THE BRUTALIST
Three-plus hours of craft in service of contempt.
Should You Watch It?
Here is the decision, plainly. THE BRUTALIST is a handsome, painstakingly produced film — and a two-star one, because handsome and painstaking aren't enough to redeem more than three hours spent with unlikeable people making a hostile argument.
That argument matters. The film mounts what our reviewer calls slimy socialist, humanist attacks on America, Christianity, and the American Dream. Its wealthy Protestant industrialist isn't merely flawed; he's made into a homosexual rapist with an Oedipal streak. One scene reveals a chapel ceiling designed to form an upside-down cross — a deliberate mockery of the faith.
Layered on top: an incredibly explicit, even pornographic sequence, full nudity, a rape scene, heroin abuse, drunkenness, and heavy profanity. This earned a −4, the strongest caution we give.
So the practical answer is simple. This one isn't for you — not for your family, and not for your own evening. Skip it.
The Story
NO SPOILERS — WE KEEP THE SURPRISESLászló Tóth is a Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to Philadelphia in 1947, separated from a wife trapped in Europe. He carries a bold, austere modernist style — brutalism, all industrial concrete — into a country that doesn't yet know what to do with him.
After years of hard labor, a wealthy Protestant industrialist takes notice and hires him to design an ambitious memorial and community center. It should be László's chance. But his patron proves unreliable and cruel the moment things don't go his way — and that's where we'll stop.
Is It Any Good?
Two stars, and here's what they mean. The production is meticulous — no one is accusing this film of being carelessly made, and its period craft is real. That's the case for the second star.
The case against the film as an experience is its length and its company. At more than three hours, it's a long slog, and it asks you to spend all of it with characters our reviewer found unlikeable. The patron in particular isn't allowed to be merely haughty or mean; the movie piles on until he becomes a Marxist melodrama villain rather than a person. Meticulous surfaces can't carry a story that neither moves nor rewards the endurance it demands. Well-built and not worth sitting through is the honest summary.
The Worldview
This is a film with a thesis, and the thesis is the problem. Its dominant worldview is strongly humanist, and it uses its hero's suffering to launch broad attacks on capitalism, America, the American Dream, and Protestant Christianity. The industrialist patron embodies that argument — a wealthy WASP whose cruelty stands in for a whole country and a whole faith. As our reviewer notes, it's true that power tends to corrupt; but the film doesn't explore that truth so much as weaponize it into caricature.
The hostility to Christianity is explicit. A chapel László designs hides a trick of light: at sunrise, the cross in the ceiling casts an upside-down cross below — an image the movie ties to his upside-down first sight of the Statue of Liberty. The message is unmistakable and deliberate. Along the way, the hero abandons his Jewish faith and sours entirely on the country that took him in.
The film does name real evils — racism and antisemitism are shown and rebuked, and the horrors of the Holocaust are never trivialized. But its larger story replaces one darkness with despair, offering no light beyond disillusionment.
The ache underneath is real: a refugee's longing for a home that will not betray him. Scripture answers that longing not with cynicism but with a promise — "the LORD watches over the sojourners" (Psalm 146:9).
The Content Guide
The specifics — spoilers included by nature — so you can judge for your own family.
Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements
Very strong humanist worldview about a Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor in America, who’s part of a social realism movement in architecture called brutalism because it uses a lot of industrial-looking concrete and who sours on America and the American Dream, loses his Jewish faith, and is also raped by his mercurial wealthy patron, a Protestant industrialist with a nasty mean streak when things don’t go his way, so the movie also has very strong politically correct, socialist attacks overall on capitalism, America, the American Dream, and Protestant America and Christianity (one scene shows that the title character designed a cross visual in a skylight that actually turns into an upside down cross below when the rising sun hits it)
Foul Language
About 17 obscenities (including seven “f” words), one profanity using the name Jesus, one profanity using the name Christ, six GD profanities, two light profanities
Violence
A stained glass dome crashes during some construction work, but no one is hurt, a train derailment occurs and kills several people, character nearly dies from an overdose, two people are pushed
Sex
Extreme explicit sexual content includes title character visits a porn theater in New York and watches a very explicit movie with an orgy scene, receives oral sex from a prostitute, and has explicit intercourse with his wife, plus his architectural patron rapes him (scene is shown from afar but sodomy is implied with some movement)
Nudity
Images of full female and male nudity, a partial image of a female’s genital area, images of upper and rear male nudity
Alcohol Use
Some alcohol use and three scenes of drunkenness
Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse
Some smoking and the title character and his friend become addicted to heroin, plus title character injects his wife with his heroin in desperation when she runs out of her bone medicine, but she nearly dies;
Miscellaneous Immorality
Instances of racism and antisemitism but rebuked, man’s wife falsely accuses husband’s cousin of fornicating with her, lying and deception, villain sometimes gets uncontrollably angry, villain is sometimes condescending and patronizing, title character gets irritable and even fires his best friend.
Talk About It
Questions for the drive home, the dinner table, or the youth group.
The film insists that power corrupts — and it's not wrong. But it turns a whole class of people into villains. How does Scripture warn the wealthy without condemning them wholesale, and where does it warn all of us about our own hearts?
1 Timothy 6:17–19 · Jeremiah 17:9László arrives as a refugee and is finally embraced by disillusionment. What does the Bible ask of us toward the sojourner and stranger — and what does it promise them?
Leviticus 19:34 · Psalm 146:9The movie mocks the cross with a clever inversion. Why has the cross always drawn scorn — and what does Paul say that scorn reveals?
1 Corinthians 1:18–25The hero loses his faith and ends in bitterness after real suffering. When you've been wronged and worn down, where does Scripture say hope can still come from?
Romans 5:3–5 · Lamentations 3:19–24The Final Word
THE BRUTALIST is a well-crafted film with an ugly heart — three hours of explicit content wrapped around a deliberate attack on faith and country, earning our strongest caution. However skilled the making, there's nothing here worth the cost. Our answer is the one we opened with: skip it. For an evening that builds you up instead, try our latest family-friendly picks.
