By Bill Simons

As evidenced by the critical and popular success of the film “The Brutalist,” the horrors of the Shoah did not end with the closing of concentration camps. Reliant on neither flashbacks nor recapitulation, “The Brutalist,” nominated in seven categories, won three Oscars at the 2025 Academy Awards: Best Actor (Adrian Brody), Best Original Score (Daniel Blumberg) and Best Cinematography (Lol Crawley). “The Brutalist” unflinchingly conveys a terror that survivors could never forget, and that some future generation may obscure at humanity’s peril. 
László Tóth – the Hungarian-born, architect survivor of Buchenwald and the film’s émigré protagonist – is inhabited by actor Adrien Brody, who wears an authentic, tortured visage. In the New York City and Philadelphia of the late 1940s, impersonal, commercial sex and the twin addictions of drugs and alcohol imperfectly ameliorate misery inflicted by Tóth’s memories of past suffering. 
Generations of immigrants have passed by the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. A symbol of expectation and compassion, the bronze plaque on the pedestal of the statue features Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus”: “I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Looking up skyward, László first views a subverted upside-down Statue of Liberty, portent of ambiguities within the American Dream. 
Initially, László finds refuge in the U.S. with his congenial cousin Attila, who established a furniture business in Philadelphia and informs László that his wife Erzsébet and niece Zsófia are alive and in transit. Attila and his wife Audrey provide László with work in their store and a serviceable apartment attached to the business. However, after it is revealed to László, an observer of Jewish rituals, that Attila is an assimilationist and convert to Audrey’s Catholicism, serious disagreement between the cousins erupts. Moreover, László, who previously gained recognition for his architectural attainments in pre-war Budapest, experiences a rising contempt for Attila’s sloth and mediocrity. 
After mounting anxiety over their mutual survival, László and his wife Erzsébet are reunited in Pennsylvania, fueling both ecstasy and unbearable consciousness of their intentional placement in separate concentration camps. In addition, Erzsébet, suffering from osteoporosis, is sensitive about her appearance and initially wheelchair bound. A journalist and convert to Judaism who yearns to bear a child in the faith of her husband, Erzsébet is tormented by the fragility of identity. To ease his wife’s pain, László ritualistically administers an illicit drug to her. As Erzsébet, Felicity Jones channels an anguish and resolve well matched to Brody’s László. 
In the U.S., László and Erzsébet are also reunited with their niece Zsófia, remarkably rendered by Raffey Cassidy in a performance of nuance and gradual revelation. Despite a painful comprehension of the world around her, Zsófia employs muteness as a shield against the omnipresence of the Holocaust and her mother’s murder. Years later, Zsófia resumes speaking, marries and decides to make aliyah to Israel.
Harrison Lee Van Buren – played by Guy Pearce, Oscar nominated as actor in a supporting role – is magnificently maleficent as the antagonist of “The Brutalist,” creating a memorable screen villain. Muscularly built, handsome, an exemplar of Horatio Alger success, a civic-minded philanthropic industrialist, loving to his motherless adult son and daughter, and a patron to cultural creatives, he is capable of cruelty and deceit. Van Buren both personifies and debases the American dream.
Authentic in his devotion to his dying mother, Van Buren confides that he crushed his grandparents, revenge against their contempt for his out of wedlock birth. Moreover, Van Buren’s patronage of the arts nestles sharp edges.
To honor his mother’s memory, Van Buren commissions László to construct a magnificent cultural center in Doylestown, PA, on the outskirts of metropolitan Philadelphia. The center, built from quality materials, will host and promote theater, literature, visual arts, research, gymnastics and other cultural achievements. Above the structure, two large towers will create the symbol of a Christian cross, which will replicate above the edifice’s marble altarpiece when natural light enters the foundational chapel. To Van Buren, the naturally lighted cross represents the aesthetic of his mother’s establishment Protestantism and that of American civilization. 
At a deeper level, Harrison Lee Van Buren and his privileged son Harry Lee Van Buren regard the Doylestown cultural center as less a sacred bequest and more a bauble drawing attention to their wealth and status. Despite words to the contrary, neither of the Van Burens like nor respect László. His architectural talent makes László a valuable asset, but certainly not a social equal. As they walk an outside vista overlooking the uncompleted cultural center, Harry turns back to pointedly fix an eye on László, reminding him that he is “tolerated.” By context, “The Brutalist” implies that the most Jews can hope for in America is to be “tolerated.”
In the quarries of Carrara, Italy, assessing marble for the chapel altarpiece, Harrison Lee Van Buren brutally completes the lesson that son Harry has started with László. Angrily approaching László who is lying on the ground in an inebriated stupor, Harrison bellows that if the architect’s people – who are, of course, Jews – want respect, they should act worthy of it. Harrison then proceeds to rape László, not out of lust or homosexual desire, but to impose dominance and absolute control. 
Disrupting an elegant and intimate Van Buren dinner, Erzsébet, imbued with righteous anger, confronts the family with Harrison’s rape crime. Responding with compelling enigma, director Brady Corbet leaves open whether a disgraced Harrison found escape in flight or committed suicide. 
The appearance of the twin towers at the Doylestown community center evolves into a warning against oppression. In 1980, Zsófia, before a large and appreciative audience, delivers a tribute epilogue. The gathering, set in Venice, includes her still living Uncle László, whose now numerous architectural achievements have earned near universal respect. The film concludes with Zsófia’s final words: “No matter what others try to sell you, it is the destination, not the journey.” 
Despite the truths it conveys, “The Brutalist,” borrowing from accounts of multiple Jewish émigré architects, is not strictly autobiographical. Nor is it primarily concerned about the deconstruction of Art Deco aesthetics by the brutalist emphasis on utilizing premier materials and making the consistency between form and function apparent. Like the 1949 film “The Fountainhead,” “The Brutalist” aligns with the vision of the artist over the pretensions of the patron.
Epic in scope with 3.5-hour playtime, “The Brutalist” is now available through on-line video platforms. Although some viewers will find the presentation intense and disturbing, significance, content, and quality render “The Brutalist” a masterpiece.