In ‘The Brutalist,’ Size Matters
During the pre-production phase of “The Brutalist“, writer-director Brady Corbet was having trouble finding an appropriate location in Italy, where he wanted to shoot a crucial scene involving Adrien Brody’s character, László Toth. In this scene, László and his wealthy patron, played by Guy Pearce, travel to Carrara, Italy, to obtain white marble for their architectural project. Corbet and his co-writer, Mona Fastvold, had written the stunning landscape of Carrara, where Michelangelo sourced his marble, into their script to provide a powerful backdrop for a pivotal moment in the story. However, it wasn’t until Adrien Brody intervened that Corbet found a suitable location. “I told him I’d help,” said Brody. “And I connected him with one of my friends who owns a quarry in Carrara.” Within hours, Corbet sent Brody a photo of himself enjoying a drink with Brody’s friend, marking the beginning of a fortuitous collaboration that ultimately gave “The Brutalist” a sense of grandeur and destruction. “It’s otherworldly,” said Brody of the Carrara sequence. “These vast, hollowed-out caverns filled with the Earth’s wonders are harshly excavated.