Movie Review: Like architecture itself, ‘The Brutalist’ is an epic exercise in ambition and grandeur

“The making of a good building,” observed architect Frank Lloyd Wright, “is a great moral performance.” Like many notable quotes about architecture, it speaks to grandeur, permanence, scale. Tóth, played with deep soul and unrelenting intensity by Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist,” is actually fictional, though you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, so richly realized is his story in director Brady Corbet’s audacious new film. But then Dad himself — an impeccably clad, impossibly dapper yet explosive and ultimately monstrous character played to the hilt by Guy Pearce — shows up too early, infuriated that his library’s been torn up. Soon, Tóth is dining with the wealthy at Van Buren’s palatial Doylestown estate, and learning that Van Buren has tapped him to build a vast community center atop a hill to honor his mother. But Tóth is stuck, mired in a project that will take years, a living hostage to the Van Burens on their estate, fighting for every phase of the project and darned near going mad — on top of a drug addiction stemming from the war — as Van Buren demands cuts and compromises, including the height of his building.