Initially, in a dreadfully mysterious manner, László Tóth’s story begins in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist in a rather dark room. The atmosphere is immediately confused. It is almost as if we are on the same footing, trying to assemble the pieces. In the beginning, we have no idea where he is. Is he inside a train or, strangest of all, a train destined for a Nazi concentration camp? There are just these dreadful metallic sounds clanging and people shifting about, mumbling in the dark, raising the extreme of fright.

László’s mounting worry arises as he panics over looking at his suitcase. Those who can watch may feel with him through his nervous search.

Once found, László begins walking in this dark, crowded space full of people, but the location is still unknown alongside the events taking place. Set against the confusion, almost like an endless puzzle awaiting the next piece to fit in, the tension builds. This entire time, we hear László’s wife, Erzsébet Tóth, talking in voiceover about being trapped in Europe. She says she does not feel free anymore, and then she quotes Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those falsely believe themselves to be free.”

Outside, it was too light for him to see. He continued on his way, the sun’s warmth flooding over him. At this moment, he was joined by his friend. They were both gazing at something we could not see at first. It floats into view, and at that moment, it fully dawns on us where they must be.

They have just landed on American shores. Oddly, we never actually see those shores or the tops of the buildings. It is as though we have been initially kept in the dark about the spot. Nothing overtly conveys to us, which lends uncertainty to the reveal and gives it an unexpectedly subtle feel.

The viewers mainly see László and his friend joyfully celebrating and shedding tears, then pointing and gazing upwards at something. The questions remain: What are they looking at, and what gives them such happiness? Then, an upside-down Statue of Liberty appears, a disturbing image that stays with you for 3 hours and 35 minutes.

The Brutalist explores the darker half of the American Dream or, rather, its harsh reality. It talks about how the very idea of success, freedom, and happiness in America turns into a kind of fabrication, a fairy tale that we have been sold to achieve but never quite meet the reality of what it is.

This film involves chasing that dream into disappointment, disillusionment, and perhaps destruction, and how this shines in the cracks of the bright image of what America is supposed to be. It is like peeling back layers from a myth to expose the truth under it, which is not pretty.

It cannot withstand the shock of reality because it was never based on reality. The whole idea of the dream’s existence has, if not been turned on its side, then definitely upside down. There seems to be a semblance, and yet it does not. One visually interprets what was supposed, but the whole scheme is mainly in a different situation; it leaves the beholder confused and aghast.

More than anything else, the American Dream is a continuous existence and nonexistence at the same time in this weird oscillation everybody wants to chase it, and it is believed to be working toward or living the ideal vision, the success, freedom, and happiness of all that they strive for. On the other hand, it does exist as something else entirely, the dream, as it is a tool of exploitation, a system that exploits people’s efforts but does not give them the illusion of winning.

Essentially, the American Dream is an American lie, one that we keep somehow believing in, even as far from the picture we have been sold as it is from reality. That trap keeps people running after something that is not there.

The American Dream is firmly embedded in our desire to accept it as real. Some may even say that it is needless to say that the dream must be realized. On second thought, does it even exist? Where would you imagine seeking the American Dream? Does it truly exist for those in America who believe in it?

The American Dream (in a more transcendental, elusive sense) perhaps exists; it is woven into the very fabric of what America is supposed to mean. It has always been up there, even before László emerges from the shadows and into the blinding sunlight of American freedom.

It may only come into being at that exact moment when he sees the Statue of Liberty. Is it possible that the dream is born right at that moment, the second he sees it? Maybe it is not waiting for him. It may be what gets created the moment he believes in it.

Moreover, if the dream is not some big, out-of-this-world idea, it may be that it lives inside the people. It could be something in the hearts of the American people. Can we see it in someone like László’s cousin, Attila Miller, who started his minor carpentry and remodeling business?

He even helps László by giving him a job and letting him work on this fancy modernist library project for Harrison Lee Van Buren, but things go south. The project flops, and instead of standing by him, Attila fires László and even accuses him of trying to hook up with his wife. So, if the American Dream is supposed to be about opportunity and support, where is it now?

Is it possible that the American Dream could exist in Van Burens’ mentality? Harrison was an extremely wealthy businessman who funded László’s gigantic project as a thoroughly contradictory man. He was not as uncomplicated as he seemed. Their very first encounter was not jolly for László.

László and Attila had just been completing a library project that had been an almost secret surprise from Harrison’s son, Harry Lee Van Buren, but Harrison returned to find it and flipped out. He was furious over the whole thing and told them off to get out. With Harrison’s reaction, a chain of events is initiated, whereupon Harry decides he will not pay Attila or László for any of their work on the project. Because of that, Attila ends up firing László. So much for the dream of opportunity, huh?

