'The Brutalist's' Colossal Sets Deserve an Oscar Nomination
How a three-and-a-half hour movie about a Hungarian architect became a sleeper hit is a story for the ages. But attention is being paid, especially since The Brutalist—starring Adrien Brody as fictional visionary architect, László Tóth, who survives the Holocaust and moves to America to rebuild his life and career—was a Venice Film Festival winner, then swept the Golden Globes with seven awards, including best motion picture. Now it's a strong contender for the Oscars.
The success of the movie has also focused attention on its production designer, Judy Becker, who with zero architectural training and a bare-bones budget, channeled the ghost of modernists like Marcel Breuer to create the rooms and buildings that give the movie its soul. “I’m still so shocked,” says Becker, whose credits include Carol, American Hustle, and Brokeback Mountain. “I thought I was doing this little art movie, a labor of love. Usually these kinds of films don’t get this kind of recognition.”
Becker has always been drawn to art films, working alongside directors like Ang Lee, Todd Haynes and David O. Russell. Since seeing Childhood of a Leader, she hoped to collaborate with Brady Corbet, The Brutalist's director. And fittingly, Becker happens to be a big fan of brutalist architecture, a minimalist style which features hulking, unadorned structures in concrete or brick. “I’m always making pilgrimages to those buildings, like Paul Rudolph’s futuristic UMass Dartmouth campus," she said. "I loved it even before it started getting popular again."
The challenge was conveying Tóth's grandiose vision without breaking the bank. In an interview, Becker shared her secrets.
The Architecture in the Movie Looks Real—But Isn't
The movie revolves around the relationship between Tóth, a Jewish architect acclaimed in his native Budapest before he was interned in a concentration camp during World War II, with an industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who lives in a mansion in a bucolic setting in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Van Buren's son discovers Tóth, now a refugee, at his cousin's furniture store and commissions him to renovate his father's library as a surprise. When his stunningly modern design lands Van Buren and his home in a national magazine, the businessman hires Tóth to build the Van Buren Institute—a community center that includes a library, theater, gymnasium and, at the insistence of the local municipality, a Christian chapel.
It was Becker's role to bring both these spaces into existence. She looked at the work of architects like Breuer and Tadao Ando for inspiration. "I've designed sets before but never real buildings," Becker says. "And László was a 20th-century star architect, so it was pretty daunting." First, she designed the Institute building "like an architect would," starting with sketches and ultimately building a full-scale model.
The Van Buren Institute, a concrete monolith on top of a hill, was never actually built—it only looks that way through the magic of cinema. "I designed it so that it could have been constructed," Becker says. "I think it would have been interesting to experience in the way László intended it. There's a part of me that wishes it could be built."
The Film Was Shot in Hungary, Not Pennsylvania
The epic narrative begins in post-war Europe, then follows Tóth as he arrives in New York City and moves to small town Pennsylvania, where his cousin owns and operates a furniture store. An astute viewer might notice that the filmmakers shot everything not in the U.S. but in Hungary (apart from a section filmed on location in Carrara, Italy). This was even more imperative, since a big chunk of the $10 million budget went to shooting the film in VistaVision, a widescreen technique of 35 mm cinematography. “You get a lot more for your money in Eastern Europe,” Becker says. “It’s the only place the movie could have been done.”
Several real locations were incorporated, including the József Gruber Water Reservoir in Budapest, a bridge, and a concrete silo. The main location, an early 20th century mansion in a parklike setting two hours outside of Budapest, belongs to an American foundation. "There aren't that many mansions you can shoot in there, and when we saw this one it had a winter garden that was almost all glass."
The script called for a library and Becker had to come up with not just one, but two designs—a before and after. This required a complete rethinking of the space. For the before, she envisioned an Art Deco space painted red with curtains to match. "Luckily it was easy to find Art Deco furniture in Hungary," she says.
Tóth then re-envisions the space as a modernist jewel, with floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves that fan out flower-like at the touch of a button. Becker designed the room in forced perspective, an optical illusion that changes the shape of the space and forces the eye to the center, where she placed a single reading chair. "Every shelf opens simultaneously at a 45-degree angle," she says. "It's a great moment in the movie and I feel really proud every time I see it."
Becker Also Designed the Brutalist's Furniture
"I call it character-driven furniture," says Becker. She tried to channel Tóth's style, combining his Bauhaus training with the influences of midcentury America. His cousin, played by Alessandro Nivola, owns a furniture store specializing in Colonial Revival brown furniture, which he admits is not his style.
The film's set decorator, Patty Cuccia, shipped a container of vintage furniture from Canada to Hungary for the store set. She also sent vintage wallpaper and curtains. Most of the furniture was purchased for a budget of $1,000 on Craig's List and Facebook Marketplace. "I wanted to use American-style Colonial furniture so that László encounters it and realizes, 'Welcome to America.' This is people's taste here."
Becker looked to 20th-century furniture designs for inspiration, including pieces by Breuer, but for reasons of character and copyright was driven to create designs that were entirely new. The library's cantilevered chair is in tubular steel, a popular material at the time, but this was combined with leather webbing inspired by American beach chairs. "I was very careful not to copy anybody," she says. "I imagined that László would have gotten some inspiration from Americana."
Brutalism is a Style, But Also a Metaphor
Tóth is almost messianic in his determination to realize his stark design for the enormous concrete Institute. The character seems so realistic that many wonder if he was a real historical figure. He isn't. But Corbet has mentioned two books that served as inspiration: Marcel Breuer and a Committee of 12 Plan a Church by Hilary Thimmesh, and Architecture in Uniform: Designing and Building for the Second World War by Jean-Louis Cohen.
"My first conversations with Brady were about the Institute, which also became the first build and my first experience channeling Tóth," Becker explains. "The building was described in the script to a certain degree, it needed to represent the barracks of the concentration camps where László and his wife Erzsebet were imprisoned. It also needed to represent the idea of freedom, the horror of the concentration camps, and some kind of passageway between László and Erzsebet."
To create the design, she looked at images of concentration camps, as well as Brutalist buildings, Louis Kahn's Salk Institute, Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Building and the Skyspaces of James Turrell. The result is a minimalist concrete structure with a skylight that, at certain times of day, shines a cross of light onto an altar in Carrara marble. "I was trying to make it minimal and elegant," Becker says, "but to have some relationship with the dialogue."
And while it was never actually built (scenes were rigged up on location or faked using models), Becker's design for the Institute makes a convincing argument for the beauty and power of Brutalist architecture. "One of the things about Brutalism and its importance is the void of historical reference," she notes. "It's only forward looking. And I think that's one of the reasons people often hate it—like atonal music, it doesn't have anything they can relate to. And for László, that's the point. He is saying goodbye to history and everything he wants to forget."
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