Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Brutalist And What's Making Us Happy

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

The new movie The Brutalist is earning a lot of Oscar buzz. Adrien Brody plays a fictional Hungarian architect who settles in America after his family is torn apart during World War II. It's a three-and-a-half-hour epic with much to say about assimilation, wealth, and the creative process. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The new movie The Brutalist is earning a lot of Oscar buzz. It stars Adrian Brody as a fictional Hungarian architect who settles in America after his family is torn apart during World War II. It's a three and a half hour epic with much to say about assimilation, wealth, and the creative process. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Stephen Thompson. Today we are talking about The Brutalist on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is our co-host, Aisha Harris. Hey, Aisha.

Hello, Stephen. It is a pleasure to have you all here. So The Brutalist is about a Jewish architect named Laslo Toth. He's played by Adrian Brody. Early in the film, he flees Europe for Pennsylvania. The film is split into two parts separated by an intermission. In the first, Laslo works his way up from nothing as a day laborer, but gets a big break when he encounters a wealthy and temperamental industrialist

named Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. He's played by Guy Pearce. Soon Harrison learns of Laslo's past work as an architect and enlists him to design a lavish community center. Talk about the details at home, which you'll be well compensated. And also, you'll be given a place here on the property to live and work. I think that residing here will allow you the time and the space to conceive of it properly. The project grows increasingly ambitious and complex.

And speaking of ambitious and complex, the second half of the book, Brutalist introduces many complications, including Laslow's reunion with his wife Erzabet, who has her own struggles to contend with. She's played by Felicity Jones. Taken as a whole, the film tells an ambitious story about the American dream, not to mention the perils of making art on the whims of the capitalist system. That last part was no doubt of great interest to the film's director and co-writer Brady Corbe, who made an ambitiously shot epic for only about $10 million, and still spent years securing the financing. The film is in theaters now.

Aisha, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of the brutalist? Well, you just touched on right now what, for me, was probably the most fascinating thing about this, which is the push and pull of artistry and commerce. There have been so many stories about the quote-unquote American dream, about immigration to the U.S., especially in this period in the mid-century. And obviously there are great examples of this. There are more hackneyed versions of this. It is grandest ambitious, but it also feels very intimate. And I was really, really fascinated by this relationship between Laslo and Van Burenz Sr.

played by Guy Beers, just the way that that character of the rich, semi-benevolent giver of funds and also the creativity to create something, how that can all just be easily taken away from you. And what that means to someone who is not accepted by many of the people in the place that you were living now, what that means for your livelihood, also what that means for your creativity. And so I thought it just did a really good job of really getting into those details and feeling like a different kind of story about the American dream and about what it means to be an artist. So I really really liked this. And I think it earned every minute of its runtime. All right. How about you, Linda? Yeah, I really like this too. I would certainly agree with everything that Aisha just said. I also admired the fact that this is a film about art that people are incredibly passionate about that Laslo in particular is very passionate about. But it's not like a guy who writes show tunes or conducts a Philharmonic or writes the great American novel. Brutalist architecture is not something that automatically people kind of come to it wanting to enjoy it.

for the fun of how beautiful everything is, right? And that's not to say it's not beautiful. It's just to say it's not as kind of popular of a form necessarily. I don't think of myself as a big lover of brutalist architecture, but there are really some choices made in how the architecture projects are shot in this film that really lets you understand why people find them beautiful, why Laslo finds them beautiful. There's a moment when they first unveil kind of his first big project, which is this library that he builds for the Guy Pearce character. And they unveil these doors on the library shelves. And the way that they open is very simple, but it's extraordinarily elegant. And I think I sort of gasped at that moment. Yeah. It's beautiful.

And it's really simple. It's not something where you suddenly see something ornate that you could not have imagined anything so ornate. It's just the elegance of it. And that kind of thing really helped me kind of key into this form and what's beautiful about it. And so particularly as a movie about an artist, I really admired the fact that it goes for something that you may need to kind of discover the beauty of the art yourself as opposed to it being something that is kind of, I don't know, obviously likable to everyone. Yeah, I think that library scene is really effective for establishing not only how gifted he is, but also that mix of, as you say, elegance, but also practicality.

Yes. That it's elegance in pursuit of practicality that made so much sense to me as a total non-expert watching in the theater. One thing I really love about this film, we've seen a lot of kind of Oscar, season movies about, and I'm capitalizing here, great visionary men. You know, great visionary men throughout history, and we watch their story and their rise and their fall and then their reascendency. You know, this kind of typical historical epic arc we've seen play out over and over again, and they're almost always about real people.

