ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In the new movie "The Brutalist," a fictional architect who is possibly a genius gets a taste of the American dream. Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce star in a wide-screen epic that critic Bob Mondello calls monumental.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: When Laszlo Toth staggers up to the ship's deck after his transatlantic voyage in 1947, leaving concentration camps behind, the first thing he sees is the Statue of Liberty. Toth grabs a fellow passenger, laughing, dazed, as the camera pans up to catch Lady Liberty's torch looming weirdly upside down - a trick of perspective, maybe a portent of how things will go. Toth, played by Adrien Brody, finds his way to Philadelphia and a cousin who tells him his wife and niece have been found. They're alive.
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ADRIEN BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth, crying).
MONDELLO: The cousin takes him to his furniture store, where Toth, who's an architect and designer, will sleep on a cot in a storeroom and work on projects. Miller & Sons, it's called.
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BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) Who is Miller?
ALESSANDRO NIVOLA: (As Attila) I'm Miller.
BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) No, you are Molnar.
NIVOLA: (As Attila) Not anymore.
BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) No Miller, no sons.
NIVOLA: (As Attila) The folks here, they like a family business.
MONDELLO: They also like no traces of Judaism. The cousin's wife is Catholic, his furniture conventional.
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BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) They're not very beautiful.
MONDELLO: But never mind. A wealthy client wants to renovate his dad's library as a birthday surprise. Can they do it by Thursday, before the elder Mr. Van Buren gets home?
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NIVOLA: (As Attila) My cousin here, specialist in renovations. He even designed a whole city library.
JOE ALWYN: (As Harry Lee) What city is that?
BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) Budapest.
ALWYN: (As Harry Lee) Never been.
MONDELLO: Toth visits the space, looks at the high ceiling, domed skylight.
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ALWYN: (As Harry Lee) I know. It's terribly dated, isn't it? I'm thinking shelves up to the ceiling and some good reading lamps.
MONDELLO: Oh, he'll get so much more than that. Toth rips out everything, turns the space into a forced-perspective marvel of modernism, louvered teak (ph).
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BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) The long panels. And the shelves have varying heights.
NIVOLA: (As Attila) So 45 degrees. Three, two, one.
BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) Perfect.
MONDELLO: And as they're putting on the finishing touches...
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GUY PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr., shouting) What is all this?
MONDELLO: ...The Elder Van Buren, played by Guy Pearce.
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PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr., shouting) Who authorized you to come into my home and tear everything apart?
NIVOLA: (As Attila) This was all supposed to be a surprise. Your son, Harry, told us not to expect you...
PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr., shouting) It is a damn surprise.
NIVOLA: (As Attila) We were just putting everything back in its place.
PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr., shouting) You've turned it all inside-out. How do you know its proper place?
BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) We are finished here. It's quite all right.
PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr., shouting) It's quite all right? This is not all right. This is my home.
MONDELLO: After fighting with his cousin, Toth spirals down, ending up on the streets, addicted to opiates. But months later, Van Buren shows up with a just-published magazine spread on the library he's come to realize is a masterpiece.
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PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.) Have you seen that? I can assure you everyone else has.
MONDELLO: Not only that, he wants Toth to design a community center as a monument to his mother.
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PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr.) Something boundless. Something new.
MONDELLO: It will be that, a massive brutalist structure unlike anything Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has ever seen. Unlike anything I've ever seen, frankly. And filmmaker Brady Corbet makes all of it so persuasive, I spent the intermission - "The Brutalist" is a brisk 3 1/2 hours - searching the internet for images, convinced Laszlo Toth's community center must exist. It doesn't, of course. But if it did, it would be fashioned of concrete, tears and blood.
The film's breathtaking second half is all about building the monument and, in the process, exposing cracks in the foundation of the American dream. Toth's obsession with his work is total, even when he's reunited with his wife. His patron is a man of many prejudices who doesn't just appreciate art but must control it and the artist. And the post-war world they inhabit, well, we know what that's like.
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BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) They do not want us here.
FELICITY JONES: (As Erzsebet Toth) Who do you mean?
BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) The people here. They do not want us here. We are nothing.
MONDELLO: "The Brutalist" is about antisemitism and the luminescence of carrara marble, about wariness for outsiders and the way moonlight strikes a line of columns. Filmmaker Brady Corbet's film is gorgeous conceptually, dizzying in its savagery, truly a monumental achievement.
I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE OF DANIEL BLUMBERG'S "SEARCH PARTY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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