Best Picture Nominee: The Brutalist

Summary

Episode Summary: "Best Picture Nominee: The Brutalist"

Released: February 17, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of All Of It, host Alison Stewart delves deep into the world of cinema by spotlighting "The Brutalist," a leading contender for Best Picture at the 2025 Oscars. Through engaging conversations with the film's director, Brady Courbet, and star actor Adrien Brody, listeners gain an intimate understanding of the film's creation, themes, and the challenges faced during its production.

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Overview of "The Brutalist"

"The Brutalist" is a poignant narrative that chronicles the journey of Laszlo Toth, portrayed by Adrien Brody, an esteemed architect escaping the turmoil of post-World War II Budapest. Trained at the Bauhaus, Laszlo arrives in America with dreams of rebuilding his life and career, only to confront the complexities of the American Dream and the preservation of his artistic integrity. The film has earned critical acclaim, securing nominations in ten categories, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brody, and Best Editing.

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Production Challenges Amidst a Pandemic

The conversation begins with Alison Stewart addressing the unforeseen delays the production faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alison Stewart [05:03]: "Brady, you were originally supposed to start shooting around 2020. There was Covid delays in shooting. There were many, many changes. What changed for this film? And that was two or three years?"

Brady Courbet [05:17]: "Well, you know, I think when my wife and I finished the draft, we suspected it might take a while. If I'm being perfectly honest."

Brady elaborates on how the pandemic necessitated a flexible approach, leading to a condensed 33-day shooting schedule. This intense timeline required the team to balance large-scale scenes with more intimate settings, sometimes operating with skeleton crews akin to student film productions. Despite these hurdles, the film maintained its ambitious scope and depth.

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Exploring the Immigrant Experience and the American Dream

Adrien Brody shares personal connections to the film's themes, drawing parallels to his own family's history.

Adrien Brody [06:22]: "It is a, you know, it's a really telling story not only of the immigrant experience but the journey for any artistic person and their pursuits and, you know, and the complexities of the American dream and, you know, all of this is it, it just spoke to me."

Brody reflects on his mother's emigration from Hungary in the 1950s during the Hungarian Revolution, highlighting how Laszlo's quest for peace, freedom, and creative fulfillment resonates on both personal and universal levels.

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Architectural Significance and Creative Inspiration

The episode delves into the architectural elements that define "The Brutalist," with Adrien Brody expressing his passion for the Brutalist movement.

Adrien Brody [13:52]: "Well, Brady and I had. I mean, first of all, I have loved brutalist architecture and some of the structures very much, and I always look out for them when I'm traveling abroad."

Brady discusses the challenge of creating a fictional character inspired by real Bauhaus-era architects, noting the absence of surviving Eastern Central European architects who emigrated to the U.S. They incorporated elements from renowned figures like Louis Kahn and Mies van der Rohe to craft a believable and multifaceted protagonist.

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Maintaining Engagement in a Lengthy Narrative

Addressing the film's extensive runtime, Adrien Brody shares his strategy for staying immersed in such an emotionally demanding role.

Adrien Brody [09:16]: "Oh, I have no problem with getting engaged with things that speak to me. And I've been really yearning for a collaboration with a filmmaker like Brady for many, many years. Someone who has this tremendous capacity for understanding for so much that is going on in the world and so much history and such a knowledge of film and love of film. So for me it was a pleasure. There is just sheer physical exhaustion that we all endured."

Brady Courbet adds his perspective on incorporating an intermission into the film, emphasizing its role in enhancing the communal movie-going experience.

Brady Courbet [10:13]: "For the intermission I, you know, I get so stressed out when long films and I don't want to step out to use a restroom because I don't want to miss anything. But it kind of makes the experience pretty uncomfortable. So I, I, I, we had a solution for this, you know, 75 years ago. The intermission. I also think it's great for the communal movie going experience. And you know, I, I, I'd like to see it come back if a movie's over three hours long."

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Personal Reflections and Gratitude

Adrien Brody takes a moment to express his gratitude towards his fans and the broader community that supports his work.

