For Adrien Brody, his role in The Brutalist is more than an opportunity to win awards, though he has already done that. The film, which follows an architect who flees postwar Europe for the United States, hits close to home.
“I definitely have an intimate understanding of the immigrant experience, as my mother is a Hungarian refugee,” Brody told Yahoo Entertainment. “My grandparents and my mother fled Budapest in 1956 and came to America with hopes and dreams.”
Like his character, László Toth, Brody’s mom dedicated her life to “trying to leave behind something of great significance.”
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“Her experiences in the past informed her work, and her experiences have influenced me and my understanding of life and my own connection to art and yearnings as an artist,” Brody said. “It’s generational. I feel really grateful to be able to … hopefully give a greater connection to the complexities of that struggle that so many people endure and that our ancestors have endured for our lives today.”
The movie, he said, speaks to the “paradox” of the immigrant experience. Though it begins in the year 1947, it’s still relevant today.
“One leaves behind all this hardship and oppression and comes to a nation such as the United States with all these hopes and dreams and assimilates and leaves behind a lot of that and becomes a member of the community and devotes themselves to it and yet is not still fully accepted or is looked down upon because they sound different, look different, have different beliefs or because of their name,” he said. “It’s just wrong, and it troubles me that it still exists.”
Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones in The Brutalist. (Lol Crawley/A24/Courtesy of Everett Collection)
Felicity Jones plays László’s wife, Erzsébet, who he’s forced to leave behind in Hungary after the Holocaust. She doesn’t appear until after the movie’s 15-minute intermission, which is built into its whopping 3-hour 35-minute runtime, but her presence looms large.
“In many ways, Erzsébet haunts the first half of the film, and you, as the audience, are put in the headspace of László, waiting for this person to arrive. When she does come off the train, your expectations are extraordinarily high,” Jones told Yahoo Entertainment. “There’s no pressure [for me] in that sense — you just turn up! … You realize in some ways that Erzsébet is a disruptor. We did a Q&A recently and someone described her as a badass, which I thought was a great way of putting it.”
Brody said the film is about more than just the immigrant experience.
“It is also about the artist’s journey, which is also quite long, and a struggle to not lose the flame and maintain your integrity and stand up for what you believe is right,” he said. “And to do the work you feel is worthy of leaving behind. All of that is relatable to me.”
Brody and Jones both raved about how the script’s quality made them want to be a part of the film. It was co-written by director Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold.
“I know actors are always banging on about good scripts, so it becomes meaningless,” Jones said. “It was just all there on the page — the intelligence of it, the ambition. … It was so huge, but at the same time it was anchored with these very humorous human interactions that underpin the whole film.”
The Brutalist is in select theaters Dec. 20, with a wide release planned for January.
