22 years after he nabbed his first Best Actor Oscar, Adrien Brody did it again. He snared a second golden trophy for 2024's period drama The Brutalist.

After the Nazis separate him from wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), Jewish-Hungarian architect László Tóth (Brody) emigrates to the US. In 1947, he finds himself struggling to get work.

After a rough period, an encounter with industrialist Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) changes this, as he gives László a major architectural job. Eventually reunited with Erzsébet and Zsófia, he pursues the "American Dream", with a mix of ups and downs along the way.

We call that a quick 'n' tidy synopsis for a movie that runs well past the three-hour mark. Clearly a film that long must pack all sorts of plot and character material I omitted, right?

Nah – not really. Despite its extreme running time, Brutalist doesn’t include a surfeit of plot elements along the way.

We do follow László’s path in America, so it doesn’t come as an accident that the film gets to his arrival in the US quickly. While we get a short glimpse at his travails in Europe, the movie spotlights his vision of the Statue of Liberty and his Ellis Island experiences.

Brutalist comes with an intermission, and it does pretty well for itself up until that point. It traces László’s ups and downs and his creative endeavors in a fairly involving manner.

If the film stayed in that realm and lasted maybe two hours, I’d view it as a winner. However, it keeps going, and when it formally brings Erzsébet into the picture, it flails.

In my view, at least, I think Erzsébet exists as an unnecessary plot contrivance. We focus less on the more interesting László/Harrison connection and get stuck with dreary melodrama between husband and wife.

This leads us down a contrived path that culminates in a borderline eye-rolling finale. Honestly, I think the film could entirely lose Erzsébet – and Zsófia – and offer a stronger experience.

Writer/director Brady Corbet wants Brutalist to offer a take on the immigrant experience, and the film uses the title as a metaphor beyond a style of architecture. With obvious nods toward the current state of US immigration, Corbet depicts an America that resists/rejects immigrants and treats them brutally.

Too much of the film makes its subtext into text. For instance, we get lines such as when László shrieks “They don’t want us here! We are less than nothing!”

A stronger movie would’ve not felt the need to shove that theme in the viewer’s face, but Corbet apparently thinks the audience needs to be spoonfed. He also invests Brutalist with a self-conscious air of Big Important Movie that doesn’t really match the fairly small human tale on display.

An intimate character tale about an immigrant architect doesn’t seem like it needs to run 201 minutes, especially since Brutalist doesn’t come with a wide array of roles. It sticks with a pretty tight core and doesn’t need more than three hours to explore them.

Even with all that cinematic real estate, it doesn’t feel like Corbet manages to paint the characters as especially well-realized. We get sketches of their personalities but not a lot of depth.

Again, if Corbet made a two-hour version of the story that stayed with László’s basic life and struggles related to his “misunderstood genius” status, I’d like it a lot more. Unfortunately, its second half sends it downhill and makes it a less effective tale in the long run.

The Brutalist appears in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 on this 4K UHD Disc. Shot on VistaVision stock, I went into the film with high expectations for picture quality that the UHD didn’t quite match.

The anomalies I encountered were intentional, though. As implied by that use of VistaVision, director Brady Corbet clearly wanted to echo “period” visuals, so that meant some choices that kept the image from technical greatness.

Oddly, though, Corbet submitted to modern standards for the movie’s palette, as Brutalist opted for 2020s Hollywood Standard Orange and Teal. It felt odd to me that Corbet tried so hard to make everything else match 1950s cinema but gave the flick 2020s colors, but the UHD rendered them well, even with the decision to forego HDR.

Sharpness largely satisfied, as the majority of the flick boasted appealing delineation. Some softness impacted wider shots, but the film usually brought tight definition.

No issues with jagged edges or moiré effects occurred, and I saw no edge haloes. Occasional specks cropped up through the movie, an unexpected occurrence for a brand-new film, but another one that came as a stylistic choice to “age” the project.

Blacks seemed deep and dense, while shadows appeared smooth and clear. Despite the absence of HDR and some off-putting cinematic decisions, the image usually looked fine.

In addition, the movie’s DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack worked fine. A chatty affair, the mix lacked a ton of ambition.

Still, it filled out the speakers in a manner that made sense for the tale at hand. This mainly meant ambience and music, as the film didn’t come with moments that provided a sonic “wow factor”.

A few scenes with war or violence filled the room nicely. In any case, the soundscape used the channels in an appropriate manner and created a convincing atmosphere.

Audio quality satisfied, with speech that remained natural and intelligible. Music showed nice range and punch.

Effects played a fairly small role but they seemed accurate and without distortion. Again, nothing here dazzled, but the soundtrack suited the story.

A few extras round out the disc, and we find an audio commentary from director of photography Lol Crawley. He provides a running, screen-specific look at cinematography, cast and performances, sets and locations, and a few other production elements.

Unsurprisingly, Crawley largely concentrates on photography. This lends a highly technical orientation to the track.

Which works fine at times, but Crawley simply lacks enough content to cover an entire 201-minute movie. While we get occasional insights here, the commentary sputters more often than I’d like.

The Architects of The Brutalist runs 24 minutes, 23 seconds. It includes info from Crawley, writer/director Brady Corbet, writer Mona Fastvold, production designer Judy Becker, composer Daniel Blumberg, and actors Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce.

The featurette examines the project’s origins and development, story/characters/themes, cast and performances, sets and locations, photography, music, and the film’s use of an intermission. “Architects” mixes good insights with happy talk to become a decent but erratic program.

Inside the disc’s sleeve, we get six Photo Cards that depict architectural designs. These seem harmless but not much of an addition.

If it ran two hours, The Brutalist would deliver a strong character drama. At three hours, 20 minutes, however, it wears out its welcome, especially because it follows some iffy character choices in its second half. The 4K UHD comes with largely good picture and audio as well as a few supplements. I respect the ambition of the film but the end product doesn’t enchant.