Adrien Brody Reacts To ‘The Brutalist’ Scenes

How you doing? I'm Adrien Brody.

You're watching GQ Action Replay for The Brutalist.

[bright music]

These are yours. Yes?

I portray a Hungarian immigrant man

who fled Budapest to an immigrates to the United States.

And my mother and her parents,

my grandparents are actual Hungarian immigrants as well.

They fled Budapest during the revolution in the fifties

and moved to America.

My grandfather had a very distinct

and quite pronounced Hungarian accent

that's not too dissimilar to what I work towards for László.

And my research, working with a dialect coach

and finding sources of that very specific dialect

of a man from that time, from the fifties,

really was to honor his accent.

And the truth that I knew of, not just even with a dialect,

but personality

and forms of expression that kind of came out

that I recall from my childhood with my grandfather.

It's a dialect

that I had unknowingly been researching my whole life.

László, my character and Van Buren had an altercation

prior to this where László was hired to do,

rebuild a library in Van Buren's home.

And Van Buren kind of loses his cool

and essentially kicks László out of his house

for a bunch of assumptions.

But basically he was very disrespectful.

Van Buren had done some research

and discovered not only László's talents,

but a series of images of his previous works

that he had constructed.

What felt most profound to me was the gift

of seeing all his years of work

and creativity still existing

as he had assumed they had been demolished

during the Nazi occupation.

Did not realize these images were still available,

much less of any consequence.

May I keep these?

When he asks permission to keep the images,

it's pretty heartbreaking

because these images are more nourishing

and the knowledge that all of his efforts

and devotion to his work

remained intact is more nourishing

than the potential for food to come.

And I thought that was just so powerful and beautiful.

[László] This is magic.

Thank you. László tell me,

there will be a big party tonight.

I remember much love at parties.

We shot this in Carrera in Italy.

We were in pre-production, and Brady Corbet, our director

and I were texting

and he said he was struggling to find this location,

and he was in Italy.

And I texted him back, I got you.

I just so happened

to have a friend whose family owns that marble quarry,

and I reached out to him and within two

or three hours they send me a picture arm in arm

having a glass of wine.

My friend was very kind to allow us

to film our humble movie in that epic place,

and it enhances the storytelling so much.

So, it's a big gift.

He also shot it in Vista Vision,

which gives it this expansive look.

So there's tremendous depth of field.

It's a format where the negative is actually horizontal.

It's, there hasn't been an American film shot

on Vista Vision since 1961, so the look

and feel of this is quite unique and of another era.

So I think that adds to it.

This grandness is kind of telling

of the dangers looming as well.

I've never thought of that before.

I'm, I hope it was an intelligent enough answer,

but I do see it.

I do see how it's quite symbolic.

♪ Love for me ♪

♪ Would I be a fool to ever leave you dear ♪

♪ And I fool I'd ♪

We played this music again and again on the day,

and we danced to it and we reveled in it

and it haunted me.

But there's such, it's such a beautiful moment.

Lol Crawley, our DP is just an artist.

We discuss how we will shoot something

and it's a matter of the dance

between the camera and the subjects.

And so you have to be in a moment,

but you also have to be aware

of where light sources are and certain movements

and what you are revealing in certain movements

as they unfold.

He's partying.

[Adrien laughs]

And he's in, he's kind of given

into the emotion of it all, I guess.

And then that exposes vulnerability.

And you have Van Buren,

the vantage point above, clearly looking down upon him

and the circumstances, with other agendas.

I mean, Guy is a remarkable actor.

He is a wonderful human being, but he's a very gifted actor

and there's a lot of complexity to his character.

He is quite a mercurial character,

and he brings all these nuances to his depiction

of this character

because there are a lot of extremes.

There's a genuine sense of wonder and gentleness

and thoughtfulness that exists within him.

But then there's this darkness

and a very foreboding and controlling

and representative of the class difference between them,

representative of numerous ways

where he must dominate in order to feel superior.

It is no coincidence that fate brought us together

on the eve of my mother's death.

I'm good at reading the signs.

Sir, I do not know what the commission entails.

We'll talk about the details at home,

which you'll be well compensated,

and also you'll be given a place here on the property.

In this scene, Van Buren invites László to his home

and they have a celebratory dinner

and they have some drinks together and they really speak.

And this is the first moment of profound respect

and opportunity.

They're on the precipice of this mountain,

and this is the kind of precipice of crossing all

that hardship to apparently the American dream.

And your family, should they arrive,

they're welcome here too.

What do you say?

I would like to draw something and present it to you.

You'd like to win the commission?

[Van Buren laughs]

Van Buren is offering him an opportunity

to build this grand institute in Van Buren's mother's name

with all this artistic freedom.

And I think it's very hard

to believe for László.

It's really like winning the lottery.

So anyone would be in disbelief in this position.

But of course there are undertones

of that loneliness and longing,

and he's alone at the end

on the knoll in which he intends to,

and ultimately proceeds, to build this life's work.

It was very cold on this. It was a mountaintop.

We had to be brought up with quads

so everybody would get in these quads and go all the way up.

And this is where we started to construct the basis

for the institute.

So we worked in this location. We were outside of Budapest.

It had a hopeful quality.

It did have other things that may not be fit for this,

but that were very telling of his journey.

It spoke to all the complexity of both rebirth, renewal,

the past lingering, it's heavy.

In many ways, this character honors the journey of an artist

and how experiences and traumas of war

and loss inform and influence the work that is being created

and the beauty of art to be created stemming

from some of the darkest times in our world history.

And all of that speaks to me as an artist

and as a son of a Hungarian immigrant

who is an artist in America.

I'm definitely the right man for the job.

I would, I don't know

who else really has had these influences in their lives

who is fit to play the character.

It's quite interesting.

[laptop snaps shut]

Thanks for watching.