Adrien Brody wins best actor Academy Award for Doylestown-set ‘The Brutalist’
This is Brody’s second Oscar after 2002′s The Pianist.
Doylestown-set drama The Brutalist netted Adrien Brody his second Academy Award for his role in the locally-set historical epic.
Brody won his first Academy Award for best actor for his role in 2002′s The Pianist.
Set locally but filmed in Hungary, The Brutalist focuses on Jewish Hungarian architect László Tóth (Brody) after his immigration the United States in 1947 following the Holocaust. In the film, Tóth works with wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) to construct a community center in Doylestown.
Director Brady Corbet, who lost the Oscar for best director to Anora’s Sean Baker, told The Inquirer that the film is set in Doylestown and Philadelphia because of the Northeast’s role as a base for many prominent mid-century designers. The area, he added, is also a hotspot for modern architecture.
Hungary, meanwhile, served as the filming location because its architecture more closely resembled a Philadelphia of the 1950s and 1960s, Corbet said. The city, he added, has changed so much since that era that it is difficult to represent Philly’s older self on camera.
The Brutalist went into the Academy Awards with 10 Oscar nominations under its belt.
The film’s successful night at the Oscars, however, continued its winning streak from the Golden Globe Globes in January. There, The Brutalist took home three awards for best motion picture for drama, best director for a motion picture for Corbet, and best performance by a male actor in a motion picture drama for Brody.
Currently, The Brutalist is available stream via popular services like Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Google Play. It holds an overall critic score of 94%, according to movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.