I’ve been watching movies for around fifty years now, and I’ve been a film critic for about ten of those years. The main thing is I’m a huge fan of cinema in general of any kind. When I hear a film is getting a huge buzz out of a particular film festival like Cannes, TIFF, or in the case of The Brutalist, Venice, I tend to get excited about the prospects of said film. That’s the case here with many great things about this movie, so naturally, I’m going to be excited about seeing it and what its awards potential could be. Sometimes, that works in the opposite direction as all the buzz around a particular film can work against it. That’s also the case with this movie. I was very interested in seeing it until I actually saw it, and it wasn’t my cup of tea, as they say. I didn’t hate it, though.

Laszlo Toth (Adrian Brody) is a Polish Jewish immigrant from Hungary who survived the Holocaust in WWII. He gets met and picked up by his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and is invited to stay upstairs at his furniture business in Pennsylvania while working for him. Toth learns right away that things are different in America and that he has to fight and claw for everything he wants. Every opportunity comes hard, but if you work, you may get noticed and/or hired. The American dream isn’t handed out on a silver platter.

Adrian Brody won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Wladyslaw Szpilman, a radio pianist in “The Pianist”, a film about the Polish/Jewish experience during WWII. His role in this movie is similar in a lot of ways to his role in “The Pianist”. They are both Polish/Jewish citizens who are trying to survive the Warsaw ghetto during WWII. In a way, they are like the same person, even though they are not. One tries to survive in the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto while the other fleets the country to what he perceives as safety. One is a gentle, nice, compassionate man, while the other is a thick-skinned, hard-headed man. He doesn’t like to take advice or criticism from his wife or anybody else for that matter. The characters are very different in a lot of ways. I don’t think this is an Academy Award-winning performance like his role in “The Pianist”  was. I don’t see people vibing with this character at all. Maybe I’m wrong, though. Who knows?

Besides Brody and Nivola, there are other supporting cast that are excellent in this film. First off is Guy Pearce as Harrison Lee Van Buren, a brash businessman who petitions Brody’s character to build him an all-encompassing building. 4 buildings in one. They butt heads a lot because of their stubborn personalities. Joe Alwyn plays Pearce’s character’s son, and he is worse than his father is. Felicity Jones is only in half the film, but she is pretty good as Brody’s character’s wife. She stands up for herself and her husband even though she isn’t treated well by him or others in the movie. Rafferty Cassidy, though as an immigrant girl who has endured a family tragedy during the war, is pretty good. Her eyes are intoxicating to look at, and she is a bit of a revelation in the film. The cast all the way around is very good. The acting isn’t the problem I have with this movie.

My family came to this country over a hundred years ago as Irish immigrants seeking a new life away from the famine in Ireland. I’ll be the first person to say we haven’t always done the right things. More often than not though we worked and tried to make lives for ourselves in America. We didn’t have a set of skills as an architect either. Toth did have that ability, and he wasted it by causing trouble with people and starting arguments with his friends and family members.  Loo, I didn’t get along with everybody in my life, and neither did my father or brother, or from what I heard about my grandfather, either. I take the blame for my mistakes and move on. This man blamed everybody else but himself for all of his shortcomings. He was his own worst nightmare at times in his life. That’s not the American dream. If you don’t like America, then leave. That’s what most people would do.

This Brutalist film starts as a story trying to talk about the American dream, but that isn’t always the case for some immigrants. The American dream isn’t for everybody. Brady Corbet dictates that very well in this film. The script clearly says that and the actors are acting the story from the script out very well. I just don’t know who this story is truly for. Is it for Polish/Jewish survivors who immigrated to this country while fleeing Europe during WWII?  Is it for history buffs? Is it for teachers who’ll have something to teach their students about the experience these people went through? I don’t know, I wasn’t exactly the target audience though. Others may have been. I’m proud to be an American and even though my life hasn’t been great I would want to live in any other country.  Even the film’s poster shows what this story was ultimately about with the upside-down Statue of Liberty. That to me is a slap in the face towards this country and what it stands for. That indicates an unpatriotic take from the writers/director.

The Brutalist is a film that wants to have a good message I guess. Corbett tries to give the story some context, but it ends up being against the American way of life. You know the old saying about taking if you can’t play you’re going to take your ball with you so nobody can play? That’s how this story felt to me. This man played by Bridy didn’t like how he was treated so he left the country which gave him opportunities to make something of himself. Brody and the rest of the cast were all very good in the movie, but they weren’t the issues I had with it. There’s a message behind it that I wasn’t a fan of from the director who was also one of the screenplay writers. This is a film that’s getting a lot of awards buzz, but after watching it I don’t see it being justified. There are better movies that have come out this year that deserve those award accolades. As always all film is subjective so maybe my take on it is misplaced. Who knows? I can only go with my best judgment on things and that’s how I feel.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen