If there’s anything “The Brutalist” is, it’s ambitious. Following visionary architect László Toth (Adrien Brody) through some thirty years of his life — from his post-World War II immigration to the U.S. to his struggles with a wildly ambitious project — “The Brutalist” reflects its namesake architectural style: massive, angular and carved out of stone.
In the United States, every four years marks the resurgence of a red-white-and-blue-splattered, uniquely-‘American’ electoral aesthetic, from the Odyssean mythology of the campaign trail to the iconography of the ideal, dutiful citizen submitting their ballot card. With the election season approaching, it’s the perfect time to see how filmmakers have — perhaps playfully — handled these political aesthetics.
