January 13, 2025
A BITESIZE CHAT WITH
BRADY CORBET
There is a genuine argument to be made that there wasn't a single premiere more buzzed about this festival season than Brady Corbet's The Brutalist. The three-and-a-half-hour epic chronicles the life of an immigrant architect named László Tóth, played by a never-better Adrien Brody. Corbet used VistaVision technology to bring his vision to life, and the results are extraordinary, with the film recently winning Best Motion Picture – Drama and Corbet winning Best Director at the Golden Globes (not to mention Brody winning Best Actor – Drama). The film is currently projected to perform similarly at the Oscars this year.
BB: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today. It is extraordinary how many different themes, metaphors, thoughts, and ideas are present in this film. Deciding you're going to do four hours is tough enough as a filmmaker right now, but to put such depth and complexity into a story is, I imagine, a massive challenge.
Was there an organizing principle…for you as you were writing it to create the story so that you could layer that in, [and] how did that happen for you?
BC: I think that the film is primarily about post-traumatic stress and the way that post-war architecture and post-war psychology are intrinsically linked. I always start a project with themes as opposed to starting with characters. And for me, each character is emblematic of something, of an idea, and is a mouthpiece for that idea. I think that my wife and I write intuitively, we usually have spoken about a project for at least a year, if not two years, before sitting down to execute a draft, so we know it very well. Before we put pen to paper, I'm constantly thinking about the defining events of an epoch.
BC: All of my films are virtual histories. They're concerned primarily with American culpability. My first film, The Childhood of a Leader, is about how Woodrow Wilson and his team inadvertently paved the way for fascist uprising with their participation in the Paris Peace Conference and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Of course, Vox Lux is a film that is about 9/11 and Columbine being the sort of jumping-off point for the new millennium. The last 25 years have really been defined by those two events. And then this is a film about the post-war generation, which is a period of time that conservatives in the U.S. really romanticize. This 1950s Americana when, of course, everyone was processing the events of the 1940s that almost everyone in the world was affected by one way or another. I think that I struggle a lot with biographies, I certainly struggle with most biopics, because they often represent history as being something linear. It's a series of dates and figures. It's cause and effect. Whereas I think I'm more interested in a sort of ambient tyranny -- what is in the air, what's in the water, what's in the atmosphere -- that is all contributing to these defining historical events and happenings.
BB: Knowing that the film has been in development for so many years, since 2020, has anything actually changed, or is the final product that we ended up seeing the actual film that you envisioned so many years ago?
BC: Yeah, it's exactly the same. There's not a single scene that didn't end up in the film. There's not even a shot that didn't end up in the film. We were working on such a tight schedule that we had to use everything that we had because we really didn't have enough. So we had to find ways of… even in montages and stuff, I'm flipping shots, I'm flopping them, I'm reusing them, I'm reframing them… just because we didn't have that much raw material.
BC: I think that there are about three sentences from the monologue at the Christmas party that were omitted. It was just for a pacing reason, something felt off about keeping them. And other than that, the film is really the screenplay just executed. I mean, the screenplay’s now available online and you can see that there's a way that they're formatted, where it says ultra-wide on this, long lens on that. When you read them, you have a sense of where the camera is in relation to the subject. And I think that's very helpful. It was very helpful for my production designer because what we had to do is, we could never really afford to design sets that we could shoot 360°, so we would sort of have to choose between “we're going to do the floor” or “we're going to do the ceiling,” but we couldn't afford to do both.
BC: The screenplay sort of allowed for us to operate that way because everyone had a sense of the sort of frame that they were working within. And then we also prepped on the ground together for about 11 weeks. Which, for me, was actually quite a long pre-production. I'm accustomed to having more like five or six weeks before starting a film. So that was actually the one thing that our extraordinary producer on the ground in Hungary, Viktória Petrányi… she was, like, “You know, we can do the movie in 30-something days.” We ended up with 33, but it was sort of in flux for a while. But she was like, “we need the prep, we can't rush the prep.” So she really protected that and found sort of clever ways of making that work with our very kind of modest means.
BC: I think that in a way, those limitations forge a very unique cinematic form. It gives it something as well. Maybe that's like looking at the glass half full, but I do think that something comes from not being able to do just anything. Because when you can do anything, somehow it frequently just turns into nothing. If we look at a movie like Metropolis or something, for example, it’s there, just so many clever solutions. And I felt like, you know, if we could do it a hundred years ago, we sure as hell should be able to do it now. Because it's mostly practical effects. We built massive models and the building was achieved through a few different methods but now we have visual effects that can digitally extend something if you combine it with something real.
BC: The problem is that too many people nowadays use visual effects in a way where they create something from nothing. And that tends to look quite bad. So what we did is, we built a massive facade of the building and it was real concrete, real scale. And then it was just digitally extended. So when you have the real scale, you have real light, real shadow, real minerality from the concrete, then it just becomes about duplicating the pattern. And that's something that obviously people couldn't do back when F.W. Murnau was making movies. So for me, it feels like we should be able to do almost anything at this point.
BB: In the film's first act, when László is asked why he chose architecture as his trade, he replies, “is there a better description of a cube than its own construction?”
Do you feel that same statement encapsulates your approach to The Brutalist? How do you feel the film's construction, using the outdated 70-millimetre format with the classical presentation and the overture intermission, informed the film's meditation on the American myth-making of the American dream?
BC: Absolutely. I think that the sentiment that there's no better description of a cube than that of its own construction… I, of course, feel the same way about the film because if you could tell a film, then why make a film? It's hard to even qualify what drives me. When I think about why I do what I do, I really don't know. I really don't know. It comes from a place of obsession. It comes from a place of real stubbornness. You know, I never start something that I don't finish. That's of course a blessing and a curse.
BC: It can be extremely productive, but it's not a very easy way to be. I'm probably not a very easy person to live with. My wife and daughter are very patient. And I think that in the Venn diagram, I think that there's a lot of overlap between architecture, building a building, and making a movie. It is something I can relate to, and that my wife that wrote the film with me, Mona [Fastvold], she absolutely relates to as well.
BB: What drew you to tackling the idea of this broken promise of the American dream and the immigrant experience specifically through the eyes of an architect or an artist?
BC: Well, I think the characters were mostly written to their circumstance. It was predominantly Central and Eastern European Jews that were at the Bauhaus. So for me, the characters were always from that part of the world because it's a film that chronicles the life of a Bauhaus architect. For me, the artistic experience and the immigrant experience have a lot in common because an immigrant is fighting for their right to exist, and an artist is fighting for the right for their project to exist.
BC: We were looking a lot at the life of Marcel Broyer, Paul Rudolph, Mies van der Rohe, Vláclav Moholy Neuge, you name it. And the character is sort of an amalgamation of all of these real-life characters. They all had something in common. With maybe the exception of Paul Rudolph, they were all coming from Europe. And it was such a big deal. The radical style of architecture in the era that gave us I Love Lucy, you know, and so I sort of just had this vision of that 1950s aesthetic being interrupted by these designs that they must have looked like a spaceship at the time when Breuer was doing St. John's Abbey or something like that. It was written long enough ago at this point that it's hard for me to pinpoint what drove each of our decisions and choices, but we always start with real life. And then once you start writing, it becomes fiction.
BB: There's a lot of sexual content in the film, especially compared to other mainstream American films that are generally sexless right now. Was it important for you to include that? And has there been any pushback to remove it or condense it since the festival run?
BC: Yeah. I mean, the film was finally rated R, but I think it was kind of on the bubble for an NC-17. I just think it's preposterous. This puritanism, I don't know where it comes from. It's 2024, for Christ's sake. I find it odd to condemn the human body. You walk around a museum and everyone's fucking in every single painting. I just think there are a few things that are very important for this film in particular, which is that this movie is about a character that is trying to reclaim his body of work and about him reclaiming his body. We understand in the first 10 minutes that [László’s] impotent following the war, and that even when he and his wife reconnect, it takes them a long time to physically reconnect. Which after 10 years, of course, it's like touching a stranger. You don't know how to interface anymore.
BC: It was very important to me to portray a survivor, two survivors, that are trying to reclaim their bodies for themselves again. Because they've been used and abused for over a decade at that point in the story. So yeah, I don't know. My wife is Norwegian and my in-laws are, like, always skinny dipping and stuff at the holidays. I don't think anything of it. It didn't even occur to me that this film might get an NC-17. And I'm very glad that finally it didn't because I never would have changed anything anyway. I don't give a fuck.
BB: Nor should you. During this press tour, you've made many references to how challenging it was to bring The Brutalist, and many films in general, to the big screen. How do you feel about that complicated relationship that an artist has with themselves, their vision, and maybe the commercial nature of the business? And how do you think that relationship informs your storytelling?
BC: I think this film happens to be about exactly that. I remember when we finished the screenplay with this line from Zsófia as an adult (Ariane Labed) saying, “in fact, it is the destination, not the journey.” It dawned on us back in 2017 or whenever it was when we first started this project that it would probably be a long road. It was longer than we expected, mostly because of COVID and the shutdowns, because we were originally meant to shoot the film in Poland. The very day that my crew was supposed to arrive in Poland to start pre-production, Poland shut their borders. And then the tax credit for a period of time became unstable a year later because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And so we had to pivot and shoot the film in Hungary. Part of the reason that I decided on Hungary was that I had shot my first film there, and I had scouted the country, and I kind of knew what was available, so I was able to scout virtually in Hungary because it was still a tricky time for travelling in 2021 because of COVID. I knew it was the only place that I felt I knew well enough to plan remotely, which is what we did. And then finally, we arrived at the top of 2022 and shot the film in March. Then I was in post-production for two years, primarily because of the length of the picture.
