Photo: Supplied
Review: The term brutalism is used to describe an architectural style, popular in the mid to late 20th century, in which a building's construction materials and methods form the design aesthetic -they're not hidden by decorative elements like paint or plaster.
It's a technical term that would normally only be used by architects, students and designers, except for the fact that it lends itself so beautifully to wordplay.
Indeed, the word could easily be applied to both New Zealand's most famous brutalist building - The Beehive is a great example of a building with lots of bare concrete revealing the formwork that went into its construction - and the occupants of its 9th floor.
The Brutalist in Brady Corbet's film of the same name is Hungarian modernist architect László Tóth (played by Adrien Brody) but it might just easily be his patron, the wealthy industrialist Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce), or even the tough shell of American post-war society which makes it difficult for European emigrés like László - especially Jewish ones - to fit in and feel at home.
László is Hungarian and has arrived on a boat from a Europe still reeling from World War II. Like so many emigrés and refugees, the first thing he sees of America is the Statue of Liberty - here deliciously shot upside down, a sign that not everything in the New World will be as it seems. The plaque on the Statue famously reads "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" but that promise is one that was more honoured in the breach even then.
László heads for Philadelphia where a cousin (played by Alessandro Nivola) can put him up and offer a little work. Their first significant job is a library for Van Buren, a surprise present from his son Harry (Joe Alwyn), but it is not well received, and the pair are not paid.
A desperate László finds work in the local shipyard and makes just enough money to pay for his emerging heroin habit. But then Van Buren turns up out of the blue and he has had a change of heart.
Van Buren would like a building constructed on his estate as a memorial to his beloved mother. It is to be a community facility for the locals, including a gymnasium, library, theatre and - to László's surprise - a Christian chapel.
That appears to be a feature that's required in order to guarantee a civic contribution to the cost but László - like all architects before and since - goes along and produces an elegant and spiritually powerful solution.
That solution is very modern, however. No one has seen anything quite like it in 1950s country Pennsylvania. But László sticks to his guns and Van Buren continues to back him. At least, that is, until he changes his mind once again.
We follow the ups and downs of this project - and the ups and downs of this difficult relationship, one between two proud and headstrong men, but one in which only one of them has any cards to play.
László's wife Erzsébet (a remarkable Felicity Jones) and niece (Raffey Cassidy) have finally managed to escape Europe with Van Buren's help - another favour that will never be allowed to be forgotten - but the project and László's single-minded determination to protect the design from being corrupted almost makes their new life intolerable.
It takes more than just length for a film to become an epic but at 215 minutes, plus a fifteen-minute interval, The Brutalist meets that first requirement. It also needs to be about something greater than just the domestic travails of its characters and it ticks that box, too.
This is a film about America and the promises made and broken by capitalism. But it's also about something else, something I won't reveal here because it comes in an epilogue at the end. It hits you like a gut punch and forces you to think again about everything you have just seen - even to the extent of wanting to rewatch the film immediately, from the beginning.
It's not being clever for clever's sake, it's a genuinely brilliant and powerful film about trauma and the inadequacy of recovery, the impossibility of healing and the necessity of survival.
Co-writer and director Brady Corbet is only 36 years old, and this is his third film. I haven't seen anything quite as ambitious as this for many a year.
The Brutalist is rated R16 for rape, sex scenes and drug use, and is screening in limited sessions in select cinemas across New Zealand now.
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