: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. The Academy Awards are being televised on Sunday, and among the best actor nominees is Adrien Brody, up for his starring role in "The Brutalist." He plays a Hungarian refugee who escapes post-war Europe and arrives in the U.S. with dreams of rebuilding his life. The film is up for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture, directing, cinematography, supporting actor and actress and screenplay. Directed by Brady Corbet, "The Brutalist" explores the harsh realities of the American dream.
Brody portrays a fictional character named Laszlo Toth, who settles in Pennsylvania in 1947. He soon meets a wealthy industrialist, played by Guy Pearce - who's also nominated for an Academy Award - who recognizes Laszlo's talent and hires him to create a community center in honor of his mother. However, the relationship between the two comes at a cost. The sweeping nature of "The Brutalist" is reminiscent of Brody's work in "The Pianist," in which he won an Oscar for his stirring performance as a Jewish pianist from Warsaw who survived the Holocaust by hiding from the Nazis. Adrien Brody spoke with Tonya Mosley last month.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TONYA MOSLEY: I want to play a clip so folks can hear a little bit from the movie. But first, I want to just set up. Your character, Laszlo, arrives in the U.S. in '47. And he goes to stay with his cousin in Philly, who's been in the U.S. for a couple of years now. And he owns a furniture shop named Miller & Sons. And I'm saying that because that is not your cousin's name. He does not have sons. But he notes that Americans love a simple name, and they also love a family business.
ADRIEN BRODY: (Laughter) Yeah.
MOSLEY: So your character works for his cousin designing furniture for the store. And then one day, the son of a wealthy businessman asks you two to redesign his father's library as a surprise. And when the father, Harrison Lee Van Buren, who's played by Guy Pearce, returns home and sees this library, he's furious. He refuses to pay. This sends your character into a spiral until a little while later, Lee Van Buren searches and finds your character shoveling coal. He apologizes. He asks him to be a part of this new project to create a community center in honor of his deceased mother. And in this scene I'm about to play, Van Buren asks your character why he chose architecture as a profession when he lived in Hungary. Van Buren, played by Pearce, speaks first.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BRUTALIST")
GUY PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren) Answer me something. Why architecture?
BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) Is it a test?
PEARCE: (As Harrison Lee Van Buren) No, it is not.
BRODY: (As Laszlo Toth) Nothing is of its own explanation. Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction? There was a war on, and yet it is my understanding that many of the sites of my projects had survived. They remain there still in the city. When the terrible recollections of what happened in Europe cease to humiliate us, I expect for them to serve instead as a political stimulus, sparking the upheavals that so frequently occur in the cycles of peoplehood.
MOSLEY: That's my guest today, Adrien Brody, in the new film "The Brutalist." He's in that scene with Guy Pearce. And you're known - you're pretty well-known for going the extra mile to embody your characters. In particular, with "The Pianist," you did all sorts of stuff. You gave up your apartment, you put your stuff in storage, you moved to Europe, you learned to play the piano. I think all the headlines talked about how you starved yourself. I think you lost, like, 30 pounds. And you do this with all of - a lot of your films. For the movie "Dummy," you literally slept with a dummy to play a ventriloquist.
BRODY: Well, depends what you mean by that, but yes...
MOSLEY: (Laughter) Slept next to...
BRODY: Slept in the same bed together. But I worked with it very - I had to learn how to, yeah, be very close to it (laughter).
MOSLEY: Were there any things in particular for this role that you kind of refashioned your life for to really embody Laszlo?
BRODY: You know, I only do what I feel is necessary to find a closeness and a sense of truth so that I can, you know, quote, "act" less, you know, and feel honest in an interpretation. I can't portray a man who's starving if I don't understand hunger. I can't portray the physical shift of a man who's starved by not losing that weight. I can't understand classical music without knowing to play it. You name it.
And fortunately, a lot of that work that I had done in an effort to honor Szpilman in "The Pianist," and really to honor one man's journey that represented the loss of 6 million and spoke to such a horrific time in our history, gave me a great deal of insight and understanding in what Laszlo's past experiences were, that he is just on the precipice of overcoming as he arrives to the United States. And so while this movie is a vastly different story and a story about an immigrant's journey, it is also the journey of someone who's endured that. And it's quite remarkable how that has lived with me and given me greater insight years later in a role like this.
MOSLEY: How did that role give you insight? - because I will tell you I watched "The Pianist" again, and then I watched "The Brutalist." And so I kind of watched them back to back. And, of course...
BRODY: Did you? Wow.
MOSLEY: ...As you said - yeah. There - I know - some heavy times but really, like, a very - it was really important for me to watch it that way, and I'm glad I did. As you said, they are two very different films, and your characters are different. But they do feel like, to me, that they are speaking to each other. I don't know if that's the right way to put it. Maybe it's that they both hit a similar emotional note. I'm wondering how you see that.
BRODY: Well, they both reference this time that has changed the shape and face of this world indelibly. And they both reference how intolerance and oppression and antisemitism and forces that are ugly exist and have deprived us of so much beauty in this world. This movie, "The Brutalist," is a fictional story. And the reason it's a fictional story is because when Brady and Mona were doing their research to try and write a film about a European architect who survived the Nazi occupation and carried on his work in America, there were none to be found because they'd all been killed.
MOSLEY: Yeah.
BRODY: And then Brady and Mona had to find references of other wonderful creatives who were similar and - like Marcel Breuer, who has left a wonderful legacy of work, you know...
MOSLEY: As an architect.
BRODY: ...As an architect and - but had left in the mid-'30s, fortunately. And so I think the films obviously speak to this horrific time and speak to the power of art and the beauty and the capacity for the human spirit to endure and the power of - the ability to create beauty and lightness amidst darkness and to find purpose in art to transcend that darkness.
MOSLEY: The use of silence in both of the films is also really powerful. In "The Pianist," the silence is because Szpilman is alone in his hiding from the Nazis. But in "The Brutalist," from my view, the silence plays another role. It plays a lens into the life of an immigrant. Like, on a very practical sense, when you are coming to a new country and you don't speak the language well, you are other. You are an outsider. As you're saying, like, that's a lonely experience. And so there are probably huge swaths of time where there is silence, especially when you don't have your family with you.
BRODY: And you don't have the words. You don't have the vocabulary or confidence to speak in another language. You know, I can understand a fair amount of French, but I'm very reticent to start speaking, especially when I'm in France, because I'm just not confident with that. And, you know, the pressure of coming to a new land and trying to communicate and express yourself in a way is very hard for many people. And - but, yeah, I see what you're saying.
A lot of the silence that exists or does not exist in a film is also up to the filmmaker and the editor. And, you know, the beauty of this film - and you can correct me if you feel differently, but in spite of its length, it does not feel long. And the beauty of its length is that you are afforded moments that feel very real and personal because you can sit with the characters and experience those moments, and they aren't truncated in an effort to keep a scene lively and edgy for the sake of pace. And that takes a very confident and brave filmmaker and one who understands the nuance of language and storytelling and trusts in his actors and gives them the space and honors those magical moments that can be created.
: Adrien Brody, speaking to Tonya Mosley last month. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Tonya Mosley's interview with Adrien Brody from last month. He's nominated for Best Actor at this Sunday's Academy Awards for his starring role as Laszlo Toth in "The Brutalist."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
MOSLEY: I know you've been acting since you were very young. How old were you when you first started?
BRODY: I think my first professional job was 12 years old. You know, before acting, I started doing magic, and I was - you could call it a professional job. I mean, I think I earned $50 to do a children's birthday party in its entirety. But I loved magic, and I found that the storytelling that's involved, in addition to creating the illusion, was a gateway into an understanding of performance and precision in performance. But I found a love for acting at a very, very young age and then was fortunate to work pretty consistently over the years. I didn't have a big career for many years, but I was a working actor, and I have always been very grateful for that.
