The Brutalist (2024) review

From Bauhaus to Your House ... in Pennsylvania: talented Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) arrives in the United States from his native Hungary, is taken in by his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who owns a furniture shop in Philadelphia with his Catholic spouse Audrey (Emma Laird), and then has an up-and-down "business relationship" with the wealthy (and impulsive) Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who commissions Tóth to design a multi-functional center in Doylestown; years later, Tóth's disabled wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) are "freed" from a concentration camp and come to live with him.  Both Corbet and his co-screenwriter Mona Fastvold should be applauded for having the audacity to create this three-and-a-half hour historical epic (that spans multiple decades) and although it's missing dramatic tension and does a so-so job detailing Tóth's "artistic process" (he makes some sketches and glues a model together and boom ... something glorious emerges), former actor Corbet shows confidence behind the camera, and the film glides effortlessly on its darkly nostalgic atmosphere.  Brody is phenomenal as the lead - his character is broken physically and emotionally, and he abuses heroin and alcohol to ease his suffering - and the movie feels like an ode to the "tortured artists" unrecognized for their talents ... but is a lifetime of hardship truly worth fame in the twilight years when one is a widower, confined to a wheelchair and unable to appreciate it?