Adrien Brody [15:47]: "Oh, I am, I am grateful every day. I am kind of in awe of, first of all, the love that I have received from so many people as a result of my work and this communion that I have with so many people, not just members of my community and my city where I grew up and my neighborhood and but when I travel throughout the world, I encounter people every day who are somehow moved by something that I've shared. And, you know, I strive to find meaningful work like this for that very reason. So that in things that feel worthy of discussion and circumstances that I am fortunate enough to not have to endure should be recognized because others are enduring that and should be represented. And we should all be conscious of that and open to everyone with the same level of respect that we crave ourselves. And, you know, I'm. I'm grateful because I do receive a lot of respect and love and I have a great capacity to reciprocate."

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Notable Quotes

• Adrien Brody [03:28]: "It is no coincidence that fate brought us together on the eve of my mother's death. I'm good at reading the sign."

• Alison Stewart [12:26]: "Laszlo was a well known architect, trained at Bauhaus. But now he just wants a place to lay his head."

• Brady Courbet [10:13]: "I also think it's great for the communal movie going experience. And you know, I, I, I'd like to see it come back if a movie's over three hours long."

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Conclusion and What's Next

As the episode concludes, Alison Stewart hints at forthcoming discussions, including an interview with Stanley Tucci and director Edward Berger about their Best Picture-nominated film "Conclave," which delves into the behind-the-scenes politics of selecting a new pope.

Alison Stewart [17:21]: "Brady After Ellis Island, the early part of the story takes place in Pennsylvania... actor Stanley Tucci and director Edward Berger discuss their best picture nominated film conclave about the behind the scenes politics that goes into selecting a new pope. That's next."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of All Of It offers a rich and nuanced exploration of "The Brutalist," weaving together personal anecdotes, professional insights, and thematic discussions that highlight the film's significance in contemporary cinema. Through thoughtful dialogue and heartfelt reflections, listeners are invited to appreciate the depth and artistry that make "The Brutalist" a standout nominee in this year's awards season.

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Transcript

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[WNYC Studios]

Listener Supported WNYC Studios.

[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart.

[Brady Courbet]

Happy Monday everyone, and happy President's Day and happy awards season. If you're film buffs like we are, we suspect you've been following this year's Oscar buzz. And at this point, it's really hard to say how things are going to shake out because there's been so much good cinema over the last year. Whatever the outcomes are, we'll find out on Sunday, March 2, when Conan O'Brien will host the ceremonies in Los Angeles. Of course, LA is still recovering from those devastating wildfires that actually forced the Academy to postpone the deadline to vote for this year's winners. Today we're going to celebrate the silver screen's best and boldest offerings from 2024. Of the 10 nominees for best picture, we've been able to speak with the creative teams of almost all of them. Later on in the show, we'll talk with Stanley Tucci and director Edward Berger about Conclave. We'll speak with Nickel Boys director Romel Ross, Edward Norton will talk about a complete unknown, and director Walter Salas and actor Fernanda Torres will be here to tell the true story behind I'm Still Here, the first ever Brazilian film to be nominated for best picture. So let's kick things off with a conversation about the Brutalist. In addition to best picture, it's nominated in nine other categories, including best actor for Adrien Brody and best editing. We actually spoke with the nominated editor, Laurel Crowley in a separate conversation, so head to wnyc.org and search all of it to listen to that if you want to hear more. But without further ado, let's get into my conversation with the director Brady Courbet and one of the stars, Adrien Brody, of the best picture nominated film, the Brutalist.

[Alison Stewart]

All right, this is the only real spoiler I will give you from the acclaimed film the Brutalist. And it's from the opening, you see the Statue of Liberty upside down in a frame and slowly as the camera turns, it turns right side up. And you realize this is how our protagonist, Laszlo Toth is introduced to our country. You see it from his point of view, from the ship that he's been in. He Is traveling. Escaping really, from Budapest in the 1940s, hoping his wife will join him one day. He lands in Ellis island with nothing except his cousin's address. Laszlo was a well known architect, trained at Bauhaus. But now he just wants a place to lay his head. When a wealthy man finds out Laszlo's backstory, he asks him to build a huge community building on a hillside in Pennsylvania. A gift to the community and a monument to himself.

[Adrien Brody]

It is no coincidence that fate brought us together on the eve of my mother's death. I'm good at reading the sign.

[WNYC Studios]

Sir. I do not know what the commission intends.

[Adrien Brody]

We'll talk about the details at home. But you'll be well compensated. And also you'll be given a place here on the property to live and work. I think that residing here will allow you the time and the space to conceive of it properly. And your family, should they arrive, they're welcome here too. What do you say?

[WNYC Studios]

I would like to draw something and present it to him.

