At over three hours long and with so many award nominations, this is a true epic, even the swelling music it opens with proclaims it as such. Given its premise, I’d expected it to be similar to a biography of an artist even if the character is fictional. Yet the film resolutely refuses to stay in that box, spends as much developing other characters as the protagonist and is barely about architecture at all. In the end, all is explained and I have to admire the director Brady Corbet’s unique artistic vision. But it feels like a bit of a bait and switch to me and so I’m not a big fan of this film.
In 1947 architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth is elated to finally arrive in New York though his wife Erzsébet and his orphaned niece Zsófia are still stuck in Europe. His cousin Attila puts him up at his furniture store and gives him a job, though László realizes that he has converted to Catholicism after marrying an American wife. One day they are approached the son of wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren to renovate the library at his mansion. László comes up with a minimalist, modern design but when Harrison arrives at the mansion one night, he is dismayed by the surprise renovation and fires everyone. The son refuses to pay for the work already done and blaming László for the debacle Attila tells him to leave. Years later László is working as a laborer shoveling coal and living in a church when Harrison comes looking for him. The library has become a hit among the architectural community and after doing his research, Harrison has realized that László was a famous architect in Europe. He apologizes, pays for the previous work and at a party, commissions László to build a large community center to honor his deceased mother. László accepts and Harrison’s personal lawyer even helps to expedite his wife and niece’s travel to the United States.
The story of an architect sacrificing everything, even his own fee, to complete an unconventional great work brings to mind Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and I even detect a superheroic quality to the musical score. Yet László Tóth is a very different from Howard Roark. He is a perpetual victim who bows his head and and has learned to tolerate casual insults in order to keep the peace and survive. Despite his largesse, Harrison is no savior. He is a racist who believes that his wealth makes him superior to others. He professes to admire great artistic talent and admits that he has none himself. The intent of the film is to show he is akin to a leech, paying László to take ownership of some part of the latter’s talent. Despite being unable to walk due to osteoporosis from famine, his wife Erzsébet seems like the stronger person, and so the very opposite of Dominique Francon. She unapologetically asserts her Jewish identity while being also sexually powerful. In fact, the entire film is oddly sensual, verging on the erotic, which I found somewhat disconcerting.
The key to understanding this film is to let go of the preconception that it is about brutalism at all. Instead it is very much about Jewish trauma and how it doesn’t end even after they’ve made it to the relative safety of the US. Harrison’s son outright tells László that they’re only tolerating them at best. Zsófia doesn’t feel safe until she is married to a Jewish man and leaves for Israel. When László presents his massive concrete edifice for Van Buren’s project, the implication that this is meant to seen as beautiful and magnificent. Yet László has the last laugh at the end as it was never built for Van Buren but for himself as a way to conquer his own traumas from being incarcerated in a concentration camp. Good for him and Van Buren surely deserves it. But as part of the audience, I feel tricked along with Van Buren and I think this framing is unkind to the brutalism movement itself. It says nothing at all about the esthetic appeal of the style and even implies that there’s something terrifying about it. I’m especially disappointed that even at the end, the film doesn’t show the completed building in use and welcoming as an actual community center.
It’s true that the film surprised me with its bold directing style. It strives so hard to be a true cinematic epic. But underneath that style, the theme of Jewish resilience in the face of oppression isn’t that sophisticated. I daresay that given current events proving that Israeli nationalism has swung all the way around into extremism, it’s even harder to think highly of this film.