Reader, I went to see The Brutalist… and, yikes. And I’m not the only one. Oliver Wainwright’s review in The Guardian charts the growing critical mass within the architectural community against it. How did I not love The Brutalist? Let me count the ways.

Architecture has long been susceptible to the cult of the singular genius — a visionary figure, so often tormented, with poor boundaries and worse work–life balance, whose work is framed as the inevitable, heroic march of progress. The Brutalist, a recent film by Brady Corbet starring Adrien Brody, leans into this myth with the full weight of modernism behind it. It tells the story of an architect, László Tóth (a stand-in for Marcel Breuer), a Hungarian Jewish refugee who rises to international fame in post-war America.

The film begins with a staccato rhythm — sparse dialogue in favour of movement and suggestive backtracks. This, to me, was enjoyable. But where it glorifies the ‘tortured’ master-builder and walks well-worn tropes of the lone genius shaping the world in his image: not so much. No cigar.

Beneath its aesthetic choices, The Brutalist is not just about architecture. It is a political statement enshrined in concrete: an unsustainable amount, literally and figuratively. It arrives at a moment when architecture’s entanglement with power, capital and nation-building is under more scrutiny than ever, particularly in relation to Israel and its ongoing violence in Palestine. The film’s not-so-subtle positioning, its treatment of displacement and its celebration of modernist ideals align it with a long-standing pattern of using the built environment as a tool of political ideology. And it does so with little self-reflection. That it is currently being celebrated as a filmic feat concerns me.

The film’s biggest flaw is its uncritical embrace of the ‘starchitect’ narrative. This model, deeply embedded in 20th-century architectural storytelling, elevates the figures we all come to know in the first weeks of architecture school — Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe — as singular forces of change. We make pilgrimages to their buildings, dragging along partners, friends and family, while locals shrug.

The reality of the built environment is far messier. Architecture is a collaborative practice, shaped by political, economic and social forces — not just the will and might of a single, tormented mind.

By framing László Tóth as a brilliant but tortured genius, The Brutalist reinforces an outdated and damaging myth. It erases the labour of draftsmen, engineers, builders and communities that actually bring architecture to life. More importantly, it distracts from the material consequences of architecture — who it serves, who it displaces and what ideologies it upholds. This narrative is not just about artistic vanity. The lone, wounded genius myth has long justified harmful urban interventions, from modernist slum clearances to luxury developments that erase workingclass communities and gentrify neighbourhoods. Spoiler alert: it also justifies a healthy heroin habit… which seemed to serve only as a prophecy-fulfilling plotline. The film aligns all too well with the broader ideology of starchitecture — architecture as spectacle for the elite rather than as a public good.

Modernism in architecture has always carried ideological weight — as heavy, and as seemingly immutable, as the concrete that defined it. We have all sat in lectures where the early 20th century is framed as a break from a dusty past — embracing seductive clarity, functional design and a rejection of ornamentation. But this aesthetic revolution is rarely presented alongside its counterpoint: modernist architects working, often uncritically, with regimes of power, from Mussolini’s Italy to post-war American corporate expansion.

The Brutalist romanticises this modernist epoch (I believe the word epoch is even used in the film — so excuse my use of it here) without reckoning with its consequences. Brutalism itself, as a subset of modernism, was often deployed as a tool of state power — whether in Soviet housing blocks, post-colonial African capitals or Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. The film positions Tóth’s architectural vision as a symbol of resilience and reinvention, yet it fails to reconcile the ways in which modernism, particularly in Israel, has been used to erase indigenous Palestinian spaces and histories.

Israeli architecture has long been entwined with colonial expansion. The Bauhaus-inspired ‘White City’ of Tel Aviv, often celebrated as a triumph of modernist urbanism, was built on the rubble of Palestinian Jaffa. Brutalist architecture in Israel has been deployed in state-building projects, from housing developments to military outposts. In this context — and in the current moment — The Brutalist’s glorification of modernist ideals takes on a more troubling significance.

Perhaps the most urgent critique of The Brutalist is its pro-Israel undercurrent, which is particularly harmful in the wake of Israel’s assault on Gaza. The film presents Jewish displacement as a central theme, positioning its protagonist as a survivor who rebuilds through architecture. While this is an important historical narrative, it is presented in isolation, detached from the present-day displacement of Palestinians.

As reports emerge of thousands of Palestinians walking to northern Gaza, they will inevitably reach homes that have been bombed to rubble. One could argue that The Brutalist is set in a specific historical period, disconnected from the present. Yet, somewhat jarringly, it flashes forward to a fictional award ceremony at the 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale. This is a common pattern in cultural narratives about architecture and diaspora. Modernist contributions are often framed as stories of resilience, revealing a sort of truth by stripping away the ornamental as criminal. But they are rarely placed in conversation with the displacement of others — particularly Palestinians, who continue to be uprooted, dispossessed and subjected to architectural erasure through settler-colonialism.

By centring the trauma of its protagonist without acknowledging the way that modernist and brutalist architecture has been instrumentalised in the Israeli statebuilding project, The Brutalist risks perpetuating a one-sided narrative. ‘Risks’ is a light touch — it is onesided. This omission is especially glaring in the context of the recent ceasefire and all that has preceded it. If architecture is political, then so is its storytelling.

Ultimately, The Brutalist fails because it clings to an outdated — and already wellproven problematic — vision of architecture. It is one that elevates the individual over the collective, the myth over the material reality and aesthetic ideals over political consequences. If the film inadvertently reveals anything, it’s that architecture needs new ways of telling its own stories.

These stories must focus on the communities that architecture impacts. Rather than celebrating modernism in isolation, we ought to examine its entanglements with power, displacement and capital. And, in this moment, as Palestinian homes, schools and hospitals have been systematically destroyed, we should be asking harder questions about architecture’s complicity in violence.

Architecture has always been a political act. It is loved by its practitioners for this reason; its stories ought to reflect that truth. If that means rethinking what stories are told and by whom, so be it.