- Warning: Major spoilers ahead for “The Brutalist.”
- Guy Pearce told BI that the ending and how his character exits the movie is “brilliant.”
- “It’s important what the audience imagines,” he said.
Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour epic “The Brutalist” is filled with eye-popping visuals and moving sequences as it chronicles the life of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian Jew who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to post-World War II America. It all leads to a shocking end centered around Guy Pearce’s character, the bombastic wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren.
The bulk of the movie focuses on Van Buren commissioning Tóth, an architect, to create a massive community center. The endeavor stretches Tóth’s talents and patience for most who work with him, but he seems to always have Van Buren’s support. Van Buren even helps Tóth get his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) to the US and allows them to live on his estate during the center’s construction.
Years into the project, Tóth and Van Buren travel to Italy to order the marble needed to complete the community center. The two enjoy a party there one evening, and Van Buren rapes Tóth. Tóth returns home a changed man, filled with anger towards everyone.
By the end of the movie, Tóth tells his wife what happened in Italy. She then barges in on Van Buren and his family having dinner with guests. Erzsébet calls Van Buren a rapist in front of everyone, which leads to an argument, and Van Buren’s son Harry (Joe Alwyn) forces Erzsébet from the room.
Once things calm down, Van Buren has disappeared. Harry begins to search the house for his father while also seemingly having a panic attack. When no one can find Van Buren in the house, they expand their search around the estate and through the unfinished community center.
He is never found.
A24
Pearce doesn’t know what happened to Van Buren — but that’s not the point
Pearce told Business Insider he didn’t have much discussion with Corbet, who cowrote the screenplay with his wife Mona Fastvold, about Van Buren’s dramatic exit.
“That was on the page,” Pearce said. “It was pretty clear in the script that we go out of the room, we come back, and the dinner guests say, ‘He’s gone to bed,’ and then Joe goes looking for me, and I’m not in bed, and we just don’t know where he’s at. He’s become nothing.”
Pearce said looking for answers to what really happened to Van Buren isn’t the point. “It’s not important even to know what happened to him, it’s important what the audience imagines,” he said.
“I think the unsatisfactory nature of a character who is so present and so dominant and so controlling then just evaporates — I thought it was brilliant.”
After watching the movie, Pearce said what struck him about the scene was how it raised the question of if this was the first time Van Buren sexually assaulted someone.
“Watching how that scene played out — while I was busy hiding behind a chest of drawers in that dining room so I wasn’t caught on camera — watching Joe run around as desperate as he was looking for me, there was something there that tells us that there’s more to this,” Pearce said. “It was harrowing stuff.”
“The Brutalist” is now playing in theaters.
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