However, when Harrison realizes how talented László is, he hires him to design a community center. Suddenly, Harrison treats László with respect, kindness, and understanding. Harrison not only allows László to build his dream project for him but also assists László in bringing his wife, Erzsébet, and his niece, Zsófia, from Europe to America.

Are the Van Burens the epitome of the American Dream? The family rose above its station from the bottom rung through work, wit, and iron resolve. Their success is based on a willpower few could only wish for. Outwardly, they are polished, perfected, and released into a world of fervent charm, sunny politeness, and rarefied beauty.

It is almost as if they were expertly put together because every aspect aims to represent what America claims to be successful. However, there is much more than that shiny façade to show their progress from good intentions.

On one side, the Van Burens say they want to help the Tóth family as if it were part of their dream for America. On the other side, they will betray the Tóth family the worst way possible. Harry rapes Zsófia, and Harrison rapes László. So, can these men be called the American dream?

The Van Burens truly symbolize the quintessential man living the American Dream. Externally, they come off as exceedingly polite and charming, but underneath, this is more of a mask they wear. Their politeness is more of an act to mask something much darker; if anything symbolizes the American Dream, it could be more like the American Lie.

One, in that regard, is László. He believes in the dream and is willing to put everything he has into it, but then he goes deeper into it. With time, he sees the truth. There is nothing like the dream he has been pursuing. That in itself is a lie, one that conceals an even uglier truth. To him, the dream is nothing more than a pretense covering all that crime and evil lying underneath.

That lie itself masks violence; it is not just violent because it relates to drug abuse and sexual abuse but also because of financial exploitation. The truth of the American dream is rather a bearer of the truth about the American lie. Dream built up actually on a foundation of abuse. It is a nightmare. You might even think of László’s grand project as a metaphor for this lie.

The flooding destruction at the center is not an oddity. It is much more an indication of a decay hiding underneath the grandeur of the American Dream. There it stands, with the truth trying to break through but trapped beneath a glassy veneer. So, what covers this ugly truth? Beauty, but not just any kind of beauty: it is a particular kind.

It is good Christian beauty, not quite how we picture it. It is Christianity tangled in fundamentalist evangelical beliefs and ideologies often fused with fascism today. It is the same Christianity that Max Weber had in mind, associated with the Protestant work ethic. The American dream glorifies suffering, where working hard while standing in pain is viewed as a virtue. It is about struggling for the sake of struggling, and somehow, this is held up as the highest ideal.

A lie comes out into the open only once, but one of its primary functions is to remain beneath the surface, rotting away out of sight while coming to expression through the pain of other people exploited by it. The suffering undergone by Tóth family members is a direct consequence of that lie. Whenever they try to change their situation, it never works out. Truth at the moment always loses. For instance, absolutely nothing changed when Erzsébet told Harrison that he had raped László.

The corporeal violation of László by Harrison stands in powerful contrast to the exploitation of the American dream at the core of this transaction (supposing that such a dream even exists). Acts of violence that begin high up in the continental hierarchy will trickle downwards and affect those who give credence to the American dream. László becomes an image of the very assault that injured him. He becomes an exploitative figure recognized in partnership with those who exploited him.

Harrison imposes onto László the American dream as an ultimate die, beyond any hope for redemption, whereupon László himself begins to exercise that very violence in his affairs. The last time we saw or heard about Harrison, he denied what he did to László, calling him merely a dog that needed to be put down. A shocking illustration of how far the distortion of the lie has gone will be heaped upon the others: people like Harrison who, once drained of usefulness, consider other human beings as objects for disposal.

Search for Harrison by the Van Burens after he has vanished, but he is nowhere to be found in their sprawling house. Instead, they head for László’s community center. They end up deep inside the church and slogging through the murky water. Almost as if they are trying to cleanse László’s mess, but the place offers no solace to them.

László gave them build heaven and hell. Not the burning kind of hell. Instead, it is a hell where there is no light of God’s love, and, for the Van Buren and anything representative of that lie called America, that light is not just missing; it might as well never have existed.

The light hardly enters the gaps in the church’s roof. Then, by chance, it falls, glimmering across the altar as an upside-down cross, not signifying hope or salvation but twisting it into something corrupted. It is as if the place itself has no absolute comfort that the light can bring. For the Van Burens, beauty is an eternal thing. It gets close enough, so close to see, but far away again when it tries to touch; it always slips recline wards.

That is what Harrison did to László, an assault that was hardly an incident of random malice. It was linked to the Van Burens’ ultimately larger obsession with beauty, the obsession that consumes America. This kind of obsession turns desire into domination. They do not only admire beautiful things; they possess, control, and destroy them. The act of Harrison was a perverse and brutal culmination of that fetish, a vicious attempt at ownership of beauty, a redrawing in his image, if at all costs.

