How ‘The Brutalist’ built architect László Tóth — inside and out

The tortured architect in Brady Corbet’s film required a powerhouse performance from Adrien Brody. The Oscar winning actor and production designer Judy Becker share how they crafted the character – and his creations.

In a dark corner of a mansion in mid-century Pennsylvania, Erzsébet, a Hungarian immigrant rebuilding her life in America, pores over the contents of a desk. Scattered across it are sketches and technical drawings for a civic building, a grand folly designed by her husband László, for the wealthy patron whose home they now share. “What are you doing?” László says, walking in. “I’m looking at you,” his wife replies. Years later that building is incomplete, though stands tall in its creator’s mind. A second chance to finish the job presents itself. “Promise me you won’t let it drive you mad?” Erzsébet pleads. Even as László promises he won’t, his voice betrays him. The madness — the obsession — is already there, deep within his marrow. Director Brady Corbet’s film “The Brutalist,” a vast and imposing portrait of fictional architect László Tóth, a Holocaust survivor starting over in the United States, has already achieved near-universal acclaim. A Venice Film Festival winner and Oscar contender, including for Corbet and the movie’s lead actor Adrien Brody, it is both a new American epic and cinematic throwback, running over three-and-a-half hours, plus an intermission , and shot on VistaVision (a film stock which hasn’t been used by an American movie since 1961). The thrust of the movie is Tóth’s commission to design a public institute for industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Tóth, a notable Jewish architect in Europe before World War Two, was interned in a concentration camp and relocates to America in 1947 at the start of the film. Once there, he learns his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) has survived the camps too, and longs to be reunited. Van Buren can assist with this, and help Tóth revive his career, but their relationship and its power imbalance comes at great personal cost. Corbet’s film, written with his partner Mona Fastvold, required not one but two people to embody Tóth: as well as Brody, production designer Judy Becker was charged with imagining then constructing the architect’s work. “I am fortunate to have an understanding of that immigrant experience and the many parallels of an artist’s journey,” said Brody in a video interview with CNN.