"The making of a good building," observed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, "is a great moral performance."

Like many notable quotes about architecture, it speaks to grandeur, permanence, scale. One imagines Lázló Tóth, the visionary Hungarian architect who escaped the Holocaust and sailed to the United States to find his American Dream, would heartily agree.

But don't go looking on Wikipedia. Tóth, played with deep soul and unrelenting intensity by Adrien Brody in "The Brutalist," is actually fictional, though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, so richly realized is his story in director Brady Corbet's audacious new film. Though not for everyone, it's a film that can justifiably be described as "epic" in ambition and design. And, wouldn't you know, ambition and design are precisely what the movie's about.

Of course, that's not all. "The Brutalist," which takes its name from the raw style of architecture that Tóth creates, is also about the incalculable trauma that followed World War II. It's about the immigrant experience, and it's about what happens when the American Dream beckons, then fails. It also explores a different dream: the artist's dream, and what happens when it meets opposing forces, be they geographic displacement or cold economic calculus.

Not to mix our arts metaphors, but it's fair to say a story like this needs a pretty big canvas. Corbet, working with co-writer Mona Fastvold, definitely gives himself that, shooting in VistaVision, with its expansive field of view; dividing his film into movements like a symphony; and finally, allowing himself a whopping three hours and 35 minutes, including a built-in intermission. The parallels with architecture here seem clear. Make a building, or make a movie — but... Read More