And I think the fictionalization here, Laslo Taf is not a real architect. This story is not beholden to anything that actually. actually happen other than like just the world events that are used as its backdrop. But it uses this fictional story as a way of getting it something larger. And I think it's just such a, such an effective piece of art in that way without feeling hidebound the way some of these historical epics do. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that this movie cost $10 million to make. Yeah. Because it looks so much more expensive. And it's so ambitious. It's so sweeping. It's basically two movies stacked together and separated by an intermission. And those two movies are

tonally pretty different. Watching this film, it really does feel like you're watching two movies and not just because of the length, right? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, also the $10 million of it all also comes down to the fact that, again, as you've already noted, Stephen, this took several years, I think seven years to make approximately. And Corbe has talked about this. He gave a pretty extensive interview in the Hollywood Reporter about these exact themes of like how he's this isn't a for-profit thing like very few directors are in the top 1% or have that same sort of like ability to just get things made I think about someone like Spike Lee who still has to occasionally like raise money like for his projects and so when you see that and then you see

the parallels to what Laslo is doing in this film and the way he is like this movie definitely gets into even the financials of what it means for him to be creating this thing. A lot of, there's a lot of pressure to get it done by a certain time. There's also pressure to like something happens, catastrophic happens that sets them back. And so seeing those little details about like what it makes to actually create art. So few movies get into the details of the financials around these things. And it's impossible to ignore. Like you can't be an artist.

You couldn't devote your life to this without making sacrifices. And I think that that really comes through in this film and ways that I have not really seen in too many other pictures that try to talk about similar things. Yeah, there's a scene in this film where Laslo is essentially throwing a temper tantrum at someone who's been brought in to kind of consult and keep things on track and maybe on budget. He's just throwing this tantrum and he says something like everything that's cruel and stupid in the world is your fault. And that moment for me, I was like, wow, I have heard that howl. I have maybe made that howl in the direction of money people. To me, that scene really felt like a primal scream on behalf of so many people who've been involved in trying to make something against the pressures of budget and budgets that are controlled by people who do not share those artistic impulses. Right.

And I think the other thing is, you know, you mentioned, Stephen, the fact that it's not a real story. And I think one of the things that that did to my eye was the purpose of the film is not to burnish his legend or to say negative things. There's no sort of real public image of this person to build up or tear down to be fair to or not to be fair to. So you get a human being. And I think it's possible in this film to enormously admire what he does. And it's not until late in the film that I think they give you the full context of the relationship between his life and his art. And it's very moving when they do that. But it's also very possible for them to say, yes, you know, he was a passionate person who tried to make real art that he cared about in the face of this, you know, very, very punishing.

capitalist environment for art, and also the way that he behaved had consequences for other people. And sometimes he did things that were hurtful. And sometimes he took out his frustration on the wrong people. And sometimes he did make decisions that in retrospect, you know, other people in his life are able to say, well, what did you think was going to happen? The film doesn't seem to feel the same obligation to litigate his character. As I think you sometimes get when somebody is taking on a real person, people feel obligated to kind of get, well, you know, what's the real? Like, how good is this person versus how not good is this person?

No, no, no, no, no, no. This is just a fictional character, and you get out from under a little bit of that, I think. Well, I wanted to ask you guys what you thought of the performance. in this film. I mean, Adrian Brody is certainly giving this very, very sweeping and expansive performance. You've also got people like Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones. I could not find any flaws with any of the performances. I feel as though, especially Felicity Jones, who, if I'm going to be honest, I know I've seen her in movies, but she's never been, for me, someone who I'm like, oh, I'm excited to see her in a movie. And this is no shade to her. She just hasn't really stood out to me before. I think here the relationship between Erzibat and Laszlo is so fascinating to

see because they've spent so much time apart after experiencing these tragic events. And when they finally come back together, how they figure out how to try and be a couple again. And the sort of, it's not a happy reunion, right? It's a reunion that's tinged with like bitterness and sadness and distance that's been created. And I think that the two of them have. such good chemistry in that way and trying to figure out, okay, how do we become somewhat like what we might have been before all of these things happened? Because you can tell there was love there, but a war, a Holocaust, like all of these things weighs on you. And so I thought that these performances were really, really great. And I also think Guy Pearce, that character is

