hardest part was the limited amount of time I think was hardest for all of us. And that’s just comes down to not having the resources to do more. We could have used more days. There’s a very dense script to shoot in such obviously much longer than a typical film might be. So to shoot in less time than most normal run time films have to make a film of epic proportions with all of these layers and. Decades of time passing and creating structures, I think it was very hard for the entire production. So, it’s just lack of lack of resources and time, I think was the biggest weight on everyone’s shoulders. But creatively, it was a deeply immersed, immersive experience, and everybody was holding each other up.