BC: Also, for financial reasons, we were continuing to raise money throughout the entire process because we actually started the film with a budget of closer to $8 million. And it really didn't fit inside of that box. $10 million was really the minimum and the maximum that the market would allow it to be made for. The good thing is that there's a budgetary restriction. That mostly just affected our quality of life while we were making the film, so I believe it would have been the same film if we had an additional $1.5 or $2 million. I really do. But we wouldn't have had to work seven days a week. We wouldn't have had to work 20-hour days. There was literally one day in the mix that was like 23 hours long. It's because we could only afford the studio for X amount of days. And when we got to the last day, we just weren't finished yet. We were moving very quickly, but we just weren't finished.
BC: What's very tricky is that filmmakers are frequently exploited because filmmakers are treated, not as if they're someone doing a job, but that it's a privilege to be able to make your film. So frequently, the powers that be sort of lean on the filmmaker who are so desperate to get their project off the ground that they're willing to do it for free, which becomes increasingly difficult as you get older. I've got a 10-year-old daughter and we live pretty modestly. But as we get older, of course, life is becoming more and more expensive, not less. Every single filmmaker I know is grappling with this. You'd be surprised how many people are currently campaigning their movie for Best Picture right now that can't pay their rent.
BC: It's ultimately not acceptable. I mean, I've done three movies this way. And when I make the next one, I just need to be able to pay my rent while I'm working on the project because a lot of distributors and exhibitors and producers and studios benefit because of the filmmaker's work. Not always, but frequently. So, I think that the magic number for this movie would’ve been $12 million, but I wouldn't have wanted more because with more money would have come more voices. More checks. More people, you know, more cooks in the kitchen. And for me, when I pick up a novel, I don't want to read a book that was written by 24 people. I certainly don't want to read a book that was written by 24 executives at a streaming [service]. I think that a singular vision, a singular point of view, matters. And it's something that we should encourage and foster, culturally. Audiences actually do speak up. It seems to happen a lot in the world of these superhero films where people hear about a director's cut and start beating on a drum about it. But in fact, everyone should be beating on a drum for the director's cut of absolutely every film because even if a film is imperfect, there's a consistency and continuity of vision. It will always make for a better film. Otherwise, it ends up looking something like an exquisite corpse.
BB: And when you talk about the time constraints, the budget constraints, the scheduling, all of this stuff. It's no secret that The Brutalist took many, many years to come to fruition. Now, it’s being regarded as a massive American epic masterpiece and something that we just haven't seen the likes of in a very, very long time. When you sit with this movie, being made, getting released, and hitting IMAX in a few weeks nationwide. Is there a particular scene that you look back on in fondness and think, you know, “Wow, that's really cool that that made it from my mind, to the paper, to the screen”?
BC: Oh, yeah. Honestly, I'm just so grateful to my team on the movie. Even as recently as last summer, I had just started to run out of gas because I'd been working so relentlessly for so many years in a row and really without a break. We'd run out of money, and I was like, “You know what? it's fine. We'll do a 35-millimetre print and maybe eventually down the line, let's just save and enter negative so that we can make a 70-millimetre print, which is the only way to appreciate the full resolution of VistaVision,” My producing partner, Andrew Morrison, said, “um, absolutely not. We're going to do it. We're going to figure it out.” And he went out and he raised more money.
BC: You know, when Ingmar Bergman was directing Fanny and Alexander - the iconic funeral sequence in the film, the beautiful winter sequence - Ingmar Bergman got sick. And his crew had been working with him for such a long time that they continued on shooting without him. And it's funny because it's very much a Bergmanian sequence. But they'd worked together for so many years that when he was struggling, his team got him through to the finish line. And so, my composer [Daniel Blumberg] who we made this film with… I mean, it's 110 minutes of original music, and he made it truly on a shoestring budget. Or my production designer, Judy Becker, who really managed to do so much with next to nothing. I’m just so grateful. I'm very proud. I'm very proud of all our films that we've done together. Every movie is a miracle. Even a bad movie is kind of a miracle that it gets made. But with this, we certainly fought the good fight for many years, so I'm just really touched that they are all being recognized because that doesn't always happen that every member of the team sort of gets their due. For the most part, on this one, everyone's been acknowledged.
BB: Well thank you for taking the time and I wish you and your team all the best of luck in the award season, I hope to see you guys up on the stage in March.
BC: Appreciate it. Thank you. Well, we've already made it this far and just being a part of the conversation, in all seriousness, that's actually what matters. More than anything, because just being in the conversation has a real impact on the film's box office. And if the film performs okay, then it means that more movies like this get made.
Make sure to check out The Brutalist now in theatres.
Interview conducted on December 17th, 2024 by Adriano Caporusso.