How the “brutalist” decorator transformed Hungary

Judy Becker’s portfolio of production design work on films like “American Hustle” and “Carol” prepared her for the unique challenge of shooting a period piece.

“Carol” was filmed in Cincinnati as a double for New York and “American Hustle” was filmed in Boston and was also supposed to be New York, so she’s “used to looking for the right place in the wrong place.”

But filming overseas — in the case of Brady Corbet’s historical epic “The Brutalist,” which doubles from Hungary to Philadelphia in the 1940s — presented a completely different challenge.

The film follows an architect named László (Adrien Brody) who escapes the Holocaust and immigrates to the United States. After discovering his talent by a wealthy client, played by Guy Pearce, László is tasked with building a community center including a library, theater and chapel. In exchange for his services, László’s wife, Erzsébet Tóth (Felicity Jones), can immigrate and join her husband.

While most of the film was shot on location, Becker designed a practical center in which László spends the time constructing the film and in which he devotes his ambitions. She knew the structure would have large concrete forms, but would otherwise be uncluttered, inspired by brutalist-style architecture.

She also knew that the goal was to conceptually merge two concentration camps to symbolize László’s escape from the Holocaust. This was important since the film never shows László during the Holocaust – his emotions and trauma are represented in the building itself.

“But I really didn’t know how I was going to do it, I had no inspiration for it when I started,” Becker says.

After examining the architecture of different World War II concentration camps, she found that the barracks were on either side of the central road. Most notably, she noticed a cross formation in each of them which, in the film, becomes a focal point in the otherwise empty chapel.

Becker explains: “It could have been a coincidence, but it started to make me think about all this symbolism. And of course there is the cross in the building formed by the light passing through the tower. Once I solved this problem, it became much easier.

The team spent about 12 weeks preparing in Hungary and researching locations that could pass for the United States. Becker explains that “the fact that the film was set in an earlier time period was helpful, because there were places in Hungary that seemed lost in the past. For example, the industrial zone of Budapest looked a lot like the industrial zone of Philadelphia in the 1950s.”

In addition to the challenges of working in a new country, Becker and his team had very little money.

“I know everyone says it doesn’t look like it, but it was probably by far the lowest budget movie I’ve ever made,” Becker admits. “So figuring out how to focus the money was a challenge, and it was a good challenge.” You really have to focus on how to show things in an economical way. I think it makes you creative and intelligent.

It was previously reported that “The Brutalist” cost $10 million to make, a figure that surprised many people who saw the film. But just because the budget was low didn’t mean Becker felt limited.

Becker states: “On many much larger budget films, I felt it was a (bigger) struggle budget-wise…When you’re asked to do a labor of love, that means you don’t You’re not going to get paid very well. a lot about this film. But it was a true labor of love, I think for everyone who worked on it.

Becker describes his collaboration with Brady Corbet as liberating, with great creative flexibility in artistic direction. The first time they met to talk about the scale of the project, she recalled a much smaller-scale experience her husband had at the Sundance Visitors Lab.

Everyone was assigned the same script and one director interpreted the film as taking place on a plane. They placed paper plates on the backs of bus seats and covered the windows to look like blinds. This story has stuck with Becker over the years as a small-scale example of how to transform a space simply by using ingenuity.

“I’m not saying we were going to take paper plates and paper and pretend a space was an airplane, but it was an example of how creative you can be when you really think about it,” Becker recalls laughing. “I think in a way, ‘The Brutalist’ allowed me to turn a bus into an airplane movie.”

“The Brutalist” is now showing in theaters.