[Adrien Brody]

You'd like to win the commission? All right, you can do that. It's cold. Let's return inside. Come on.

[Alison Stewart]

The arc of the Brutalist follows Laszlo as he attempts to find his American dream without giving up important parts of himself. His pride, his family, his sense of self. And a country that tells him that he tells his wife doesn't want him. The three hour plus film has been earning extraordinary reviews. It won best picture and best Actor at the New York Films Critics Award. Joining me now are its co writer and director and New Yorker, Brady Courbet.

[Brady Courbet]

Hi, Brady.

[Stanley Tucci]

Hi, how are you?

[Alison Stewart]

I'm doing well. Thanks for joining us. And in the role of Laza Loft, Academy Award winner and New Yorker, Adrien Brody. Hi, Adrienne.

[WNYC Studios]

Hey there. How you doing?

[Alison Stewart]

I'm doing well. So, Brady, you were originally supposed to start shooting around 2020. There was Covid delays in shooting. There were many, many changes. What changed for this film? And that was two or three years?

[Stanley Tucci]

Well, you know, I think when my wife and I finished the draft, we suspected it might take a while. If I'm being perfectly honest.

[Alison Stewart]

Yes.

[Stanley Tucci]

And you know, of course, no one could have anticipated the shutdowns due to Covid in 2020. But we knew that one way or another, it might take a while. You know, I've always said that, you know, making a movie, it's, it's. It's a. It's a marriage. It's not a one night stand. And you have to choose, you know, material and themes that you're happy to live with for, you know, a decade or however long it takes. I mean, look at, you know, Francis's film. Megalopolis has been, you know, in the works for 30 something years.

[Alison Stewart]

Adrian, this particular immigrant experience. A talented architect trying first to just survive and then build a life in America. What did the script for the Brutalist say about that experience that you hadn't seen in film before?

[WNYC Studios]

It is a, you know, it's a really telling story not only of the immigrant experience but the journey for any artistic person and their pursuits and you know, and the complexities of the American dream and you know, all of this is it, it just spoke to me. I didn't, I found this incredibly moving and personal to me in many ways obviously. But my, my mother's journey as a, as a New York photographer and artist began when she and her parents emigrated to New York fleeing Hungary in the 50s during the Hungarian revolution. And all of it speaks to, to all of these things that I think are very relatable to many people in our, in our country. And so I felt it was very, it was both very intimate and, and extremely grand and, and you know, as it's a several decades span of, of this journey of Laszlo's life that we experience and to be transported through this one individual's journey into America is really.

[Alison Stewart]

Profound and we'll give Sylvia Plehy a shout out there. Brady After Ellis island, the early part of the story takes place in Pennsylvania. Why Pennsylvania?

[Stanley Tucci]

Oh, simply because many mid century designers at the time were sort of stationed all over the Northeast, so it was just historically accurate. And Guy's character was, you know, at least partially inspired by Barnes of the Barnes foundation. And so that's why the film travels quite a bit.

[Alison Stewart]

How many locations did you shoot in?

[Stanley Tucci]

Oh, we shot all over the world, but the film was shot very quickly. It was shot in a total of 33 days, which actually normally on an independent film would have been sufficient, but in this case because the screen screenplay was about 170 pages long, you know, it was a lot to pack in, but we had skeleton crews in a much smaller footprint when we went to shoot in the marble quarries in Carrera, for example. So, you know, some of it was shot like a student film and then there's other days when we had 250 people on set.

[Alison Stewart]

Adrian, it's a long film. A long film requires a lot of you. You're nearly every scene and very emotional scenes. Even though it was only 33 days, how did you keep yourself sort of engaged that Long.

[WNYC Studios]

Oh, I, I have no problem with getting engaged with things that speak to me. And I've been really yearning for a collaboration with a filmmaker like Brady for many, many years. Someone who has this tremendous capacity for understanding for so much that is going on in the world and so much history and such a knowledge of film and love of film. So for me it was a pleasure. There is just sheer physical exhaustion that we all endured.

[Alison Stewart]

Brady. There's this intermission and it's a time for us as the viewer to sort of gather your thoughts, gather yourself, think about what you saw and then you're ready for, for the next part. When did you realize this was going to be a long movie?

