“Every Movie That Gets Made Is A Miracle.” Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold On Making ‘The Brutalist’

In a recent interview with Rollingstone, director Bardy Corbet and writer Mona Fastvold reflect on the struggles of bringing The Brutalist to life. The film, which is now being distributed by A24, has had a very complicated production cycle.

Corbet specifically wanted to evoke the feeling of a 1970s epic with this film, but the tricky part was finding out how. Over 7 years in the making, The Brutalist is the klind of film that feels like it never should have happened. Corbet adds, “Even bad movies are miracles. Because the sheer amount of keys that have to turn for something to be greenlit is just…Never mind a movie about architects.” Fastvold adds, “With a really limited budget…” And Corbet continues, “… And made in a style that hasn’t been used in decades.”

When trying to create a budget for the film, a producer told Corbet and Fastvold that they could squeeze by with a budget of around $28 million. They then revealed that their actual budget was closer to a third of that. They were committed to shooting the film in 35mm celluloid and VistaVision. The only problem being that those formats have not really been used since the 60s. However, Corbet felt like shooting it in this way would be a simple solution to make the film feel like the 1950s.

Corbet finally landed on a budget of around $10 million but had a very difficult time finding buyers. He said, ““And once you’ve exposed the film to buyers, it’s extremely hard to reintroduce it to them years later. Pandemic or no pandemic, they still think something is wrong with it, or else it would have been made by now. We really shot ourselves in the foot. There was a lot of ‘Yes, we know you’ve read it. But read it again.‘” The Brutalist is over 3 and a half hours long with a built-in intermission. It’s difficult to find anyone to invest in that sort of ambition, so it truly needs to be something special. The film has racked up awards and praise across the board from various film festivals, including a Best Director prize for Corbet in Venice. The film began its limited theatrical release on December 20, nearly filling up 30 theaters in New York and Los Angeles. The film will be releasing in more theaters starting in January.