The Brutalist begins in darkness; a chaotic, crowded space of stress and strange sounds, the hold of a ship. It’s an origin story for Laszlo Toth, a Jewish-Hungarian architect, newly arrived in America in 1947, whose subsequent work will be characterised by an obsession with darkness and light, confinement and release, defined by trauma.

You might ask whether this is the best experience to subject his subsequent building’s users to. But then, you never actually see any of the users of his buildings. The movie skips from the construction site to a belated recognition of his brilliance, decades later, at a Venice Biennale of Architecture. Even his first US work, a home library for his wealthy benefactor-to-be, is never seen being used, only displayed.

Financial Times