Through the framework of a faux-biopic, The Brutalist charts the building of an appropriation nation on the dreams of immigrants yearning for a new home and eager to blend in and belong. Corbet’s vision is as uncompromising as Tóth’s. And like the Hungarian-Jewish architect’s imposing edifice, the film too is painstakingly designed in a balancing act of form and function. It is a return to classicism — to crisp VistaVision spectacle with sweeping brass orchestrations and tender piano refrains. Corbet and his co-writer and partner Mona Fastvold take on the monumental challenge to sketch, in a single film, the national character of a country where identities are always in flux. The ambition is only eclipsed by the self-importance of Corbet’s project.

Hints are strewn all over of the literary company Corbet kept through the conception phase. Part 1: The Enigma of Arrival takes its title from the VS Naipaul novel about a young Trinidadian writer journeying to post-imperial England and coping with feelings of alienation from displacement. The Brutalist possesses the mythical grandeur of WG Sebald (named as a big influence by Corbet in interviews) but neither the precise lyricism nor the quiet revelations. The German writer’s fiction was haunted by the spectres of European history and informed by his own life. The Emigrants (1996) and Austerlitz (2001) are works charged by a profound sense of loss as homesick Jewish exiles, beset by the trauma of uprooting, find repositories of memories in buildings and places. As with Sebald, central to the work of Bellow was the Jewish identity and the trauma of the Holocaust. So is the case with The Brutalist, a film rich with physicality but low on the hypnotic power of Herzog (1964) or The Adventures of Augie March (1953), both novels about the struggle to reconcile the Jewish identity with the desire to assimilate. Hard as Corbet tries, the film doesn’t quite embody the essence of America to the same potent degree.

Great films keep us so engaged we forget the tricks of editing and the seams of production. On first viewing at least. The Brutalist is not so much a great film as a film aspiring to greatness. The mechanics of the film are hard to ignore because the images are eager to impose themselves. Each shot, each ellipsis, each aesthetic minutiae, each choice seems to announce its purpose. When the film isn’t spelling out what is already writ large, it is patting itself on the back for its technical accomplishments. In a film of two halves, the second belabours to literalise the allegory of the first. That Van Buren is taking advantage of Tóth is depicted as a monstrous violation on a trip to the marble quarries of Carrara. Abuse is consensual, charges Van Buren, if the abused allow the abusers the opportunity. As Tóth learns the hard way, yielding to the demands of a man like Van Buren only beckons more indignities. After a point, enduring doesn’t signify resilience; it opens the door to self-destruction.

Corbet declares his intent with a Goethe quote: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free.” An illustration follows: immigrants stagger around disoriented in the chaotic darkness of a ship’s hold until their searching gazes catch sight of the light. And with it the Statue of Liberty, framed upside-down, a distorted view foreshadowing the American Dream as an illusion. The light at the end of the tunnel doesn’t offer salvation but will soon put the inequalities into focus. “The Jews could survive everything that Europe threw at them,” as Sorella Fonstein says in Bellow’s The Bellarosa Connection. “But now comes the next test – America.”

There is no greeting party for once-renowned Jewish architects. The reputation Tóth built before the war means little. He has to start from the bottom. Attila (Alessandro Nivola), a cousin in Philadelphia, is happy to give him a leg up with a job and a place to stay. To assimilate, Attila has married a shiksa, changed his last name from the Hungarian Molnár to the English Miller, and named his furniture store ‘Miller & Sons’ because American customers favour family businesses. The guilt and shame of abnegation is written all over his frame. But it doesn’t stop him from cutting short his hospitality towards Tóth when his wife hides in a false accusation her hostility towards a man who refuses to mask his otherness.

Tóth is first hired by Van Buren’s son Harry (Joe Alwyn) to remodel his father’s library as a birthday surprise. The surprise doesn’t go down well with Van Buren frothing at the mouth with rage. It is only on learning of Tóth’s pedigree later on that Van Buren seeks him out and entrusts him to build a community centre near his estate in Doylestown as a memorial to his late mother. Besides sizeable compensation, Van Buren also promises to facilitate the immigration of Tóth’s wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), who are still stuck at the Austrian border. The war has taken its toll on the two. Osteoporosis has left Erzsébet wheelchair-bound; the horrors endured have left Zsófia mute.

The Doylestown project is taxed with demands soon as the blueprint is drawn. In exchange for underwriting the costs, the local city council insists on a chapel to be included in the community centre. Tóth objects at first. But he gives in. The chapel’s most striking formal touch is a raised section with a curious aperture. When sunlight seeps through, it angles to form a cross illuminating the marble altarpiece. This chink in the chapel becomes a reflection of a Jewish architect fighting to hold onto his vision in spite of WASP intervention, the passing glimpse of the cross-shaped light symbolising the elusiveness of the American dream, and the negative space a reminder of the erasure that assimilation demands.

As the construction runs into obstacles, the pressure to compromise starts to coil around Tóth’s neck. The despair over each setback consumes him so much he becomes dependent on heroin as a coping mechanism. Brody’s strained headlamp eyes direct a study in doggedness. As the tortured artist with a self-destructive streak, he puts in his most soulful work, seemingly accessing reserves of pain and humiliation deep within himself. Pearce as Van Buren is a forceful counterpoint, repressing his contempt and hostility under a smile. When he launches into anecdotes, it exposes the affectations of a man who measures every word to impress. Van Buren hungers for validation as a self-made businessman and a patron of the arts. His interest in Tóth doesn’t stem from an educated appreciation of his designs but the chance to piggyback on his pre-war stature. For Van Buren, Tóth is a means to increase his social capital, a plaything on his payroll he can call his own, a trophy to show off at parties.

Given the genius architect at the centre, comparisons between The Brutalist and The Fountainhead are inevitable. Ayn Rand’s Howard Roark valued aesthetics over utility in his designs. He would rather blow up his buildings than jeopardize his vision. Through Roark, Rand elevated individualism to a religion in her church of self-interest. As a movement of post-war restoration, Brutalism offered a collectivist alternative. Its utilitarian designs of exposed concrete prioritised functionality over aesthetics in the efforts to speed up rebuilding. Through Tóth and Van Buren’s battle of wills, Corbet challenges Rand’s view by showing why people shouldn’t be given moral licence to radical selfishness and how power imbalance normalises abuse. When the project is hamstrung by unfortunate accidents, even Tóth begins to behave like Van Buren: temperamental, chastising underlings and concerned about personal glory.

Bone-tired of the indignities suffered in America, Erzsébet declares, “This whole country is rotten. I’m going to Israel.” (Oh, the irony.) Tóth agrees to leave the US with her for the “promised land.” The epilogue jumps years later to the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale where Tóth’s work is being celebrated in a retrospective. With an elderly László unable to speak, an adult Zsófia (Ariane Labed) acts as his mouthpiece. We see a montage of his work including the finished Van Buren Institute. Zsófia explains the building as an expression of his trauma in chiselled concrete, sneakily designed to echo his claustrophobic experiences at the Buchenwald camp. Perhaps, that was his intention. Or perhaps it is a case of an artist fighting to fulfil a personal vision, only for others to pervert it to fit their ideology.

Prahlad Srihari is a film and pop culture writer. He lives in Bangalore.