WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!
At first glance, “The Brutalist” looks like it has it all in the way of a great movie.
Released in January of 2025, this movie’s box office numbers are striking, with a worldwide gross of over $47,000,000 according to Box Office Mojo. It has also had a lot of success with awards, winning several Golden Globes and racking up 10 Oscar nominations.
But lately the movie’s success has been covered with controversy. Before getting into the truth and speculation of that controversy, let’s first look at the review of the plot.
The Movie
“The Brutalist” is centered around a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor. Adrien Brody’s character, László Tóth, emigrates to the United States after being forcibly separated from his wife and niece following the events of World War II.
It starts out with Tóth, moving through doors, to show his face lighting up with happiness at seeing the Statue of Liberty finally. This beginning scene is just a prologue that includes a quote from Goethe, a German writer, that reads, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe themselves free.”
Tóth believes himself free now that he’s in Philadelphia and getting a job at his cousin, Attila’s, furniture shop, Miller & Sons. Brady Corbet, director of the film, uses the furniture shop to note the rising presence of capitalism within the US, as there was no actual Miller family.
Tóth’s life begins to change once a guy named Harry Lee Van Buren comes into the shop to hire them to remodel his father’s library. Once they start remodeling, his father, Harrison Lee Van Buren, comes home from being away on business. He is very angry witnessing his house being renovated and ends up refusing to pay Miller & Sons for the work they did. When the big project falls apart, Attila kicks Tóth out.
Years later, Tóth will meet Harrison again where he tells Tóth how praised his library is by the architectural community. It’s the very one that Tóth helped design and create years prior. Harrison pays him the money he deserves from the renovation done long ago, but Tóth uses the money to buy drugs with his new-found friend, Gordon.
The once catastrophe of the renovation ends up helping Tóth when Harrison brings him into the upper-class world. He commissions the architect to build a new community center in honor of his late mother after learning about Tóth’s background in Europe.
Harrison then offers to help Tóth bring his wife, Erzsébet, and their niece, Zsófia, over to America from Europe using his high-ranking attorneys. Once Tóth’s family does arrive at the train station he notices Erzsébet is in a wheelchair and learns she has osteoporosis. Zsófia became mute due to the traumas endured during the war. But Tóth quickly learns no gifts can come for free. Harrison seeks to build a community that he can then control. He believes he can easily manipulate the Tóth family.
Tóth’s architectural career starts to hit some bumps until its eventual downfall when a train carrying his supplies derails. Harrison decides the cost for production has gotten too high and fires Tóth.
The rest of the movie follows more conflicts for Tóth and his family. The ending emphasizes how Tóth’s architectural work throughout the movie was based on his experience in the Holocaust, which I think is important to emphasize considering the significance of his character.
The Controversy
Though the movie took off with its excellence in a wide range of nominations and awards, it has also been in the spotlight of controversy. This box office success has become subject of debate after it was revealed that AI was used in the making of the film.
The generative AI company Respeecher was used to make the lead actors’, Aiden Brody and Felicity Jones, voices sound more authentic and improve their punctuation when they spoke Hungarian. Respeecher, is actually a Ukrainian software company that develops speech synthesis using AI.
Dávid Jancsó, Hungarian editor for “The Brutalist,” told RedShark News that while using the AI software, they were still careful about staying true to the actors’ work and performance. He explained they only used it for some harder Hungarian dialect.
The movie’s award winning director, Brady Corbet, also defended their use of AI for some of the dialects in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
“Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” Corbet said.
But, even that doesn’t seem to be the only controversy critics are brutalizing the movie about.
Corbet also denied claims that the production designer used AI to make parts of Toth’s buildings and blueprints. He insisted that all of the images were actually hand drawn by artists when talking to The Hollywood Reporter.
“The Brutalist” isn’t the only movie to be recently criticized for the use of Respeecher or other kinds of AI to manipulate voice or dialect. A Vanity Fair article describes another award winning production that used AI to slightly alter the actors’ voice in some way. This included the movie musical Emilia Pérez, which used AI to extend the vocal range of the lead actress.
Whether the majority of the public agrees or disagrees with any use of AI in movies, even to slightly alter voices, it seems to be something that people just can’t overlook. While these actors did an amazing performance, they did get an upper hand by using AI to alter their dialect. I think the use of AI in this way can be unfair to other actors in the industry who already have this dialect. It overlooks them and their talents – everything they already have. Even with my views on this controversy, I think people should still watch this movie but should keep in mind what’s real and what’s not.
