Photo: A24
Photo: A24
Honouring his heritage'There is a humanity in storytelling'

The brutality of the post-war immigrant experience

For Adrien Brody, The Brutalist is a story deeply tied to his heritage, immigration, and resilience. He spoke to The AJN about the award-winning film.

For Adrien Brody, portraying an immigrant fleeing persecution and trying to rebuild a lost life in America spoke deeply to his personal story. His mother, the exceptional photographer Sylvia Plachy, was born in Budapest, much like Brody’s character László Tóth in The Brutalist. She too fled Hungary. She too was a refugee, emigrating to the United States, starting again to pursue her dream of becoming an artist.

It’s a story that will speak to many.

“It’s very meaningful for me to be able to help share this time in history,” Adrien Brody told The AJN during a global press junket roundtable for The Brutalist. “It’s meaningful to tell a story of this journey of predominately, at that time, there was a tremendous amount of Jewish immigration and creative people coming to America – or elsewhere – to flee persecution, but also to have a life where their contributions are valued.”

The Brutalist – which recently took home Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama, and Best Director, tells the story of László Tóth who survives the Holocaust and moves to America to rebuild – both his life and his career. While Tóth is fictional, his experiences mirror those of key artists of the brutalist movement, including Louis Kahn, who designed synagogues and Holocaust memorials and Marcel Breuer, the Hungarian Jewish designer who was forced to renounce his Judaism when he lived in Germany.

“What is also quite touching to me is that when Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold wrote the script, they were very moved by architecture and that time in history, and they tried to find someone like László to draw from, who had survived the Nazi occupation and who was able to carry on with their work from the Bauhaus era. And there were no survivors,” he explained. “What this film speaks to, for me at least, is symbolically how much is lost creatively in this world. And so, it was even more meaningful to tell the story about the great potential that has been extinguished.”

The Brutalist, with a running time of over three and a half hours, doesn’t feel like a lengthy movie. In fact, it draws you into the characters, their stories, their lives, and their failures, and within what seems like a moment, the lights are coming up in the cinema. For Brody, this made bringing Tóth to life even more enchanting. “Oftentimes you jump into the action and things happen in a story – but you don’t know the person you’re on the journey with. This film encompasses a 30-year span of one man’s life.”

Throughout the 30 years, you are privy to the complexity of Tóth. Brody explained that it’s part of what drew him to the film and the character. The film tackles many different topics including war, religion, trauma, power, sexuality, family dynamics, addiction and so much more.

“These are all very relevant human struggles that so many people are enduring in some capacity, whether it’s them personally or a family member. But they’re all very relatable, whether it’s an ancestral struggle, whether it’s racism or antisemitism, or being othered. It is relatable to, unfortunately, too many people in this contemporary world,” Brody told the roundtable. “There is a humanity in storytelling. And the beauty of it is that the protagonist is quite a flawed and real person, rather than one constructed to gain your affection or sympathies. I’m grateful for that in the sense that … it’s representative of all of us in a way. And I think that is timeless, whether we’re telling a historical film or a fictional depiction of a man from another era that’s born from many truths, it is steeped in reality.”

Photo: A24

There isn’t much chatter about what Tóth went through. His full experience as a Jew during the Holocaust is not fully revealed until the end of the film. But his Judaism takes centre stage throughout.

Towards the beginning of the film Tóth is depicted wearing his tallit in a shule service and attending a Yom Kippur later on, there is a voiceover telling listeners about the establishment of the State of Israel, Hebrew and Yiddish are spoken at moments throughout the film, and there is talk with family members about making aliyah to “go home”. During intermission, there is also a photograph of Tóth’s wedding – a smiling family posing under their Synagogue door’s Hebrew lettering.

There are also echoes of Holocaust trauma through the character and his complexities, his wife Erzsébet’s experiences (beautifully portrayed by Felicity Jones), and the building he is commissioned to design by wealthy industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce).

And of course, there is commentary on what many Jews faced when arriving in America following the war – being ‘othered’, antisemitism, assimilation. Then there’s the sneer by Van Buren’s entitled son Harry to Tóth, “we tolerate you”.

“I think László’s journey begins fleeing the horrors of that war and coming to America, and really speaks to the hopes and dreams of immigrants and the disconnect between the reality of the hardships of the American Dream,” Brody told the roundtable. “In spite of the great contributions made, oftentimes foreigners are still less welcomed or less able to assimilate. And that’s a burden for many many people.”

The film, while set in America, was shot in Budapest, something that Brody said helped bring authenticity to his role, specifically his accent. Brody also credited his grandfather for helping him bring Tóth to life.

“The interesting thing is that there are characteristics in my grandfather and the dialect and those kinds of things that are very very helpful for me in portraying this character,” he said in a previous interview. “And in a way, I get to honour them and their journey, their resilience, their sacrifice for me to be here and have this fortunate life.”

Brody also drew on his previous role as Wladislav Szpilman in The Pianist, saying “although they are two entirely different characters, the months spent researching and connecting with Szpilman’s past, and the horrors of that era, still haunt me and offered an emotional understanding of the harrowing experiences and loss that inform László’s journey coming to America as a refugee.”

For Brody, the film represents and honours the past. But it also reminds viewers of what happened in the past, and how we must learn from each experience.

Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce. Photo: A24

“I do think it’s quite unique how many aspects I can draw from and honour within my own ancestral hardship,” Brody said. “But I feel any tragic loss that exists – and there’s unfortunately too much of that in this world – is relatable if you understand that we’re all the same, and we’re all yearning for the same freedoms.”

In part, he understands this more than most due to his heritage. Brody acknowledged this while accepting his Golden Globe, thanking his parents.

“Oh my goodness, you always hold me up. I often credit my mother for her influence on me as an artist,” he said, “but Dad, you are the foundation of this family, and all this love that I receive flows back to you,” he shared.

“The character’s journey is very reminiscent of my mother’s and my ancestral journey of fleeing the horrors of war and coming to this great country, and you know, I owe so much to my mother, my grandparents for their sacrifice,” he continued. “And although I do not know how to fully express all the challenge that you have faced and experienced and the many people who have struggled to immigrate to this country, I hope that this work stands to lift you up and to give you a voice.”

Following his win, Brody also addressed the rise of antisemitism.

“It’s something that this character is fleeing, and that persecution, not just for being Jewish, but for his artistic beliefs and his values, and to be oppressed and judged and othered, and then to come with hopes and dreams that is in the past, and to still face that. And for those challenges to still exist … it’s intimate to me, the roles that I’ve played, and it makes me feel very grateful to be a part of storytelling that speaks to this, and the many other issues that the film provides insight into.”

The Brutalist is in cinemas from January 23.

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