The trip to the Italian marble quarry with Harrison and László exemplifies this idea. They visit Orazio’s quarry, where he shows them a vast, gorgeous block of marble. László and Harrison are both infatuated with its beauty. One wonders: Can a morally corrupt one enjoy the beauty by looking up at the magnificent stone? Harrison not only sees beauty, but he also finances it with his funds. The Brutalist invites us to consider a separation of morality and beauty. They are two distinct entities that are not necessarily related.

In the same way that good people create beauty, appreciate it, and recognize its value, so do evil persons. Beauty is not tied to goodness and badness but is too shallow and surface an analysis.

The more profound truth is that people with evil intentions understand beauty in itself and see it as an active tool for manipulation and control. Evil seeks to make us associate beauty with goodness, to think beauty must equal something pure and divine. Evil uses beauty as a mask to hide its own true, darker heart behind an attractive façade. Beauty becomes a means to an end, pulling the wool over our eyes and distracting us from the real evils.

So evil takes an obsessive interest in beauty while eternally rejecting the ugly. Beautiful would, therefore, be good; the opposite, ugliness, must then be evil, or at least wrong. Evil people cannot contemplate ugliness, as it does not flatter their view of reality as good. Whatever is ugly cannot possibly be good. Therefore, it has to be rejected by evil.

Should evil accept anything ugly, that would mean accepting their inability to do so; in their minds, they would accept that they are evil, a thought they would never entertain. Evil cannot reconcile unbeautiful with beautiful, so it has to deny it to make sense of itself.

Beauty is mainly induced by moral manipulation. In The Brutalist, it is connected with pleasures, divinity, and even God, and we all know that God should stand for pure goodness, right? That is why bad people use beauty to hide their darkness; it is like a smokescreen. How can someone cruel and manipulative be seen as bad when they seem to adore beauty? How can they be truly evil if surrounded by things that represent purity and grace?

Indeed, the beauty they represent makes it harder for others to notice the ugliness lurking beneath the surface. Underneath all that glamor and polish is the same lie as the American Dream: if you work hard and chase the right things, you will achieve success and happiness. It is a façade that hides something much more sinister.

As Emma Lazarus promised in her 1883 poem The New Colossus, this statue symbolizes the American dream. László illustrates the immigrant experience, which is integral to the American story. However, at the same time, it is false and idealized, and it is fraud that justified centuries of oppression. The immigrant experience and its associated tie to the American dream take another twist, as it closely associates with the idea of meritocracy-bound success through hard work.

The American Dream says anyone, especially immigrants, can come to this so-called land of freedom, work hard, and eventually “make it.” It should all be based on merit; anybody who is smart enough, talented enough, and hardworking will rise and live a good life. It is the promise and the pursuit of happiness, but here comes the catch: meritocracy does not exist.

It is not some universal system that happens to exist out there, neutral and fair, rewarding every effort. No, people have concocted this. It is subjective, biased, privileged, and powerful. Worst of all, we buy into it. Whether we want to or not, we absorb the idea that our worth is based entirely on what we produce or our achievements. It becomes a falsehood by which we live and hold ourselves and each other accountable even when we have disadvantaged most of us from the beginning.

Study the situation in which Attila first takes László in and offers him a job: at least on the surface, he seems to be helping him out, while in truth, he is merely taking advantage of László with the library project, and then it blows up not even due to anything that László did avail himself of that basis, Attila sells him out entirely. Sacking him and throwing him like just another worthless person so that he now does hard, meaningless labor like the nobody leftovers that nobody seems to care about anymore.

Some might say, upon seeing this, “Well, that is simply how meritocracy functions. László failed, and so he had to pay the price.” In an unfortunate sense, they would not be wrong. On the surface, There appears to be some meritocratic functioning here. In ideological terms, László did not deliver his promise, so he is blamed for it. The interesting part is that he never truly failed. That was not what happened at all.

If you think back, the real reason László and Attila were fired was not anything that they did wrong. The real reason was that Harrison did not like the surprise that László was preparing for him. That personal feeling made Harrison withdraw the funding, leading to everything falling apart. Nothing here was determined by merit or failure, simply by the crazy whims of someone with more power. It is how the proper functioning of merit is not equitable but rather cryptic, depending on who happens to be wielding the power.

Did László truly receive his just desserts? Initially, one may think he did not do a good enough job on the building and got fired. That kind of reasoning propels the notion of meritocracy forward him, having failed and thus reaping consequences. However, we learn later that such is not the case.

In truth, critics praised the library he built as a true modernist masterpiece. Thus, László did not fail; he passed his test with flying colors. If meritocracy worked, he would have been celebrated, not cast aside. So he got fired, which only shows that meritocracy is effectively dead.

