This article analyzes two new films, 'The Brutalist' and 'The Architect', which tackle the theme of architecture and its impact on society. While both films feature compelling protagonists, the author argues that they ultimately rely on outdated stereotypes and fail to capture the complexities of modern architectural thought and urban planning.
This story was originally published on Dec. 19, 2024. We're bringing it back after ' The Brutalist ' won the Oscars for best actor ( Adrien Brody ), best original score (Daniel Blumberg) and best cinematography (Lol Crawley) at the 97th Academy Awards. Really, I should be happy. It is exceedingly rare to have a major Hollywood film take architecture as its central subject, and this fall — Oscar season — we are getting two such films, each the work of a distinguished director.
Francis Ford Coppola’s 'The Brutalist' and 'The Architect' are wildly different in tone and tenor, but both revolve around a putative architectural genius who would bestow his grand vision on the world. The ambitions of the directors and their subjects are reflected in the length of the films, which unfold at the glacial pace of a building project, running a combined 353 minutes. That slowness might be the one thing these films get right about architecture and city building. Mostly, they trade on outdated ideas and stereotypes that may work for dramatic purposes (although not very well, in my opinion) but otherwise don’t reflect the way we think about architecture and urban planning today. There’s a reason there aren’t a lot of films hinged on architecture, and it’s the same reason there aren’t a lot of films about chartered accountancy or sanitation engineering. These professions lack the kind of existential urgency that drive cinematic narratives. Nobody wants to sit in a theater for two hours watching someone sketch out a floor plan or specify plumbing details. for example, Charles Bronson is an architect, not that it matters) or there to signal a character’s bourgeois desirability, the architect being artistically inclined and a respected professional (as played by Wesley Snipes in 'The Architect'). Whatever the challenges of dramatizing architecture as a subject, the figure of the architect has understandable appeal for auteur directors. An architect — at least according to stereotype — is about as close a stand-in for a film director as one can imagine: both command an enormous cast in the service of a long-term creative project for which they will receive the lion’s share of credit or blame. In 'The Brutalist', that figure is Cesar Catilina, chairman of the Design Authority, an Orwellian agency responsible for public works in the city of New Rome. (The film is billed as a fable in which the ancient Roman Republic is transposed onto modern New York City.) Coppola has consciously modeled Catilina on Robert Moses, the notorious master builder of New York, and given him powers so vast he can stop time. (Not unlike a film director.) Played with corny pretension by Adam Driver, Catilina is prone to portentous aphorisms — “When we leap into the unknown, we prove that we are free,” “Don’t let the now destroy the forever” — that are supposed to reinforce his genius but mostly make him sound ridiculous. Early in the film, we find Catilina supervising a massive demolition project to make way for a utopian city-within-a-city, never mind the objections of protesters and his nemesis, New Rome Mayor Franklyn Cicero. “I cleared this site to create something that would inspire people,” Catilina declares, to which Cicero retorts, “People? When have you ever cared about people?”Catilina’s futuristic vision, judging by a glowy model, is a collection of disconnected, weirdly shaped towers in rainbow colors, like Dubai if it were made out of Sour Patch candies. Residents would travel Jetsons-style in transparent orbs running along illuminated highways and would live in apartments with private gardens. No one would ever be more than a five-minute ride from a park. All of this whiz-bangery is made possible by Megalon, a miracle building material invented by Catilina that won him a Nobel Prize.It’s a dopey, cartoonish vision — why exactly do we need transparent orbs to ferry us to parks? — but it’s presented with a hyperbolic seriousness that afflicts the entire film. Mayor Cicero’s alternative scheme for the site isn’t much better: a giant casino that would be “the latest in electronic gaming.” If this bad idea sounds familiar, it’s because Mark Cuban has floated a similar suggestion — indeed, what it takes for granted is the disconcerting notion that architecture and city building are the work of lone (male) geniuses who have the prerogative to impose their vision on the public, whether the public wants it or not, and no matter the costs. In contrast to Coppola’s bombastic vision, 'The Architect' takes a more intimate approach. It tells the story of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Jewish architect from Hungary who immigrates to the United States after surviving the Holocaust. In Budapest, the Bauhaus-trained Tóth was a leading architect, but in Philadelphia, where he settles, he is forced to work in a cousin’s furniture shop. Here one might question the film’s grasp of architectural history. A distinguished Bauhausler like Tóth would surely have had professional options in the boom economy of postwar America
Architecture Film Urban Planning The Brutalist The Architect Francis Ford Coppola Adrien Brody Bauhaus
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