The Brutalist (2024) on Netflix
László Tóth, a Jewish architect from Hungary who survived the Holocaust, reaches America. A wealthy industrialist hires him to build a community center, and his wife Erzsébet joins him.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.2/10163,673 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
László Tóth, a Jewish architect from Hungary who survived the Holocaust, reaches the United States alone. In Philadelphia he stays with his cousin, who runs a furniture business. They take a job renovating a library in the mansion of industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren, but Harrison disapproves of the surprise and Harry refuses to pay. László leaves the house. Later Harrison seeks him out, pays the debt, and commissions him to build a large community center; Harrison also provides a lawyer who arranges for László's wife and niece to immigrate.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Brutalist (2024)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Brutalist was shot using VistaVision, a large-format process developed in the 1950s, and was the first film shot in that format since One-Eyed Jacks in 1961.
- Its use of VistaVision sparked a revival of industry interest in the format: Paul Thomas Anderson used it on One Battle After Another, followed by Yorgos Lanthimos's Bugonia, Alejandro González Iñárritu's Digger, Greta Gerwig's Narnia: The Magician's Nephew and M. Night Shyamalan's Remain.
- Editor Dávid Jancsó said A.I. tools from the Ukrainian company Respeecher were used to improve the authenticity of Adrien Brody's and Felicity Jones's Hungarian dialogue, after both actors struggled with Hungarian phonemes despite dialect coaching.
- Shooting was scheduled to start in Poland that December but was postponed by COVID restrictions, then delayed further by the war in Ukraine, several pregnancies, including that of lead actress Felicity Jones, and deaths in the families of cast and crew.
- László Tóth was inspired by real architects and designers: Marcel Breuer, Paul Rudolph, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy, Louis Kahn and Ernő Goldfinger.
- Budapest and the surrounding Hungarian countryside doubled as 1950s Philadelphia and rural Pennsylvania, while the Andrássy Castle in Tóalmás stood in for the Van Buren mansion.
- Corbet and Daniel Blumberg wanted continuous music for the film's first 10 minutes, so the opening sequence was choreographed and shot to Blumberg's demos.
