If you were psyched for the release of the long-awaited biopic of László Tóth, the Hungarian geologist who infamously vandalized Michelangelo’s Pietà statue in 1972, or László Tóth the footballer, water-polo player, or go-kart racer, you’ll have to wait a little longer. Unfortunately, all of those inevitable awards-season juggernauts have yet to be green-lit. So for now, let’s settle for The Brutalist, director Brady Corbet’s historical epic about the fictional László Tóth. A full-length trailer is out after racking up seven Golden Globe nominations yesterday. The two-and-a-half-minute trailer for the three-and-a-half-hour movie introduces us to Tóth, a Hungarian-born Jewish architect played by Adrien Brody who emigrates to the United States shortly after the Second World War. He toils away at a coal mine in Philadelphia before being asked to design a new community center by the suspiciously charitable industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), setting him on a course that is sure to cut to the dark heart of the American Dream. There’s also some tender, sad-looking smooches with Tóth’s wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and plenty of brutiful shots of the Pennsylvanian hillsides (the film was photographed in VistaVision).
The Brutalist premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September and earned Corbet the Silver Lion for Best Director. Alongside Brody, Pearce, and Jones, it stars Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Emma Laird, Isaach De Bankolé, and Alessandro Nivola. The Brutalist will premiere with a limited 70-mm release in both New York and Los Angeles on December 19, and a wide release will follow in January, Variety reports. The film will also have a 15-minute intermission, at which point you can also Google whether Harrison Lee Van Buren is real, too (he’s not).