Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” didn’t win the Best Picture prize at this year’s Academy Awards, but the blow was softened by Adrien Brody taking home a trophy for his performance (in addition to the two other Oscars the film won on the night). What’s more, the historical drama is finding a new lease of life on streaming, with FlixPatrol noting that it’s HBO Max’s most watched movie at the time of this writing. The buzz of the Oscars season might be over, but “The Brutalist” looks set to have staying power.
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In the movie, Brody plays László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor who moves to America to chase his dream of becoming an architect after World War II. The story spans decades, making for a sprawling epic that chronicles the architect’s hardships while dissecting the notion of the American Dream, so don’t go into the film expecting a tale that’s only about fancy buildings. Not even “The Brutalist”‘s AI controversy is bad enough to drag it down, and that’s saying a lot.
Despite being a work of fiction, “The Brutalist” has been praised for its realism, especially for the way in which it authentically portrays the experiences of Holocaust survivors. The topic is also close to Brody’s heart, and his family’s experiences helped him get into the mind of his character. So, what made the project so appealing to the actor?
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Adrien Brody empathizes with his character in The Brutalist
Much like the story of László Tóth emigrating to the United States in “The Brutalist,” Adrien Brody’s parents and grandparents also escaped hardship and left Europe for America following World War II. Not only that, but the actor has family members who survived the Holocaust, and he infused their experiences into his performance when bringing his character to life. As he told the BBC:
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“The wonderful thing is, it’s an opportunity for me to honor my ancestral struggles — my mother and my grandparents’ hardships and loss in fleeing Hungary in the ’50s and emigrating to the United States. [It’s] very moving to be reminded of the details and hardships that they experienced that very much parallel the lived experience of my character.”
Brody’s empathy for his character undoubtedly helped bolster his performance, and he has the awards to show for it. “The Brutalist” will go down in history as one of the actor’s career-defining roles, and the film’s success on HBO Max will hopefully expose its wonders to even more fans.
