Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold penned down the story of The Brutalist in 7 years; the film was shot in about 5 years—and the film went on to receive 10 Oscar nominations. Here’s the story of how they made it all happen.
The Brutalist Is A Brutal Portrait of The Life of An Immigrant—László Tóth
The film is about the life of a Hungarian man named László Tóth—portrayed in a way that’s beautifully brutal by Adrien Brody.
Throughout 3 chapters of his life, we get to witness all the transitions, struggles, growth, and breaks of László for a stunning duration of 3 and a half hours. The runtime of the film may feel a bit heavy to some, but if you watch it, you’ll realize how well this timeframe is filled up with life, heart, and soul.
What’s truly beautiful about this is because of this duration we get to see László for almost everything he is. An architect, a husband, an architect, and a man with a dream.
The writers worked on the script together for 7 years.
Part of the reason why The Brutalist is so good, rich, and all-engulfing is because Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold took their sweet time to make it.
The couple—who started out as friends, turned to writing partners, and then life partners—took 7 years to write the film’s story. The two drew inspiration from personal life experiences and firsthand encounters, creating a story that is raw, honest, truthful, and larger than life in every way possible.
Brady Corbet, who always wanted to create a movie of this scale and to tell a story about architecture and the immigrant experience, is closely connected to these two topics.
Filming The Brutalist Was No Easy Feat
Brady Corbet admitted how while writing the film, they wanted to go all out—and that’s exactly what they did. They didn’t let the thoughts or worries of how everything would be executed while filming hold them back.
Let’s be honest, making a film about a form of architecture that hasn’t existed in almost a century isn’t all that simple. Hence, the film and crew decided to carefully pick and choose the filming locations that still had some remnants of brutalist architecture.
To represent that period of time, they had to adapt a filming style that fit that timeline. To do this, the film was shot with VistaVision. Some of the more complex and practically impossible buildings were built by production and set designers using various tricks.
Of course, this was all paired with the brilliant cinematography skills of Lol Crawley and the iconic background score composed by Daniel Blumberg, adding a lot of depth and emotion to the film’s story.
The Brutalist Is Not Your Average Movie
While the movie is iconic in a lot of ways, it’s in no way a ‘traditional’ film that users are used to watching in modern-day cinema.
For starters, it’s a period film set in the mid-19th century and features a type of architecture that doesn’t even exist anymore—and it features themes that are heavy and often unexplored and leaves you with a lot of food for thought.
If you’re a fan of good cinema, like heavy themes, and want to see a masterclass in acting, then you’ll definitely enjoy The Brutalist, which you can check out on JioHotstar.