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I will begin with a plot synopsis. The Brutalist is an epic account of the turbulent relation between a fictional émigré Hungarian architect and concentration camp survivor, László Tóth (Adrian Brody), and his rich American patron, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Set during the late 1940s and '50s in Pennsylvania, where Tóth has joined Atilla, a cousin from Hungary who owns a Philadelphia furniture design company, the narrative proper begins when the cousins contract with Van Buren's son to design a library for his father. Initially outraged by the disarray of construction, Van Buren abruptly changes his mind when he learns of Tóth's already established reputation as an architect in Europe, and sees the completed library praised in a magazine article.
Van Buren then hires Tóth to design and supervise the construction of a regional community center, which Tóth conceives in an austerely geometrical, Bauhaus-influenced style, free of external or internal ornament. A freight train derailing and exploding nearly bankrupts Van Buren's company, but the building project is eventually renewed.
Prior to the groundbreaking of the construction, Tóth is reunited with his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and their niece, Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), from whom he'd been separated during the Holocaust. The complexities of their reunion are poignantly depicted. Finally, during an episode in Carrara, Italy, where Tóth and Van Buren go to inspect marble to be used in the center, the patron violently assaults the architect. Once back in Pennsylvania, Van Buren and his family are confronted by Erzsébet, and Van
Buren mysteriously disappears. The film concludes with an epilogue in Venice in 1980, where Tóth's buildings are celebrated.
As a narrative on a grand scale, the action of The Brutalist is driven by the powerful motives of the two principal characters, which touch the extremities of artistic aspiration and philanthropic and social ambition, on the one hand, and p