MOVIE NEWS – When the big studios are able to spend 200 million dollars on a production that might fail in the first week in theaters, Brady Corbet put together a three and a half hour film from 6-8 million, which he brought to this year’s Venice festival he won the Silver Lion for best director. This is probably just the beginning of the triumphant march: according to critics, The Brutalist is one of the best films of the year.
The Brutalist can also be said to be a Hungarian film to a certain extent. It was mostly filmed in Budapest, its heroes are Hungarian Jews who moved to America, the main character is Hungarian-born, Oscar winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist), and according to the director it was possible to get away with the production with such a low budget – while the production is gigantic in size – because you can always count on the Hungarians. Corbet believes that filming in Hungary is not particularly cheap, but the costs are still far from what would have been paid in America.
“We were able to film in a country where things really cost as much as they should normally cost,” the film magazine DeadLine quotes the director as saying. Corbet alluded to the fact that in Hungary foreign film productions are lured by extraordinary tax incentives, which allow them to operate cost-effectively.
This situation is beneficial for Hungarians, because foreign productions leave a lot of money in the country despite the discounts, in addition, they employ highly qualified local professionals, using the local infrastructure. It is also a point not to be underestimated that the foreign productions shot here take the good name of the Hungarian film industry to the world and attract new large-scale films here. (See Dune.)
As for the domestic professionals: The Brutalist is edited by Dávid Jancsó, the son of one of the greatest Hungarian directors, Miklós Jancsó, who already worked on Corbet’s previous film,
em>The childhood of a leaderwas also the editor. (But Dávid Jancsó is also the editor of The Ape Man), one of the most surprising and disturbing action film sensations of recent years.)
A brutalist‘s hero is László Tóth, the Hungarian architect of Jewish origin (Adrien Brody), who after the horrors of the Second World War in America he wants to start a new life with his wife Elizabeth (Oscar nominee Felicity Jones – The Story of Everything). The Hungarian architect’s brutalist style is highly valued by an eccentric billionaire (Guy Pearce), so he becomes his patron, but this relationship ends up causing more suffering than benefit.The Brutalist examines whether the insane history of the twentieth century can be processed with the power of art, and how long the creative mind can remain sovereign in the attraction of money and power, while conjuring one of the most beautiful love stories of recent years on canvas. p>
(The Brutalist – domestic release: January 23, 2025.)