At the state, some viewers might be drawing back their hands to hit you with a hitch moment. Didn’t Harrison return and offer László the job of working at the community center? It seems like it ought to prove that meritocracy still holds on from the other side. After all, László “was” talented and ultimately got his due. He was recognized and rewarded. That proves the system works! The whole rebuttal goes: he worked, showed skills, and got his big break. Everything is fine. Meritocracies saved; curtains closed; nothing to worry.

The right person to be caught rightly in a “gotcha” moment. If only he stopped watching the film before it was over. If he has the demerits of his hideous ambition to leave his sight before he sees the end, he would know that the moment László went back to the Van Buren, he was sucked right back into that toxic, violent system that the American dream is built upon. A very misleading happy ending. László is being reinserted.

Meritocracy is this great noble thing; no, it is just grease, grease to keep the whole damn machine running. László does not win; he gets used; he is turned into a prop, a product, into something shiny they can use to show off and control.

The Van Burens exert their violence over László and his kind in the same fashion with which his cousin had violently dealt with him before. Now, that is not just bodily; it is rather this larger systemic pattern of abuse with which violence has been passed down through various layers of society. It all leads up to the brutal act of rape perpetrated by Harrison, primarily because, aside from being an assault on László, it also denotes that more profound, insidious violence ingrained in the concept of the American dream.

The film intends to bring forth this culture of violence used as a tool of power, control, and rigid hierarchy. It speaks of cruelty not just for cruelty’s sake but of ways of maintaining the status quo and reinforcing the illusion of meritocracy. Violence is one way to maintain the false notion that success must be achieved and that anyone can achieve it with enough effort.

Harrison’s rape is a logical consequence of the American dream. The obsession with beauty, hard work, and honesty. It is all nothing but a façade, an empty thing devoid of substance. The people meant to inscribe the meaning and authenticity are violently elbowed out of that process and are no longer in control of what they once made. By the end of the film, it is very clear that for artists like László, beauty has no control over its fate.

Completely divided, the whole system ends up with everyone in it abusing those below them, oftentimes in fierce forms. It is twisted so that beauty may be transformed into a weapon that hides that brutality that covers the evil and strength used in maintaining control. It is a way to keep the social hierarchy intact, especially the one built on white, Christian, American, and Western values.

This system imposes itself on the marginalized, the same people who make the beauty this system relies on. So beauty is used by those in power to hold dominance, while the real creators, the subjugated, are crushed in the process.

Dissecting the film, we separate the prologue from the epilogue. What are their common themes as related to the story at large? What would be a more profound sense other than just being beautiful? Could this be the point, and indeed, is it not this turning against the fetishism of beauty that engages it instead?

Are we, as an audience, also treating László similarly? Is Zsófia doing that at the end, using László’s work for her gain, so to speak, in much the same way that we are? A cross-shaped window looms behind a young woman named Zsófia as Russian soldiers question her in the prologue.

In the last act, the grown Zsófia exhibit László’s work at the famous Venice Biennale of Architecture. Celebrating the work’s acknowledgment and remembering its long journey is important. She ends her presentation by saying, “It is the destination, not the journey, no matter how many times other people try to sell you.” Given the film’s critique on monetizing success and beauty, the phrase is significant because of its ramifications.

The scene then cuts back to Zsófia, and the camera holds on her face as she gazes upward slowly before the credits roll. The ending feels contemplative and conclusive as if the film wants us to interrogate what we have just seen and what it means.

It brings us to reexamine everything it has been thrusting before us by returning the prologue to the movie’s end. The prologue shows Zsófia being interrogated with a Christian cross looming behind her. It echoes the one before this epilogue since, at the end of the same scene, light shines into László’s church, creating an upside-down cross on the shrine. It resembles László’s arrival in America with an upside-down Statue of Liberty. What strikes all of them in this case is reflection; yet, which is that bigger meaning?

So when we strip away the surface, we do not find ugliness but evil itself. Look at the film. Take away all the stylized shots, the elegance, the haunting music. What do you see? You see Harrison rapping László. That is core, stripped of all aesthetic distractions. Now, try to do that to America. Remove its polished image, ideals, and whatever tell-tale stories about dreams and freedom. Where does one end up finding itself?

All these fanciful lies, cloaked in some lovely wrappings: Harrison, and by extension all of America, uses beauty as a weapon, and then there comes an uncomfortable question: how should we recognize evil, masked in beauty, as it shows up? That is why László builds the way he does. His brutalist style is not about hiding beauty because he is afraid of it; it is his style of showing what is happening. Because evil does not always look like a monster, it does not come looking broken or scary. It hides behind things that seem good and beautiful.

When you peel that beauty away, you do not find something ugly but horrifying. So, if you strip away the elegant look of the film, what is left? A man was raped. Harrison raped László. That is the reality beneath the style, and if you do the same to America, what will you see then?

References

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