‘The Brutalist’ Post-WWII Epic Earns 13-Minute Ovation at Venice Festival

Brady Corbet’s 215-minute post-WWII epic The Brutalist had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this afternoon, earning a spectacular 13-minute, five-second ovation from the Sala Grande audience.

Corbet, whose earlier films Vox Lux and Childhood of a Leader also made their debut at the Lido, was present alongside an illustrious cast, including Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Stacy Martin, Raffey Cassidy, Emma Laird, Isaach De Bankolé, and Alessandro Nivola.

Due to its length, the movie included an intermission, which itself was met with a 17-second ovation. The finale’s reception was marked by enthusiastic cheers and “Brava”s from the audience. Ethan Hawke was also in attendance and stayed throughout the extended ovation.

In The Brutalist, Brody stars as László Tóth, a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who, along with his wife Erzsébet, emigrates to the U.S. after surviving the Holocaust. Their lives are drastically altered by a mysterious and affluent client, played by Guy Pearce. The screenplay was co-written by Corbet and Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold, who is also his wife.

Brody expressed to the Venice press corps that he felt an “immediate kinship and understanding” for his character Tóth, drawing parallels with his own mother, Sylvia Plachy, a photographer and immigrant who fled Hungary in 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution. Brody shared, “She was a refugee and emigrated to the United States, and much like László, started again and lost their home and pursued a dream of being an artist… This fiction feels very real to me.”

In his review, Deadline’s Damon Wise noted, “There’s a perverse charm to (Corbet’s) hardcore aesthetic, just as there was in Childhood of a Leader and Vox Lux. The Brutalist reprises some of those film’s themes, and vast chunks of cast, but somehow it doesn’t quite feel as finished. Then again, as Frank Lloyd Wright might say, does any architect ever really finish?”

Focus Features acquired the international rights to the film during the Berlinale.

Source: Particle News, Deadline