Daniel Blumberg: The Brutalist Album Review (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Vast expanses of carved marble. The coal piled up like little black mountains. Towering concrete slabs groan as they rotate in unison. These are just some of the grand, panoramic scenes that flash across the screen in Brady Corbet’s ambitious third feature, The Brutalist. The period drama follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody), an esteemed Hungarian-Jewish architect who emigrates to America in 1947 after enduring the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp. While the details of his imprisonment are only hinted at, composer Daniel Blumberg’s music fills the film with agony: howling woodwinds, industrial percussion and minor keys writhe beneath even the most triumphant melodies. This internal tension mimics Corbet’s extreme shifts in scope – from the intimate to the colossal – and Tóth’s fierce struggle as he seizes a fantasy American dream.

After landing in New York alongside countless displaced Jews, Tóth moves to Pennsylvania to live and work in his cousin’s furniture store. His modern designs eventually landed him an architectural commission for wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), beginning a decades-long relationship between Tóth and his patron. But despite Van Buren’s apparent generosity – he boards Tóth and facilitates the arrival of his long-lost wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) – the dashing millionaire harbors a viciousness deeply rooted. The dynamic between benefactor and artisan ebbs and flows over the course of the film, shaping the course of Tóth’s post-war life.

Blumberg has a big role to play The BrutalistIt’s a thematic gesture. His score often contradicts the immediate connotations of what’s on screen, creating instant unease. “Erzsébet” is a tender piano piece that accompanies Tóth’s reunion with his wife and niece. But beneath the delicate touches are screaming children, metal screeching, shoes clicking on the sidewalk. The strings arise as Tóth meets his family at the train station, only to realize that, unbeknownst to him, Erzsébet has suffered a life-changing injury. “Handjob,” a brief chant of drones and brass that curdles around the edges, hints at the lingering pain of their separation. The way Corbet contrasts Blumberg’s softer piano melodies with more sordid scenes—of Tóth addicted to heroin, visiting a brothel, watching porn in a movie theater—suggests that our protagonist’s pleasures are vaporous and ephemeral.

Although much of Blumberg’s score is ominous, he sets off a joyous uproar during scenes depicting Tóth at work. In “Chair,” as Tóth crafts furniture from sleek steel tubes and slung fabrics (pieces reminiscent of famed Brutalist designer Marcel Breuer), Blumberg implements percussion that sounds like bolts popping. threading through metal and synths that whir like a circular saw. “Construction”, the first piece of music written for the film, was recorded at London’s Café Oto, where Blumberg worked with friends Billy Steiger and Tom Wheatley to complete a prepared piano. “We were literally jamming screws, clips and objects into the piano strings to create percussive sounds reminiscent of construction sounds,” Blumberg told Indiewire. The play propels Tóth’s return to the construction site after a miserable scene with Van Buren in the marble quarries of Carrara, Italy. The furious pulse of “Construction” tracks the film’s most insidious acts, as Tóth once again casts his anguish into artistic compulsion.