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Why ‘The Brutalist’ Is Brutal to Watch

JL;DR SUMMARY The Brutalist, a film by Brady Corbet, follows the life of fictional Jewish Hungarian architect Lazlo Toth, played by Adrien Brody. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Holocaust SurvivorAmerican DreamAdrien BrodyBrady CorbetPost War EraBrutalist ArchitectureLazlo TothModern ArchitectureCollaborative ArchitectureFictional Portrayal

Places mentioned

Doylestown, Pennsylvania, United States
"Van Buren finds the funds to rehire his architect and restart their great endeavor. Here come, in more than one sense of the word, the spoilers. The two men travel to pick out stone (a material not much used in brutalism) at the famous marble quarries of Carrara, Italy where, once Tth is drugged and drunk at a party in a cave, Van Buren sexually assaults him."
Hungary
"Tth is played by Adrien Brody, who with evident pleasure and the accent of a Yiddish vampire reprises the handsome and haunted Holocaust survivor persona of his breakthrough role in The Pianist. Everyones been nominated for Academy Awards."
Carrara, Massa and Carrara, Italy
"The two men travel to pick out stone (a material not much used in brutalism) at the famous marble quarries of Carrara, Italy"
Israel
"Tth and family move away to Israel."
Novi Sad, South Bačka, Serbia
"If the makers of The Brutalist had driven the three hours south from the bleak Hungarian hillside where they ratcheted up their spaghetti Western-looking sets to, say, Novi Sad in Serbia, and across the former Yugoslaviathey would have found the densest and finest concentration of brutalist architecture in all the world."
Trenton, New Jersey, United States
"Just 20 miles from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in suburban Trenton, New Jersey, is the Jewish Community Center of the Delaware Valley, built in 1955."

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Retrieved 2025-07-30 05:32:18 UTC
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