László Tóth, the character at the heart of Brady Corbet’s monumental new film The Brutalist, is not real. But it’s a film so convincing, you’ll be googling him straight afterwards. “There are many László Tóths. It’s like John Smith,” smiles Corbet when we meet in London’s Soho Hotel. But simply choosing a common name – one shared by a famed geologist and also a Hungarian football star to name but two – does not make his Tóth a common man.
Brady Corbet at the 2025 New York Film Critics Circle Awards Photo: GettyGetty Images
Played impeccably by Adrien Brody, in a role reminiscent of his Oscar-winning turn in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, Tóth is a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor who arrives in America after the war to find work as an architect. “He’s an amalgamation of Paul Rudolph and Marcel Breuer and many of the mid-century designers,” explains Corbet, who crafted the story with his wife Mona Fastvold, who also co-scripted Corbet’s earlier films The Childhood of a Leader (2015) and Vox Lux (2018).
Tóth is a proponent of Brutalism, the minimalist style of architecture that took shape during postwar reconstruction, and trained at the Bauhaus, the school of design established by Walter Gropius in Germany in 1919. “I mean, it was predominantly central and eastern European Jews who were at the Bauhaus,” says Corbet, 36.
Adrien Brody[Missing Credit]
“On top of the countless lives lost in the war, I also was reflecting so much on the livelihoods that were lost and the work that was lost, and the projects out of the Bauhaus that were never realised. And there was something about that that I found quite devastating.”
As part of his research, Corbet spoke to architectural historian Jean-Louis Cohen, who told him that few flourished when they made it to America. “Those who were lucky enough to survive… the reality is that that no one went on to revamp their career or their practice after the war.”
As such, Tóth’s journey, one that sees him fall in with a wealthy businessman, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who commissions him to build a grand project, is something of a fiction.
“There is something quite beautiful about this fantasy. Because the reality is that it just didn’t happen.”
Corbet’s personal Jewish connections stretches back “a few generations” on the side of his mother, who was a mix of Irish-Catholic and Ashkenazi. “So I’m kind of a mutt,” says Corbet, who was born in Arizona and raised as an only child by her (“I don’t have a relationship with my father, so I don’t know anything about him,” he clarifies). Acting from the age of 11, he landed his first film role in Catherine Hardwicke’s hard-hitting adolescent film Thirteen (2003). Cult indie movies such as Mysterious Skin (2004), Funny Games (2007) and Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) followed.
After switching to film-making, the cine-literate Corbet has now delivered what is surely the most ambitious film of the year. Running at 215 minutes (including an old-fashioned intermission), it’s been shot on VistaVision, an old-school celluloid format, aiding the film’s rich visuals. As he puts it: “I wanted to create this monument to the past, something in memoriam.” Already, the response has been overwhelming. Winning him best director at the Venice Film Festival, the film has since claimed three Golden Globes, including Best Picture in the drama category; been nominated for nine Baftas and looks a dead cert for Oscar glory. Better yet, audiences are embracing it. “If people show up for a three-and-a-half-hour drama about a mid-century designer,” he nods, “that’s a really good thing for the movie industry.”
I wonder if he chose to make Tóth Hungarian-Jewish simply because of his heritage? “On some level, yes, but for me, I’d spent so much time in Hungary because I shot my first film [The Childhood of a Leader] there. I think that the instinct to make the character Hungarian versus Polish had a lot more to do with my level of familiarity with the culture. I’ve made three movies there and so I’ve spent years and years of my life in Hungary. We always joke that maybe we should just get a place there.”
Given Tóth’s treatment across the narrative, does he feel the film is a reflection of rising antisemitism? “The movie is about generational trauma, and it’s about post-war psychology and how post-war psychology shaped post-war architecture. And I think that the characters were really, for me, written to their circumstance. The characters are eastern European Jews because the architects out of the Bauhaus were predominantly central and eastern European Jews. But the immigrant experience is a mostly universal one. I don’t know anyone that hasn’t been affected by it – or whose family hasn’t been affected by it – in one way or another.”
A scene from The Brutalist[Missing Credit]
When we meet, it is mid-November and Donald Trump has just won the American election, with promises of mass deportration of illegal immigrants. The Brutalist suddenly seems all the more resonant. “I would certainly opt for a different political outcome than one that further contextualises the movie, because I certainly don’t want to capitalise on other people’s tragedy,” Corbet says cautiously.
“The thing is, I try to choose material that will never not be relevant. This is my goal. Because you have to live with these projects for so many years. I always want to be able to reflect on my body of work and be able to defend and justify it to myself down the line.”
With issues ranging from drug addiction to sexual assault, The Brutalist is certainly vast in scope, taking in far more than just the immigrant experience. Comparisons have been made to Orson Welles’ iconic debut Citizen Kane, and with good reason. Above all, it’s a movie that pays tribute to the beauty of architecture, a discipline rarely celebrated on film. “I’m trying not to make a movie for this week or for the season,” Corbet says. “I’m trying to make movies that carve out a cultural space decades from now. Doesn’t mean you always succeed, but I definitely think that should be the ambition.” He smiles. “So, y’know, we’re doing our best!”
The Brutalist opens in cinemas today
