Adrien Brody won a Golden Globe for his role in The Brutalist, as a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who seeks a fresh start in post-WWII America. "I just was in awe when I read the script," he says. Brody spoke with Tonya Mosley about how his family's history helped him with the role, and about his collaboration with Wes Anderson. Also, John Powers reviews the new erotic drama Babygirl.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is 'The Brutalist' about?
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. In a stunning new film, my guest Adrian Brody plays a Hungarian refugee who escapes post-war Europe and arrives in the U.S. with dreams of rebuilding his life. The Brutalist is a multi-layered story that runs three hours and 35 minutes long with a 15-minute intermission. And for me, the time flew by.
Directed by Brady Corbet, the film explores the harsh realities of the American dream. And it's visually stunning, shot on a format known as VistaVision. It's what Alfred Hitchcock used to film North by Northwest in Vertigo. Brody portrays a fictional character named Laszlo Toth, who settles in Pennsylvania in 1947.
where he meets a wealthy industrialist, played by Guy Pearce, who recognizes his talent and hires him to create a community center in honor of his mother. However, the relationship between the two comes at a cost.
The sweeping nature of The Brutalist is reminiscent of Brody's work in The Pianist, where he captivated audiences and the Academy in 2002 with his stirring performance as a Jewish pianist from Warsaw who survived the Holocaust by hiding from the Nazis. Adrian Brody has been in a slew of films and television shows. His breakout role was in Spike Lee's 1999 film Summer of Sam.
In 2002, at 29, he became the youngest person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor. He's a regular staple in Wes Anderson films, having starred in five of them, including The French Dispatch, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. The Brutalist just won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Drama and And Adrian Brody, one for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama.
Adrian Brody, welcome back to Fresh Air.
Thank you, Tanya. What a pleasure to be here.
There are so many layers to this film, many of which are personal to you. Your mother is a Hungarian refugee who fled the revolution in 1956 and started again here in the United States. Can you take me to that day that you first got the script? And was the connection immediate?
Yes, it's a remarkable thing to find something that speaks to a struggle, a resiliency and a sense of something so intimate like my mother's journey of fleeing Hungary and my grandparents and having to leave everything behind and Those hardships that not only speak to me personally, but to so many from many different backgrounds.
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Chapter 2: How did Adrien Brody connect with the script?
Well, those stories are very intimate to me. You know, there's a very interesting parallel with... the character that I play, Laszlo Toth, who is this Hungarian architect who really finds purpose and how his work, even how the works of architects of that era were really informed by the traumas of post-war times.
of that time and how that influenced the architecture to come and I feel like my mother as an artist and her beautiful sensitivity and empathy for others all of that is enhanced from her own struggles and her own consciousness of the struggles of others but she she shared so much along the years with me both stories of my grandparents and
her having to say goodbye to her friends without, she was only told she was having to flee the day before they left. How old was she? She was 13 and she had to say goodbye to her best friend and went to her house and her friend said, okay, well, I'll see you later. And my mother didn't quite have a response and said, hopefully, or something along those lines where she knew what was coming.
Wasn't able to tell her friend.
Right.
So those kind of moments are those big ones in our lives.
Right. You know, the other thing I'm hearing from you is because you say that like you were made for this role, that you were able to, through your life, just in your mom's way of being, understand that immigrant experience of coming here with nothing and trying to make a life out of it.
Yeah, it was also, she's done remarkably well, and she's a real incredible artist. Sylvia Plahi, I don't know if we've referenced her, but she is a... I'll meet people quite often in New York who say, oh, yeah, yeah, I know who you are, but your mom, she's the artist. And she's done such great, great things and has devoted her life to that.
But the struggles for my grandfather, I think, were more... um, pronounced primarily with, uh, his, he had a very strong accent, not dissimilar to my characters. Um, I think it's, it's hard to be, uh, an outsider, you know, it's hard to be a foreigner, even though you attempt to assimilate and, and to fit in. And, um, that's very much a part of Laszlo's journey. And I got to, uh,
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Chapter 3: What personal experiences influenced Brody's role?
