Brady Corbet, the director behind the architecture of The Brutalist

expectations for hyaena be high. Actor-turned-director Brady Corbet already won the Silver Lion at the Venice International Film Festival last September. And now he’s entering Hollywood’s big awards season with seven Golden Globe nominations, including for director, screenplay and drama.

hyaena is a historical epic that tells the story of Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a renowned Bauhaus architect who moves from Budapest to Pennsylvania after the Holocaust. There he meets the Van Burens, a wealthy family with enormous resources that can revive the talented architect’s career. A series of events halted the initial work, but László was resilient and in time was invited to design a large-scale, ambitious community centre.

After a break (yes, there is a break) we see László living in the land of the Van Burens. He could have used their connections to reunite families who had been forcibly separated during the war. But if László sounds easy to root for, he isn’t. Because around every victory comes a loss. And the things that tire him out are alcohol, drugs, and flirting. at last, hyaena Depart Pennsylvania for the marble quarries of Carrara, Italy, for the film’s most incredible scene.

I spoke with Brady Corbet, who co-wrote the script with his wife, Mona Fastvold, about his prickly protagonist, the film’s nearly four-hour running time, and why rich people collect artists rather than art. We discussed whether we felt we had to.

The Verge: At the Center hyaena This is a story about doing whatever it takes to survive in uncertain times. Why was this story so urgent for you?

Brady Corbet: I always try to work on topics that remain relevant to me, no matter how long it takes to actually get started. when i made childhood or sound lux or hyaenaIt is a historically deep and thematically rich film. This is a wealth of material. I suspected when I wrote the end that it would take a while to get started on this when we got to page 173 or something.

And the film deals with themes of individualism and capitalism, immigration and assimilation. I think these are all things that virtually everyone has real-world experience in the field of work that they’re doing. Obviously, I know how much journalists have to fight to report what they want and to be paid a living wage. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for artists, writers, architects, filmmakers, etc. I think this is something that anyone can relate to. And of course, I think viewers are especially top of mind right now as everyone is anticipating how the new administration will handle the immigration issue.

The moment when László tells Audrey, “I’m not what I expected either,” really speaks to this character’s instinct for survival. Can you talk about finding that with Adrien Brody?

Adrien is a really, really smart guy. And I’m not saying anything bad about the actors, but he has an uncommonly good sense of what the film was doing in terms of its subject matter and all the things he had in mind. I think he really understood the material and what emphasis to place on the syllables. And when I met him, he seemed to have a really elegant quality and reminded me of an actor from another era.

To me, he’s like Gregory Peck or early De Niro. In fact, as we enter an era where casting for period dramas has become very difficult, many of my favorite actors have had a lot of plastic surgery, but it is very difficult to cast people who have had that much plastic surgery. Plastic surgery in movies filmed before 1975. I really catch up with these actors, men, women, young people, and so many young people who get plastic surgery. It’s natural when you’re 18 or 19. And I think Adrien has that same struggle. I’m not sure exactly where that phrase came from, but it’s clear that he’s a person who has lived a lot. He squeezed a lot of juice out of the lemon.

And I think that’s all very attractive to me. Of course, I think his legacy was a factor. I knew about his background. I knew that his mother left Hungary in 1956, during the revolution. He was uniquely suited to the role.

There is a certain type of wealthy person who loves to bring people together. Guy Pearce’s character, Harrison Lee Van Buren, is a peak figure collector.

I am so fascinated by patrons who don’t just want to collect the work. They want to bring artists together.

Guy understood it immediately. I think he completely understood the piece when he read the script. I would say the film made its own choice. Because everyone involved in the project fell apart and came back together several times. They all had very strong references to what this was about.

It’s just a specific person. I see them everywhere.

It absolutely is. Listen, I think Carrara’s sequence really begins when reality shifts into flux and reaches the state of Greek mythology two and a half hours later. What was very important to me about Carrara is that Carrara marble is a material that should not be owned, but at the same time it is laid out in our kitchens and bathrooms. But the material will disappear in 500 years. The mountain would not exist. And it’s incredibly confusing. Because right now it’s like Swiss cheese. And because there are constant rock slides.

