The relationship between Brady Corbet and the Venice Film Festival is symbiotic. In Laguna, he broke through very young as an actor with Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin. He brought to Venice the three films he directed, The Childhood of a Leader, Vox Lux, and The Brutalist, which earned him the Silver Lion for Best Director and then three Golden Globes (Best Dramatic Motion Picture, Best Director and Best Dramatic Actor Adrien Brody), 9 BAFTA nominations and 10 Oscar nominations.
The Brutalist is a titanic piece of art
Written, as always, with Corbet’s wife, Mona Fastvold. The film is about the existential and artistic odyssey of László Toth, a brilliant Hungarian architect who wants to rebuild his life and career in the United States after surviving the concentration camp. He meets a benefactor magnate who commissions him to design and build a cultural centre named after his mother. It is the beginning of his American Dream and his nightmare as well.
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Starring Adrien Brody, who returns to the levels of absolute excellence of The Pianist, with which he won an Oscar, the film also stars Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce. I had a pleasant conversation with Brady Corbet in London about the genesis and development of the movie.
The Brutalist is your third movie. Vox Lux was about the life of a musician, while in The Childhood of a Leader, you dealt with something that, in a very cynical way, could be considered art—evil art, of course. Why architecture this time?
I usually start with a theme and a period. Vox Lux is a contemporary historical film which began in 1999 and ends in 2017. The Childhood of a Leader is the chronicle of the Paris Peace Conference, where US President Woodrow Wilson inadvertently paved the way for the fascist uprising through the Treaty of Versailles and the redefinition of so many borders that wreaked havoc and chaos in Europe for the next twenty years. I had wanted to work on a film about post-war architecture for a long time, and it seemed natural to do something about Brutalism and the way post-war architecture and psychology are intrinsically linked.
Brutalism was born in the UK in the 1950s, but the idea of the film is essential. Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountain of Youth is the main inspiration for The Brutalist, but there are also influences from Hollywood classics, starting with George Stevens’ The Giant. What balance have you found between contemporaneity and the past?
As far as Brutalism is concerned, it’s true that the first buildings were built in the UK in the 1950s, but the movement was born out of the Bauhaus; its origins go back to Walter Gropius and all those concepts explored as early as the 1920s. The character of Laszlo is based on Marcel Breuer, who designed the Whitney Museum in New York. As far as technique is concerned, the film was shot in Vista Vision, a large 35mm format created in the 1950s.
BRUTALISM ARCHITECTURE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
The Brutalist is about modernity versus antiquity, which is why it ends in 1980 with scenes shot in Digibeta. I like having all the tools at my disposal; I think all filmmakers should have them because shooting on celluloid instead of digital is like watercolour and oil painting. The issue is immersive. I struggle with most period films shot with digital cameras unless there is a specific reason, like Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest.
I wonder if audiences realise how close we are to losing film as an option altogether. Fuji went bankrupt years ago, and for Kodak, film production at the Rochester plant is very expensive. Filmmakers must protect it; I am not saying it is the only option. People should do what they want, but I constantly hear from filmmakers, even established ones, that they cannot afford to shoot on film.
I have to find out who their line producer is. If I can afford to shoot on film, I assure you that anyone can. My first film had a budget of three million dollars and was shot on film; my wife’s previous film had a budget of just under four million dollars and was shot on film. You can sacrifice a day or two of shooting to get the budget; for me, it is worth it.
I agree. Even I have problems with the grain of digital. It’s nothing like the rendering of film in the sixties and seventies. The colours are different, not to mention the black-and-white.
Absolutely, digital black and white feels like it has no saturation. It’s not black and white; it’s grey, and I can’t get my head around that. Film projection is an experience that we have to preserve. Digital projection is an easy option, it’s just a matter of sending a file, it’s not a physical object, and that’s the only way it makes sense to make it available in small towns that don’t have film projectors.
But in big cities, most cinemas have access to at least a 35mm projector, if not a 70mm projector, which is complex and challenging; it’s a tough job to screen 70mm. The DCP is a giant laptop. It’s like film prints are the film, whereas DCPs are a copy of the film, which is the difference between a painting and a lithograph.
László Toth is you because making films in 2024 is like building a dream building in the 1950s.
That’s right, László is me and my wife. We wrote this film together as a kind of exorcism, a way to channel a lot of our frustrations about the process of making a film. Of course, it’s not all about that, but it is partly. You are correct that there is a link between the construction of a building and the amount of infrastructure and personnel required to make a film. You can’t do it alone, and I wish I could. If I could, I would do hundreds of works in my lifetime, but unfortunately, and frustratingly, I would probably only make seven or ten films because they take years to make and require so much physical effort.
It’s not a healthy process. It is incredibly stressful, especially if you are empathetic and feel responsible for the crew. You work twelve to seventeen hours a day when you shoot a film. The figures bear this out: the life expectancy of members of the Directors Guild of America is 57 years. I’m 36, and my blood pressure doesn’t exactly do what it should. In these projects, you constantly struggle with work-life balance; you sacrifice much of your income and time with your family.
Fortunately, next year, I can stop for a year and stay home with my daughter; I am looking forward to it. Our work has peaks and valleys, but in general, it’s about putting things together, breaking them down, and putting them back together. And nowadays it’s as tricky as ever to make films, especially a film like this one that has almost everything you’re not supposed to make: three and a half hours in black and white and in VistaVision. I think it fulfilled all my wishes. Maybe I can make the next one in 70 mm.