There is an infamous barb — attributed to both Martin Mull and Frank Zappa — regarding the absurdity of music criticism: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” In the slow-but-steadily building and engrossing film The Brutalist, we have a rare case of wide release “movie making about architecture,” and various layers, angst, and facets therein.
Yes, director and co-writer Brady Corbet’s film grapples with various themes throughout, including post WWII anti-Semitism, the alienation of displacement, and power struggles between artists and manipulative patrons, and between poverty and pompous affluence. Yet what makes the film so unique is its focus on the powers and problems of architecture.
Specifically, the ghostly but literally concrete protagonist in the story is a massive showpiece community center/chapel on a hilltop in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a multi-year project subject to delays, mental anguish, and even sexual predator subplots. After all of the sweeping torment, difficult birth, and human toll of the project, the finally completed structure stands tall, with sentinel-like Modernist majesty on the hill, as architecture can.