It’s not as dangerous as it was 70 years ago when people were literally cutting off their hands every day, but it’s still dangerous. There is a helicopter pad, which serves two purposes. The first purpose is to carry out severely injured people. The second reason is that many buyers like to fly and choose slabs for their houses, sculptures, etc.

It’s about VIP, and it’s really funny and disturbing. And I think there are subjects that you can’t and shouldn’t own. The visual allegory there was very rich.

Throughout the first act, you are immersed in all the romantic and historical notions of Pennsylvania. Why did the story have to take place there? What was important to you about Pennsylvania?

When the Bauhaus Dessau was closed by the Nazis in 1935, Walter Gropius was able to place many of his professors, students, artists and designers in universities, mainly in the northeast. There is a reason why so many great people came to this area. That’s why, but for me it was important to set the film in a place that was so architecturally rich, especially because of Paul Rudolph and Louis Kahn.

And it was actually through the process of working on the film that I really learned a lot about Pennsylvania history. And that’s what’s interesting about making a film is that it’s important to know enough to make a film about that topic. And because you’re going to be working, you also need to have space to discover things. We had to be exploratory about it for many years. I want to discover something with the audience. I’m not really interested in speaking or teaching to an audience.

As a director, how do you build trust with your audience and keep them engaged throughout the run, including intermission?

I think it’s just intuitive. I see good things. I see bad things. I see everything. And film is a language that I feel pretty good at at this point. At this point I feel pretty fluent. And I think it becomes second nature. What I keep saying about this movie is that it’s a long movie, but it’s not a lasting movie. There are many movies of special duration. I like the work of Lissandra Alonso, Bela Tarr or Miklós Jancsó, who is also the father of editor David Jancsó. But this film wasn’t part of the make-up, or the intent, or the design, or the editing.

Interesting. I think for some viewers, people can find it very frustrating at times. Because I intentionally left out a lot of what feels like the first 30 minutes of most movies. They just tell you exactly what these characters’ backgrounds are and what they’ve been through. And I don’t think it’s that interesting. I want to meet an attractive stranger.

And I want to get to know them through movies. I don’t want to watch a movie where I know how it’s going to end within the first 5-10 minutes. And that’s pretty much it.

Very, very rare. And what was interesting to me about this was that it subverted the classical structure, so I thought, “It’s a natural place to end the film with a look back at this character’s work.” But what’s very unusual, beyond what’s officially very unusual (much of it was filmed in DigiBeta, and there are major adjustments to the jump from 1959 to 1980), is that the character of Adrien is not given a voice in that sequence. He is physically present for his accomplishments, but perhaps he is not mentally present for his accomplishments. His wife died. And there’s a great quote, it’s from one of the Southern Gothic writers. I don’t know if it’s Flannery O’Connor, Faulkner, or Cormac McCarthy. It’s one of them. But here are some great quotes: “The human soul becomes exhausted when it reaches the pinnacle of achievement. His noon marks the beginning of midnight.”

(Ed note: Cormac McCarthy’s exact quote is, “His mind is exhausted when he reaches the pinnacle of achievement. His meridian darkens at the same time and becomes the evening of the day.”)

And I think that’s very true. It’s interesting how to the public and anyone looking in from the outside, this seemed like a moment of glory. You are usually too spiritually exhausted to really appreciate it in any way. And for me it was important to do something that was completely classic in terms of A, B and C, but also really depressing in quality and tone. And by the end of the movie, there’s a lot going on. Ecstasy is always accompanied by pain and vice versa. And it’s important that the film represents that.

And the last thing I want to say is that I’ve always been disturbed by the way survivors are portrayed in movies, which is that they are often selfless. They are like saints. My problem is that we can only empathize if someone is perfect. And for Adrien’s character, it was important to me that it was a love story. He loves his wife very deeply, but he also has a wandering eye. He is truly a mid-century man. He is a womanizer. But both of these things may be true. Even when he behaves badly, we can sympathize with him.

The high cost of making the items is a huge burden for both László and his family. When you eventually get to the epilogue, did you know it was worth it?

I don’t know if it’s worth it to him. I don’t know. What’s a little ambiguous about the film’s conclusion is that when you talk to most people at the end of their lives, they usually say, “Take it from me. Spend more time with your kids.”