THE BIGGER PICTURE

A defiant masterpiece at loggerheads with conventional film industry wisdom, The Brutalist’ is an Oscar-tipped epic that could save Hollywood if only we’d let it, writes Xan Brooks

- Xan Brooks

There's nothing Hollywood likes better than a bumptious young director with talent to burn - at least until the world turns and puts them out of business. This year's model is 36-year-old Brady Corbet, whose new film, The Brutalist, a 215-minute period epic shot on defunct film stock, has become the unlikely frontrunner in the 2025 Oscar race.

Corbet’s a relatively fresh face, only three features into his directing career. But he’s also a throwback, or a holdout, an oldschool independent filmmaker following in the footsteps of his idols. Critics compare him to the auteurs of Seventies American cinema, some of whom are inconveniently still alive and making movies of their own.

Corbet, let’s assume, is aware that success has a shelf life and that every good work of art is just a shuffle step from disaster. The Brutalist, after all, is a film about artistic struggle, casting Adrien Brody as driven, brilliant Laszlo Toth, who wants to build a modernist masterpiece on a Pennsylvania hilltop. Officially speaking, Laszlo Toth is a Hungarian-born architect, just off the boat in 1950s America. But he could just as easily be a struggling filmmaker from modern-day Brooklyn. The Brutalist invites us to feel his pain as he tangles with his backers, stays true to his vision and tests the patience of his otherwise doting wife. “Promise me you won’t let it drive you mad,” she pleads.

Corbet, perhaps tellingly, co-wrote