[Stanley Tucci]

Well, the, the, the intermission was scripted and, and we knew, you know, our, we only did two drafts and the first draft was already well over 150 pages. And then with the second draft, grew, grew a little bit. You know, it was just, it was a big story. We, we always knew that it's been, you know, over 30 years in this character's life. And, and, and you know, I, I think that time and the passage of time is a very important ingredient in, in the recipe because by, by the time the, you know, film comes to its conclusion, you really lived a life with these characters. And, and, and look, I, I think all seen films that are 80 minutes long that feel like they're three and a half hours long. And, and so the intent, the intention was, was not to make something which was durational. I mean, you know, like I, there's actually a lot of durational cinema that I really, really love. But the idea with, with this film was to make something quite propulsive. It's just, it's just, you know, a big story. And for the intermission I, you know, I get so stressed out when long films and I don't want to step out to use a restroom because I don't want to miss anything. But it kind of makes the experience pretty uncomfortable. So I, I, I, I, we had a solution for this, you know, 75 years ago. The intermission. I also think it's great for the communal movie going experience. And you know, I, I, I'd like to see it come back if a movie's over three hours long.

[WNYC Studios]

Especially we're discussing how to considerate he is.

[Alison Stewart]

We are discussing the film the Brutalist about an architect who em and struggles to create a life. I'm speaking with Brady Courbet who co wrote and directed the film, and Adrien Brody who plays Laszlo Toth. He is our protagonist. Adrian, as you develop the character of Laszlo, what does Laszlo hope for when he gets to the States?

[WNYC Studios]

Well, it's. Look, he's fleeing such oppression. Laszlo survives enduring the concentration camps. He's forcibly separated from his wife, and, you know, he's an established architect and really all of everything has been stripped from him. And it's really about beginning again. And so the hopes of, of finding, you know, peace and, and freedom of persecution and to come to America and assimilate and, and begin again and hopefully find opportunities to find creative fulfillment. They're all the yearnings of, of anyone fleeing hardship abroad. It's very similar to many people's stories if they're lucky enough to escape something as horrific as that time in history.

[Alison Stewart]

The movie is titled the Brutalists, A form of architecture. Think like Chatham Towers downtown or the Fashion Institute of Technology in Chelsea. Adrienne, what kind of research did you do into architects, and did you find a detail that you were able to use?

[WNYC Studios]

Well, Brady and I had. I mean, first of all, I have loved brutalist architecture and some of the structures very much, and I always look out for them when I'm traveling abroad. You know, it, it really, it speaks to, it really speaks to the era and of kind of a resilience and a need to rebuild and, and looking ahead. And I, you know, I think that it's informed so much great architecture beyond, beyond that, that style of work in particular. But, you know, we. Unfortunately, this is an amalgamation of many characters, because in Brady and Mona's research, there were no surviving Bauhaus era, Eastern Central European architects after the Nazi occupation. And so there were none who had endured that and made it to the United States. The ones who have left their mark, like Marcel Brower, who, you know, did the wit form of formerly the Whitney, but the Met Brower. But, you know, they, they left earlier and, you know, there were many architects like Louis Kahn, Mice van der Rohe, et cetera, that we were able to, you know, incorporate elements of their work and personalities. But this is a fictional character out of necessity.

[Alison Stewart]

Adrienne, if someone follows you on Instagram, you are always so grateful. You post these great videos. I've seen you on your own town doing it. What makes you so grateful?

[WNYC Studios]

Oh, I am, I am grateful every day. I am kind of in awe of, first of all, the love that I have received from so many people as a result of my work and this communion that I have with so many people, not just members of my community and my city where I grew up and my neighborhood and but when I travel throughout the world, I encounter people every day who are somehow moved by something that I've shared. And, you know, I strive to find meaningful work like this for that very reason. So that in things that feel worthy of discussion and circumstances that I am fortunate enough to not have to endure should be recognized because others are enduring that and should be represented. And we should all be conscious of that and open to everyone with the same level of respect that we crave ourselves. And, you know, I'm. I'm grateful because I do receive a lot of respect and love and I have a great capacity to reciprocate.

[Brady Courbet]

That was my conversation with actor Adrien Brody and director Brady Courbet about their film the Brutalist, which is a strong best picture contender at this year's Oscars. Up next, actor Stanley Tucci and director Edward Berger discuss their best picture nominated film conclave about the behind the scenes politics that goes into selecting a new pope. That's next.

[Alison Stewart]

Stick around.

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