Um, only later, I guess I, you know, I had started acting at quite a young age, but he had already passed. And, um, we often would say how proud he would have been to see me along the way. I mean, it would be such a, a gift to be able to share this with my grandparents. I think it would just blow their mind. Um, has kind of given purpose to their sacrifice.
And it's something that's not lost on me, that my own good fortune and the firm footing that I've been given through their hardships along the way is definitely something I honor daily. So to do this film, I feel really, it's quite wonderful.
The film is set in Philadelphia, but am I right that it was shot in Hungary because of the environment in Budapest? It was like the closest thing to recreating that time period, that kind of minimalist, almost bleak post-World War II aesthetic. Had you spent a lot of time there before?
I had visited and actually we shot... Hungary is, and Budapest is a... film location destination. Part of the reasoning was that there are film labs there and Brady was using film and it's better than shipping it across borders from other locations that may have been, you know, less able to process all the dailies regularly. But also, you know, Yeah, there was a look and a feel.
It was definitely helpful for me to be there. Also, our wonderful crew are all Hungarians, and I had a responsibility to sound good, not only to live up to their expectations, but to interact and hear them constantly was very helpful in keeping me grounded and tonally feeling connected to that era.
I want to play a clip so folks can hear a little bit from the movie. But first, I want to just set up. Your character, Laszlo, arrives in the U.S. in 47. And he goes to stay with his cousin in Philly, who's been in the U.S. for a couple of years now. And he owns a furniture shop named Miller and Sons. And I'm saying that because that is not your cousin's name. He does not have sons.
But he notes that Americans love a simple name and they also love a family business. So your character works for his cousin designing furniture for the store. And then one day, the son of a wealthy businessman asks you to redesign his father's library as a surprise. And when the father, Harrison Lee Van Buren, who's played by Guy Pearce, returns home and sees this library, he's furious.
He refuses to pay. This sends your character into a spiral until a little while later, Lee Van Buren searches and finds your character shoveling coal and He apologizes. He asks him to be a part of this new project to create a community center in honor of his deceased mother.
And in this scene I'm about to play, Van Buren asks your character why he chose architecture as a profession when he lived in Hungary. Van Buren, played by Pierce, speaks first.
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Chapter 4: How did Brody prepare for the role of Laszlo Toth?
As you said, they are two very different films and your characters are different characters. But they do feel like to me that they are speaking to each other. I don't know if that's the right way to put it. Maybe it's that they both hit a similar emotional note. I'm wondering how you see that.
Well, they both reference this time that has changed the shape and face of this world indelibly. And they both reference how intolerance and oppression and anti-Semitism and forces that are ugly exist and have deprived us of so much beauty in this world. This movie, The Brutalist, is a fictional story.
And the reason it's a fictional story is because when Brady and Mona were doing their research to try and write a film about a European architect who survived the Nazi occupation and carried on his work in America. there were none to be found because they'd all been killed. And then Brady and Mona had to find references of other wonderful creatives who...
were similar, like Marcel Brauer, who has left a wonderful legacy of work.
As an architect.
As an architect, but left in the mid-30s, fortunately. So I think the films obviously speak to this horrific time and speak to the power of art today and the beauty and the capacity for the human spirit to endure, and the power of the ability to create beauty and lightness amidst darkness, and to find purpose in art to transcend that darkness.
The use of silence in both of the films is also really powerful. In The Pianist, the silence is because Spielman is alone in his hiding from the Nazis. But in The Brutalist, from my view, the silence plays another role. It plays a lens into the life of an immigrant.
Like on a very practical sense, when you are coming to a new country and you don't speak the language well, you are other, you are an outsider. As you're saying, like that's a lonely experience. And so there are probably huge swaths of time where there is silence, especially when you don't have your family with you.
And you don't have the words, you don't have the vocabulary or confidence to speak in another language. I can understand a fair amount of French, but I'm very reticent to start speaking, especially when I'm in France, because I'm just not confident with that. And the pressure of coming to a new land and trying to communicate and express yourself And in a way, it's very hard for many people.
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Chapter 5: What insights did Brody gain from 'The Pianist' for this role?
