“The Brutalist” is an overwhelming achievement that genuinely deserves its modern masterpiece label. Director Brady Corbet’s ambitious epic is a breezy three-and-a-half-hour cinematic tome about unwavering ambition and chasing the American Dream (along with the obstacles that entails), complete with a story that spans multiple decades. While use of AI on “The Brutalist” caused some controversy, the film has been praised for its authenticity, attention to detail, and complex rags-to-riches story — which is why it could be mistaken for a dramatization of real historical events.
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Indeed, watching “The Brutalist,” one would be forgiven for assuming that the A24 drama was inspired by the life of a real-life figure from post-war America. The film stars two-time Oscar-winner Adrien Brody as László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor who moves to the Land of the Free after World War II to pursue his dream of becoming an architect. His journey throughout the movie is structured like a biopic — the type that Hollywood loves making just in time for Academy Awards season — and this adds a sense of realism to the proceedings, as his story seems lifted from the history books.
Still, “The Brutalist” is a work of fiction, although the movie drew from actual history to bring its story to life. Corbet was inspired by everything from the pioneers of 20th-century Brutalist architecture to the tales of real Holocaust survivors, and some people might even recognize the name of the film’s protagonist from elsewhere. With that in mind, let’s look at the history that informed the movie.
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The Brutalist isn’t based on a true story
The László Tóth character was inspired by some of the Jewish artists of the Brutalist movement, including Louis Khan, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. However, the movie also honors those who didn’t get to realize their dreams. During a conversation with USA Today, the film’s co-writer, Mona Fastvold, revealed that there weren’t many Jewish architects during the story’s time period, as most of them died during the Holocaust. That said, some aspiring architects left behind ideas that were reimagined with some of the film’s designs. As Fastvoid noted:
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“Judy Becker, our production designer, looked at drawings and unrealized [building plans] from architects who didn’t survive. It was our wish to try and pay tribute to them; that if someone had an experience similar to our main character’s, we would be mindful in our depiction. But we couldn’t find anyone [like Tóth].”
Fastvold and Brady Corbet also researched the stories of Holocaust survivors, which resonated with star Adrien Brody. The actor’s Jewish mother and grandparents survived World War II and emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, and he believes the struggles faced by his character in “The Brutalist” is authentic to their experiences. As he told the BBC, “[T]here is a disconnect between the hopes and dreams of [Tóth] fleeing oppression and hardship and then arriving in a land with the fable of what is attainable, and the harsh realities.”
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László Tóth is an amalgamation of different people — some who created art, and others who fled to the U.S. in the pursuit of freedom and prosperity following one of the most horrifying conflicts in history. But while these people have remarkable stories, the character is also authentic to Hungary’s everyday folks.
The Brutalist’s protagonist shares the same name as real-life figures
The name László Tóth might seem memorable and original to movie fans outside of Hungary, but it’s actually quite common in Eastern Europe. In fact, it’s shared by several notable people, including Hungarian soccer players, motorsport extraordinaires, and scientists. There’s also 20-century mathematician László Fejes Tóth and László Tahi Tóth, who was a popular actor in his native land prior to his death. With that in mind, did any of these figures inspire Adrien Brody’s character in “The Brutalist?” The answer is: not quite.
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“László Tóth is like John Smith in Hungary — it’s one of the most common names,” Mona Fastvold revealed in the aforementioned interview with USA Today. “We’ve spent a lot of time in Hungary, so that name just felt good for a Hungarian character.”
As of this writing, there are no famous architects with that name, so “The Brutalist” is original to some extent. However, it’s entirely likely that there’s a regular architect named László Tóth working in Hungary as we speak, and who knows? He might design buildings that inspire great movies like this one someday.