so fascinating because he is a rich, wealthy guy who actually, like, he is deeply envious of Laslo's arts, like the fact that he can be artistic. And yet he also knows I have all this power. So, like, that dynamic is just so fascinating to me. There is a moment in this film and you will know it. If you see the movie, where they kind of take the subtext about the Guy Pearce character's relationship to Laslo. And they take it and make it very, very literal. And I wasn't sure whether I needed that moment in order to understand that relationship. It felt like maybe that was a little too much kind of translating the subtext into text. But at the same time, it does really crystallize the trauma of Laslow's experience with the guy. And, you know, I think that the key to

that character and the way Guy Pearce plays him is to have him play the role in Laslo's life that he does without making him come on from the very beginning like Mr. Potter and its wonderful life, right? Because if you give that away at the beginning, you know, it's not compelling. But if you can understand how he really does seem to want to boost Laslo's art, and he really does seem to want to support the making of something beautiful. And he really does seem to want to support the family and how easy it is to kind of be taken under the wing of that kind of benevolent money person. I think the Adrian Brody performance as Laslow, you know, this performance could be candidly real, wrote and Oscarsie in different hands. I think he does a very good job

of maintaining the amount of control that you need for this character to be sympathetic in that we care about him and we understand the things that he has been through, but also can understand the negative parts of his choices and behaviors and what he does that contributes to his own problems in his own relationship. This is the kind of character structurally in a movie, in a historical drama about the American dream that can be, I guess, more heat than light, I would say. But I think in this case, He really, it's a very, very, it's a wonderful performance. I really, really enjoyed this performance from him.

And listen, we haven't even talked about this yet, but like, all hail the intermission, man. I thought that was so smart. I thought that was so smart. What did you guys think? Completely, completely agree. For one thing, that intermission is not only giving your bladder a rest. It's also separating these two very different halves that feel in some ways like two. very different movies. You know, one half is a more conventional, you know, kind of a story of

the American dream, right? It feels more fundamentally optimistic. And then that second half becomes so much more complicated and so much more curdled. I agree with Linda, by the way, that I think there are some turns in this film late that I didn't find entirely satisfying. But on a whole, I really, really appreciated the entire. experience. I go back and forth on that moment you're talking about Linda because, yeah, it is kind of very literal seeing the monster after it being underwater for a while and it's like, oh, this, like, okay, what are we doing here? It's a little bit finally seeing Jaws for sure. Exactly. But I also think, for me, at least, not that it came out of nowhere, but I was kind of like shocked

that it went there. And then I was like, well, you know what? This is a movie about brutalist architecture or something that like I can't say that I know that much about but there's something very plain. Yeah, yeah. Not plain in like a bad way, but it's like making plain like this is what it is. It's straightforward at least kind of to the naked eye. Right. And so this felt to me a way of like making plain all of the subtext in a way that like for

me at least paid off. There's another moment where Harry, who was played by Joe Alwyn, he's the son of Guy Pearce's character. It's very tense. And he says at one point to Laslo, he's like, Laslo, we tolerate you. And that little moment where he just has to like put him in, like just remind him. Like that to me strikes the balance.

This is the crux or like a crux of this movie and what it's trying to say about never feeling quite accepted regardless of how much you ingratiate yourself to these people. I did want to throw out, I don't know if y'all were studying the score as intently as I was. But I was great. Really, really found myself totally smitten by the music in this film. Daniel Bloomberg does the score. And as much as this movie is kind of two movies stacked on top of each other under a trench coat, this score has like almost a score within a score. There's so many kind of different sounds and styles working in this film in ways that are like subtle but also constantly

kind of grabbing at you, I think it is a beautifully scored film. As gorgeous as this film is to listen to, it's also the first American film shot entirely on VistaVision since 1961. And if you see this film, like, on a really nice print of this film, on a really nice screen, you know, on this gorgeous film stock, and you just think, okay, you're just showing off. Like, there might as well be a card at the top of this film that says this film was made for only $10 million. Because there is an element of like, look at what we did for relative pittance. And you can see thought that went into everything visual in the film, including the titles. The titles are really interesting. They're done in a way I've never seen before.

