A swaggering epic of massive scope and vision, "The Brutalist" is a huge swing for director Brady Corbet.

That he doesn't quite hit it out of the park is, well, OK. "The Brutalist" is like a triple buried deep into the corner of left field, where the runner gets thrown out going for an inside-the-park home run.

You can't fault the dude for trying, and Corbet's go big or go home attitude — "The Brutalist" runs three hours and 35 minutes and comes complete with an intermission baked in — is commendable. He's going for it full stop, when a lot of other filmmakers are content holding steady at second base. (That's enough with the pained baseball metaphors, since "The Brutalist" has nothing to do with America's pastime.)

It tells the story of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian architect who emigrates to America after World War II. The opening scene of Tóth and his fellow passengers arriving in New York, in a disorienting POV shot that fixes on an upside down Statue of Liberty, has already been canonized, and rightfully so; after three features, Corbet is announcing himself as a Major Filmmaker, and this is his official arrival to the party.

We follow the story of Tóth as he enters into society, settling in Pennsylvania and living inside his cousin Attila's (Alessandro Nivola) furniture store. Tóth helps out his cousin as they renovate the home of the wealthy Harrison Lee Van Buren (a towering Guy Pearce), who fires Tóth on the spot after he performs an an uncommissioned face-lift on his library. But Van Buren later apologizes after seeing the genius of Tóth's work and hires him to design a massive community center which he's erecting and dedicating to his late mother.

Corbet — whose previous film, 2018's "Vox Lux," was a fascinating exploration of the intersection of school shootings and pop music stardom — is a patient filmmaker, and he allows his story to flow out naturally and gracefully. He's working on a grand canvas and staging staggering shots of people on the land, linking the land to people to buildings. The undercurrent of corruption is bubbling just below the surface at all times, until it eventually starts to boil over.

The second part of "The Brutalist," following the intermission, sees Tóth's wheelchair-bound wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), joining her husband in America. And it's this second stage where "The Brutalist" gets wobbly, with a horrific act perpetrated on Tóth — symbolizing America's treatment of immigrants — followed by the disappearance of a major character, and a mystifying coda tacked on to the story in the form of a puzzling epilogue. It leaves the film with an odd taste, after being so gripping for so long, and it challenges and complicates so much of what came before it.

But it gives viewers something to chew on, which is something all the best films do. "The Brutalist" isn't playing for today or tomorrow, it's looking at a much bigger picture, and it's likely to be a film people are still chewing on, for better or for worse, years from now.

———

'THE BRUTALIST'

Grade: B

MPA rating: R (for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, rape, drug use and some language)

Running time: 3:35

How to watch: Now in theaters

———

©2025 www.detroitnews.com. Visit at detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.