The Brutalist: does the end justify the means?
I inevitably thought of King Vidor’s Fountainhead, which I’d loved when I saw it in my late teens before better understanding what Ayn Rand was saying (tldr: pesky society and democracy standing in the way of individualists / wannabe dictators). I maybe should rewatch it, the lone uncompromising ‘genius’ is an entire political project in the US now, taking a chainsaw to a civil sector collectively crafted over decades. There’s of course parallels between Howard Rourke and Tóth – the uncompromising triumph of the self – but the difference in the Brutalist strikes me that the relationship with the wife is everything. It’s not a marriage of equals, it is ‘woman supports man’s drive to manifest an absolutely singular vision’. Yet she’s also his saviour and better half, who unlocks him from himself, and here Rourke seems the closer analog to Musk than Tóth.
László and Erzsébet’s stressed but concrete love reinforces the rest of the story and is enough to suggest this could be a Great Film. It’s not about buildings or architects or post-WWII America or Jewishness – but a love that survives multiple challenges. There’s still, however, a few flourishes – some monologues that linger like late Tarantino, and could benefit from a trim, a few flourishes in the final scenes that seem more than is needed. Still, it is immensely confident – you can see how director Brady Corbet as an actor got to watch Haneke and von Trier at work, carrying some of that absolute self belief as an artist. This is obviously reflected in Tóth architect, and perhaps drives part of Corbet’s interest in the story.
Where I was left somewhat alienated, but also deep in thought, was towards the end (so stop reading this next three paragraphs if you’ve not seen the film but plan to). The 80s-hewed epilogue message is ‘it’s the destination not the journey’ and I found this counter-point to conventional wisdowm challenging. It makes sense in the context of architecture – perhaps even filmmaking: the construction is messy and maybe unpleasant, but the artwork endures intact forever after. However, there’s a parallel story in this film about Israel, and doing Aliyah (the process of a Jewish person moving to Israel).
The film’s conclusion seems to be presented as “we’re not welcome in America, we must go to Israel, even though we’re not very religious”. I can see why at a time when otherwise liberal voices call for the destruction of Israel over its war crimes (but not America, UK, Turkey – or a similarly aged Pakistan), we are reminded of the backdrop of race-hate that accompanied Israel’s creation. Many holocaust survivors concluded the same as Erzsébet; but many didn’t. My distant cousin Hugo Wistreich describes in his memoirs returning to to Poland as a teenager after surviving a Siberian Soviet prison camp, only to be met with pogroms from Poles trying to ‘finish the job’; his friend watches her father shot in front of her after he’d survived the war. I can completely understand how a journey to Israel was so compelling. Hugo describes how on his first visit there being stunned to discover Jews aren’t lesser beings, but capable of being anyone from the policeman to the Prime Minister – something he’d not believed before. He makes the most moving case for the existence of Israel I’ve ever read. But Hugo settled in America like millions, and thrived there.
The conclusion of this film, and this message of ‘destination not the journey’ excludes this experience, and assimilationists like the rest of my Jewish family (who were Bundists, not Zionists). If Corbet was Jewish I’d not question this, but he isn’t. A message of ‘we’ll never be welcome, that’s why we need our own country’ feels incomplete at a time when both antisemitism is escalating and American Jews are challenging their relationship to Israel. None of this negates the film as a whole, which is obviously a major accomplishment. Furthermore, accompanying this ‘end justifies the means’ message with Tóth reinforcing the myth-of-the-lone-genius – which could be argued by any who justify brutality in pursuit of peace. It’s a worldview relevant to auteurs and ‘move fast break things’ Silicon Valley tech barons, but seems dated and impractical in the every-day world where taking a chainsaw to something broken, Musk-style, is a sign of madness, not genius. Most film auteurs will confess their strength is only as good as their team of artists and actors, and how well they work together. Still, Corbet is smart enough to show the solitude of this path – we aren’t shown Tóth happy at the end, just vindicated. [spoilers end]
All that said, I want to watch the film again in a year or two to see if it shrinks or grows. There’s a counter-intuitive quality to László and Attila’s relationship I don’t often see on film – so much is wrong, yet it endures somehow; it’s also thrilling to watching someone carry a vision through with such passion and perfectionism. The building gets built! Art about artists can be a bit intoxicating, especially when shot so magnificently. I’m just still not sure how strong the foundations on which it stands are, which will take time to measure.