And I've seen titles done in a lot of different ways. But they have a specificity. They relate to the theme of the film. You can just tell that everything that was going to happen in this movie, was thought through carefully by somebody. Well, there's a really great scene. I made a note of it while I was watching because it just really stood out to me. It actually almost felt like I was looking at one of those like oil paintings from the 50s

where Attila played by Alessandro Navola, who is Laslo's cousin. They just had like a very not great thing happened. And Attila's really mad at Laslo. And they're in the room that Laslo was staying in. And it's like really, really dark in there. But like Laszl's face is pretty well lit from like the light that's being cast. Yes. But then Attila, when it cuts to Attila's face, his face is cast in shadow.

And there's like light spilling in behind him, but you can't actually see his face. And it's just, I was just like, this is gorgeous. This is beautiful. It's great. It looks great. I remember that scene too. Yeah. It's like, yeah, the brutalist architecture.

But this scene in this tiny little bedroom was just floored me. Well, I think we can all agree, first of all, very good movie. Second of all, very good movie to be made on a budget. Clearly, the lesson here is that filmmakers should have to work under tremendous constraints. Absolutely. Don't give them money. Also, a lesson more intermissions in your really long movies. If you're going to make a really long movie, stick your intermission in there, man.

We won't be mad. I've been begging this drum for years, and I'm so happy when someone takes heat of that. Yes. Highly recommend. All right, we want to know what you think about the Brutalist. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCHH and on Letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link in our episode description.

Up next, what is making us happy this week? Now it's time for our favorite segment of this week and every week. What's making us happy this week? Aisha Harris. How about you, bud? Well, I'm going in a completely opposite direction of the Brutalists and into Indiana Jones territory, but not quite. All right.

I've been enjoying rewatching a nostalgic piece of 90s kids TV from my era of the original Legends of the Hidden Temple, which aired on the Nickelodeon channel when I was a kid. It was hosted by Kirk Fogg. What a name. This was a show where you had teams that included the purple parrots and blue barracudas who would compete in trivia games and then physical games at a chance to win prizes and then after the teens were all winnowed down, the last team left had to make it through this maze and retrieve a pendant.

That's the sort of Indiana Jones-ishness of it all. Retrieve a pendant and then make it back out again without getting caught by the temple guards. A little culturally appropriative, absolutely, but so is Indiana Jones. And, of course, there was Olmec, the giant, like talking face, like an orb sort of who, you know, gave clues and guided the kids. It's just fun. I enjoy having a little bit of nostalgia. It's a show I haven't really thought about it in a long time.

And I'm happy to say that Legends of the Hidden Temple is streaming on Paramount Plus, which is where I am watching it. Thank you, Aisha Harris. Linda Holmes, what's making you happy this week, buddy? I watched the James A.caster special James A.caster, Heckler's Welcome. Heckler's Welcome is from a series of shows that he did, a tour that he did, where, as suggested, heckling was allowed. there were rules mostly for him about how he would respond and what he would say back and not say back. And so the result is that all of the shows were different. He conducts himself physically in a really interesting way on stage.

He carries the mic in an unusual way. He paces around the stage in an unusual way. The special is edited really creatively. It's hard to explain unless you actually watch it. But mostly, it's this special where he is kind of wrestling with his relationship with audiences and how he started caring about audiences and what audiences think and whether or not he really enjoys doing comedy and whether he really enjoys that part of it and how he feels about audiences. He is somebody who I always want to listen to. And this is a great special. James A. Caster,

heckler's welcome. You can find it on Max. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Linda Holmes. Well, last year, Taylor Swift released the tortured poets department. This is not what is making me happy. Where she put out like 16 songs and then like two hours later, she released another 15 songs. Well, last month, Siza finally released. I almost picked this. Siza released an expanded edition of her late 2022 album SOS. And this expanded edition is called Lana.

And it expands a 23 song album in 2020. with 38 song album. And to me, the secret for how to do this right is do what Siza did and wait two years. It feels like its own album, but it also feels like an extension of SOS, which is already this gorgeous, unwieldy creature in its own right. And to suddenly have 15 new Siza songs dropped very unexpectedly, even though she had been teasing it for a really, really long time, has been a real treat kind of at the beginning of a new year to suddenly get to dig into a new batch of songs.

There's one surprisingly really sunny, beautiful track on this record called BMF. Let's hear a little bit of it. Siza broods so well, but it's nice to have this song that reminds you just how flexible and how versatile she is. So that's Siza's new expansion of SOS. It's called Lana, and it's available absolutely everywhere. And that is what is making me happy this week. If you want links for what we recommended, plus some more recommendations, sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash pop culture newsletter.

That brings us to the end of our show, Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. This episode was produced by Liz Metzker and edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katzif. Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.