The Brutalist

László Toth, a visionary architect shaped from several real-life figures, flees postwar Europe and attempts to rebuild his life, work, and marriage in America. In Pennsylvania, his talent is recognised by industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren. What follows is not a classic success story, but a struggle in which power, ambition, and dependence weigh ever more heavily.

Brady Corbet has been drawn to outsized egos throughout his career, he told Humbug Magazine: people who seek to shape their era, only to be consumed by it. He previously dissected the birth of a tyrant (The Childhood of a Leader) and the making of a pop icon (Vox Lux). Time and again, he portrays figures teetering between creative drive and self-destruction.

THE BRUTALIST feels like a natural continuation of that trajectory, even if Corbet refuses to call his Oscar-winning film the final chapter of an “ego trilogy.” He is far from finished dissecting such figures — and in Toth, that fascination reaches a monumental peak.