Can you remind us of how the two of you began working together?
Well, I love Wes. He's such an amazing person and fantastic and unique filmmaker and... You know, we first met for The Darjeeling Limited, which I shot with Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman. The three of us portrayed brothers and our character's father had passed away and we take a trip throughout India together to reconnect and find our way through that trauma.
It was such a beautiful life experience. We all traveled India together and we lived in the same house. I bought a motorcycle when I was there, and I lived there. I lived in Jodhpur for the most part and traveled around India. It's very, very special, and I'm so grateful for Wes for including me in his family right away.
All the wonderful creative experiences he's enabled me to have and life experiences and all the many creative people and actors who I admire that I've developed friendships and greater connection with through just... dinners on his sets. Yeah, I heard that you guys... Yeah, he's just, he knows how to do something very inclusive, and I think it's really wonderful.
Yeah, I think Jeffrey Wright noted that there's a kind of traveling circus that Wes is the ringmaster of because he does have many of the same actors who appear in his films. And on the set actually treats you all very much like family with these dinners that happened after dinner.
after filming you have talked a bit about this in the past but there's also like this playfulness and specificity in the way that Wes Anderson shoots his films and um you have to be a lot of things like you have to be ironic and cheeky while on camera um and you have to do all this while while staying in like a single shot I was wondering is there a scene or a time um
in one of his movies that you remember, that really challenged you in this regard?
Yeah, it's quite demanding. It gives off this impression of everything being off the cuff and quirky and alive. But it requires such a precision, not only from the actors, but from the camera department, lighting shifts. He does a lot of practical effects. He'll have cameras coming on and off of a dolly, for instance. So that's very challenging to do smoothly. And that is essentially...
Sanji, who's our, his master, Dali Grip, who has been with us and with him since we worked on Darjeeling together and is now part of, you know, his, his crew on everything, um, is, is really a master at his craft. And, um, so much is a dance between us and him enabling those shots to work.
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Chapter 6: What themes are explored in 'The Brutalist'?
I know you've been acting since you were very young. How old were you when you first started?
I think my first professional job was 12 years old. Before acting, I started doing magic and I was, you could call it a professional job. I mean, I think I earned $50 to do a children's birthday party in its entirety. But I loved magic and I found that that
The storytelling that's involved, in addition to creating the illusion, was a gateway into an understanding of performance and precision in performance.
in uh in performance and and um but i i found a love for acting at a very very young age and then was fortunate to work pretty consistently over the years i didn't have a big career for many years but i i was a working actor and i'm i have always been very grateful for that
12 years old is a remarkably young age to feel so directed and passionate in what you do. Were your parents leading you? Were you leading the charge? How did it come about that you took this on at that age?
Yeah, I just joked about it last night. I said, you know, acting beats working for a living. And, you know... It is very hard work in all seriousness, but it is such a joy and it's always different. And I always had a very curious spirit and that curiosity of my childhood lives on in me. And, you know, I grew up in New York City. I grew up in Queens. I took the train all the time.
I had to take four trains each way to go to drama school. I got accepted to performing arts. It was a public school, but it gave me a wonderful foundation.
It wasn't just a public school. You're talking about the school, the high school that the film Fame was based on, right? That's where you went to high school.
Yes. I mean, it's not merely a public school, but it was a... It's a remarkable school, but it was a public high school, meaning I was, by being selected and making it into the drama department, I was given four acting classes a day within the public school system, which is remarkable and was very helpful for me. But along the way to get to school, I'd have to take the train.
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Chapter 7: How does Brody describe his collaboration with Wes Anderson?
Adrienne Brody, it's been a real pleasure to talk with you about this latest work and your work overall. Thank you so much.
Tanya, thank you very much. I enjoyed this conversation. I have to say I've really enjoyed hearing your voice. You enhance the experience, and I think to the listeners as well, so thank you.
Adrian Brody stars in the award-winning film The Brutalist. It's now playing in select theaters, including IMAX, and opens nationwide on January 17th. Coming up, Critic at Large John Powers reviews Baby Girl, starring Nicole Kidman. This is Fresh Air.
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