A film that breaks the rules about Jews and America

Holocaust movies are frequent flyers at the Academy Awards. This year The Brutalist, a film about a survivor's encounter with the American dream, was nominated for 10 Oscars and won Best Actor (Adrian Brody) and Best Cinematography.

The Brutalist is an epic account of the tragic travails of a fictional Hungarian Bauhaus architect, Laszlo Toth, who seeks refuge in America after his internment in the camps.  The first half of the film seems to follow the familiar Hollywood trope of a (Jewish) immigrant desperately struggling to achieve the American Dream. The second half extends the mainstay capture/camp/escape stories of the Holocaust genre by showing the impact of such trauma not just on survivors but on their artistic vision and legacy.  

Making a Holocaust-themed movie is a fraught endeavour. There are hidden rules governing filmic representations of the Shoah which surface the moment a filmmaker transgresses.  

According to American Holocaust scholar, Terence Des Pres, the Shoah should be depicted as: 

1. a unique event, a special case.  

2. accurate, faithful to the facts and conditions of the event, without change or manipulation for any reason, including artistic licence. 

3. a solemn, even sacred, event without obscuring its enormity or dishonouring its dead. 

These criteria underscore what might be called the “Holocaust Veritas” approach - its apotheosis was Steven Spielberg’s, ‘Schindler’s List’. The Holocaust Veritas school objects to films about the Shoah, like Roberto Benigni’s Oscar winning tragi-comedy, Life is Beautiful.  

My colleague Heinz Steinert and I discerned two additional criteria for acceptable representations of the Shoah: 

4. They should be “High Culture” products because popular culture is superficial. Comedies appeal mostly to less discerning audiences so can be easily misunderstood or convey the wrong message. 

Most importantly, Shoah films should only be,  

5. Undertaken by an artist with the right attitude and motivation: altruism, good intentions, i.e. with the proper moral and didactic aims.  

Corbet and Fastvold’s screenplay for The Brutalist largely ticked these boxes so has Shoah-based criticism has been muted. In line with the ‘Veritas’ requirements, there was some disquiet that the film was fictional rather than a real bio pic. Some found the Spielbergesque Epilogue, honouring the protagonist’s (fictitious) artistic legacy, ham-fisted. There was unease too about the clumsiness of linking the architecture of the camps to the Brutalist architect’s greatest oeuvre. But, by and large, this latest contribution to the genre has not really offended.  

America the brutal  

On the other hand, The Brutalist breaks the rules about the relationship between Holocaust survivors and the United States.  

Directly or indirectly, Shoah movies usually confirm the accepted orthodoxy that America ‘saved Europe and the Jews’. For Jews, America was the ‘Goldene Medina’. For many, that was, and is, their reality.

Instead, The Brutalist lays bare the cruelty, racism, xenophobia and antisemitism of America then (and now).  

The film also explicitly rejects the self-conceit that America is 'the Land of the Free'. The cinematography of its ‘Overture’ twists and turns the Statue of Liberty on its head, literally and metaphorically.  

The architect’s wife, Erzsebet, even quotes Goethe: "None are more hopelessly enslaved that those who falsely believe they are free." She passionately proclaims that America is “rotten”' to its core. That country's relentless capitalist drive rapes and debases people and worse, cancels beauty.   

Much has been made of the supporting role played by Australian actor, Guy Pearce, as the narcistic millionaire, Harrison Lee Van Buren, who toys with, exploits and eventually rapes, Toth. He’s no angel to be sure. 

The more disturbing menace though is his son, representing the next generation. The younger man ravages the architect’s creative vision, rapes the mute niece, and literally kicks the crippled Erzsebet to the floor. The film tells us newer millionaires lack any scruples and will do anything for money.  

A bilingual English/Hungarian co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom and Hungary, the film’s Europeanness is unmistakable (including in its explicit sex scenes). From that decentred critical vantage point, America, the epicentre of capitalism, is presented as fatally corrupt.  

There is some irony in the fact that culture industry and Hollywood itself are quintessential capitalist behemoths. As the Van Buren character wryly observes, “immigrants have a habit of biting the hand that feeds them”.  

The film also exposes the deep xenophobia and antisemitism of America. When, the appalling son of the millionaire sneers at Toth, “We tolerate you”, the implication is that only the uniquely talented can escape the marginalisation of the migrant and the Jew.  

A crypto-Zionist ending 

What cements The Brutalist as a Holocaust film rather than say, a critical tale about immigration, capitalism and antisemitism, is its strange crypto-Zionism. Zsofia, the once mute niece explains to her initially dumbfounded aunt and uncle that she is moving to Israel, “It is our obligation, our repatriation is our liberation…We must go home now”. 

 In the end, Erzsebet comes to the same conclusion, because “They do not want us here…The people don’t want us here. We are nobody. We are worse than nothing.” She urges her husband to “come home with me”. Toth promises to follow her, and the epilogue suggests that he enjoyed a rich creative life in Israel.  

The link between the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel is indisputable. That strong thesis allows the non-Jewish Corbet to satisfy the criterion of acceptable Shoah depiction- the ‘correct’ motivation and didactic intent. 

In the current political climate asserting the imperative of a Jewish homeland is a bold, even confronting, message. Even for Jews in the Diaspora, the idea that aliyah is the panacea to antisemitism will no doubt be viewed as naïve. 

Given the hostility to Israel in many quarters, the film may also face backlash from some about Corbet’s implicit advocacy.  

The Brutalist is monuental film which demonstrates why the Holocaust remains a popular film subject. It is a ready psychic and creative crucible of a society’s political concerns and moral challenges.