Venice Film Festival: The Brutalist epic close to home for its star Adrien Brody

VENICE — The Brutalist, the epic tale of a Hungarian immigrant who flees the horrors of World War II to rebuild his life in the United States, proved a perfect fit for its star Adrien Brody.

Speaking ahead of the movie’s premiere at the on Sunday, Mr. Brody said his mother escaped from Hungary and moved across the Atlantic, echoing the journey of the character he plays, a modernist architect named Laszlo Toth.

“Much like Laszlo, (my mother) started again and lost her home and pursued a dream of being an artist,” said Mr. Brody, who won an Oscar for Best Actor for his role in the 2002 Holocaust film The Pianist.

“I understand a great deal about the repercussions of that on her life and her work as an artist,” he told reporters.

Directed by Brady Corbet, The Brutalist shows the Jewish Lazlo struggling to survive in the United States, where a wealthy, arrogant industrialist hires him to create a monumental project that takes over both their lives.

After years of being stuck in her native Hungary, Mr. Brody’s wife Erzsebet, played by British actress Felicity Jones, manages to join him as he threatens to go off the rails.

“Underpinning the story, and particularly for Erzsebet and Laszlo, is this idea of love and the greatest love stories always come with urgency,” Ms. Jones said.

The film, which delivers a sweeping vision of post-war trauma and creative torment, runs at 215 minutes, a challenge for some as attention spans dwindle and to attract audiences.

But Mr. Corbet said filmmakers needed scope.

“This film does everything that we are told we are not allowed to do. I think it’s quite silly actually to have a conversation about runtime because that’s like criticizing a book for being 700 pages versus 100 pages,” he said.

To re-create the look of films from the last century, Mr. Corbet shot the movie on 70 mm celluloid, eschewing the tricks of digital cinema.

“We did our best to try and evoke a bygone style of filmmaking by not falling back on a lot of those (modern) crutches,” Mr. Corbet said, adding that the film had taken seven years to complete.

It feels like a biopic of someone who existed, but Mr. Corbet said in reality not a single modernist architect from a war-ravaged Europe managed to make the sort of mark in the United States that Mr. Brody’s character achieves.

“The film, it’s dedicated to them, the artists that didn’t get to realize their visions,” he said.

The Brutalist is one of 21 movies competing for the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, which will be awarded on Sept. 7. — Reuters