MOSLEY: Twelve years old is a remarkably young age to feel so directed and passionate in what you do. Were your parents leading you? Were you leading the charge? How did it come about that you took this on at that age?
BRODY: Yeah. I just joked about it last night. I said, you know, acting, you know, beats working for a living. And, you know, it is very hard work, in all seriousness. But it is such a joy, and it's always different. And I always had a very curious spirit, and that curiosity of my childhood lives on in me. And, you know, I grew up in New York City. I grew up in Queens. I took the train all the time. I had to take four trains each way to go to drama school. I got accepted to Performing Arts, and it was a public school, but it gave me a wonderful foundation early on.
MOSLEY: It wasn't just a public school. You're talking about the school that - the high school that the film "Fame" was based on, right? That's where you went to high school.
BRODY: Yes.
MOSLEY: Yeah.
BRODY: Yeah, it's not merely a public school, but it was - it's a remarkable school. But it was a public high school, meaning I was - by being selected and making it into the drama department, I was given four acting classes a day within the public school system, which is remarkable and was very helpful for me. But along the way to get to school, I'd have to take the train. And I learned so much about character, of, you know, witnessing characteristics and you name it.
MOSLEY: Watching people. Yes.
BRODY: Yeah, watching people.
MOSLEY: What was that first role? What were your roles when you were first starting out at 12?
BRODY: I was doing theater. I'd first done some work with Elizabeth Swados at BAM, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And I'd gotten an off-Broadway play in the Lower East Side that I, you know, take the train in from after junior high school and go to work and try not to get jumped in the East Village (laughter) and, you know, go to work each day. And, you know, I loved it. I really loved it. And at just turning 14 - you know, I'd just turned 14 - I had booked the lead role in a public television film, so I went off to Nebraska and shot a movie
MOSLEY: You talk quite a bit about your mother and your father's influence. Your mother, this noted photographer - she used to be a staff photographer for The Village Voice. You say, like, people will say to you, oh, you are the son of Sylvia, because she's so well respected. And your father is an educator. But I'm curious. Growing up, like, how did your mother's work and seeing her in her creativity maybe influence your thoughts on, perceptions on what you could be? And had you thought about being anything else? Was acting just, like, a foregone conclusion?
BRODY: It's a lovely, lovely question. And, you know, my parents are a unit. You know, they've always stood together in embrace of me and in nurturing me and my individuality and not suppressing my individuality and my rambunctious nature as a child, and my enthusiasm and curiosity of the world. And they've only enhanced that. And my mother's work has been so influential on me as an artist. And my - first of all, and me encountering acting is the result of her having an assignment to photograph the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which preceded my education in Performing Arts, where I started as a very young boy, because she had seen an acting - they had acting classes for children that were - she saw in me what all these kids were doing, and she had that intuition. So even just encountering it came as a result of her photographic work.
But then I am also the son, only son, of a photographer. So I am very much a focal point in front of a lens that came from an artist's eye. And I also witnessed her imagery and her immortalization of my city and the world through that very beautiful, specific lens since birth. And whereas I grew up with film everywhere in my home, negatives being hung from the showers and film canisters in the tub and the smell of fixative in the dark room smelling like home and my mother - and film test prints on record racks all strewn around the floor in front of the landing in front of my bedroom. And so since I could crawl, I was seeing imagery everywhere, and beautiful imagery. And I think that made art and its accessibility very tangible and available.
: Adrien Brody speaking to Tonya Mosley last month. This Sunday, he'll be competing for a Best Actor Oscar at the 97th Academy Awards, televised live by ABC. Coming up, another Oscar contender. It's a film from Latvia called "Flow," nominated for both Best Animated Feature and Best International Film. Critic-at-large John Powers has a review. This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
