Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%
Print this page
Film

The Brutalist

Brady Corbet’s pursuit of historical hinge points
Universal Pictures
by •
ABR Arts • 21 January 2025
Film

The Brutalist

Brady Corbet’s pursuit of historical hinge points
Universal Pictures
by •
ABR Arts • 21 January 2025
Adrien Brody as László Tóth in The Brutalist
Adrien Brody as László Tóth in The Brutalist

Brady Corbet made his first film, The Childhood of a Leader, when he was twenty-four. A former child actor, he came to directing after years as the Zelig of the arthouse, acting in films by auteurs such as Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier. When The Childhood of a Leader premièred at the Venice Film Festival in 2015, Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), serving as the president of the Orizzonti jury, likened Corbet to Orson Welles, an invocation so sacrilegious it was sure to provoke the ire of certain American critics, who have had Corbet in the gun ever since.

Leave a comment
Harry Windsor

Harry Windsor is a critic for The Hollywood Reporter and the former editor of Inside Film Magazine. His work has been published in The Australian, The Age, Overland and The Monthly.

Leave a comment
Harry Windsor

Harry Windsor is a critic for The Hollywood Reporter and the former editor of Inside Film Magazine. His work has been published in The Australian, The Age, Overland and The Monthly.

From the New Issue

You May Also Like

Comment (1)

  • Is it now passé to apply any kind of progressive or political critique to a film with such valorised male creators as The Brutalist? (Notwithstanding Mona Fastwold’s involvement.) How could Harry Windsor mention the moment when the camera lingers lovingly on a shipmate our hero will never see again, without mentioning that the same fond shipmate also urges him to ‘just fuck her’ when they are in the company of sex workers? Not even a passing comment about why our hero is watching lesbian porn, nor the way heterosexual relationships are characterised by coercive control? No mention of the homoeroticism in the film either, come to think of it. There are so many opportunities for a richer review of this film. Investigating misogyny or homophobia must be sacrilegious these days. What a way of preserving the myth of the male genius film maker. Let’s hope Brady Corbet doesn’t share Orson Welles’ attitude to women.
    Posted by Teresa Savage
    11 March 2025