'The Pianist,' 'The Brutalist': What connects Adrien Brody's Oscar-winning performances
What's the story
Adrien Brody has bagged the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Brutalist, directed by Brady Corbet. Interestingly, this film is tied to his previous Oscar-winning role in The Pianist. Both films have Brody as characters who make their way through historical chaos. What are the common themes between the two stellar performances? Let's find out.
Character analysis
Brody's transformative roles in 'The Pianist' and 'The Brutalist'
In 2003, a young Brody impressed the audience with his performance as Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist living through the Holocaust in Roman Polanski's The Pianist. The role required an extreme transformation from Brody, who reportedly lost 13.61kg and cut himself off from everyone to become the character. Fast forward 22 years, he once again drew attention for his role as Laszlo Toth—a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor—in Corbet's The Brutalist.
Preparation for 'The Pianist'
Brody's intense preparation for his role in 'The Pianist'
In an interview with Vulture, Brody spoke about his intense preparation for The Pianist. "That was a physical transformation that was necessary for storytelling." "But then that kind of opened me up, spiritually, to a depth of understanding of emptiness and hunger in a way that I didn't know, ever. I do [have PTSD], yeah." "I definitely had an eating disorder for at least a year. And then I was depressed for a year, if not a lifetime. I'm kidding."
Thematic parallels
Artistic expression as a survival tool in both films
The Pianist and The Brutalist also have a common theme of resilience through artistic expression. In The Pianist, Szpilman's piano playing becomes his silent protest against erasure, while in The Brutalist, Toth's architecture is a symbol of constant defiance and rebuilding after destruction. Both characters are men displaced by war who turn to their art for survival.
Connection
Brody on the connection between two films
Brody told IndieWire in an interview, "The Brutalist' begins almost where ('The Pianist') ended in a way. It is a Jewish immigrant's journey, surviving. "Those specific hardships and loss, and yearning to begin again, and the dream of coming to a place like America - where the myth of the American dream, especially in the '50s - (offers) the hope to be free of that persecution and to somehow maybe begin again."