The past comes to life as a whole enveloping world in The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s fine-grained, novelistic third feature as director, about a man of genius who gets to taste the American Dream but also feel the stinging humiliation of a conditional welcome that turns ice-cold. While there are echoes of The Fountainhead, this expansive story of a brilliant Bauhaus-trained Hungarian Jewish architect who survives World War II and starts a new life in Pennsylvania is a provocative original.

Written by Corbet with his partner and regular collaborator Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist is closer to the churning ideas and dark view of power in the director’s debut feature, The Childhood of a Leader, than his more polarizing disquisition on contemporary celebrity, Vox Lux. But it represents a vast leap in scope from both, contemplating such meaty themes as creativity and compromise, Jewish identity, architectural integrity, the immigrant experience, the arrogant insularity of privilege and the long reach of the past.

Reportedly the first American film fully produced in VistaVision since One-Eyed Jacks in 1961, it screens in its Venice Film Festival premiere in 70mm, a giant canvas amply justified by the narrative’s variegated textures.

Running a densely packed three-and-a-half hours, including a built-in intermission with entr’acte, the enthralling movie hands Adrien Brody his best role in years as gifted architect László Tóth, ushered through fortune’s door by a wealthy tycoon eager to bankroll his dream project and then viciously cut down to size when his patron is displeased.

Brody pours himself into the character with bristling intelligence and internal fire, holding nothing back as he viscerally conveys both exultant highs and gutting sorrows. His exacting accent work alone is a measure of his commitment to the audacious project.

The opening jolts us instantly into anxious involvement as László is jostled around in a packed train carriage, the shuddering sound design suggesting the nightmare of his ordeal. Over the turbulent strains of Daniel Blumberg’s mighty score, letters from the architect’s wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), from whom he was separated during internment, are heard in voiceover, detailing her situation in a displaced-persons camp in Hungary with László’s niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy). László is soon on board a ship bound for America, with plans for Erzsébet and Zsófia to follow.

Ellis Island arrival scenes are a staple of immigrant dramas, but the disconcerting angles from which DP Lol Crawley shoots the Statue of Liberty as it looms into view seem to presage both the elation of deliverance and the challenges to come. The blank stares of the assembled passengers barely able to follow instructions in English from port officials provide a haunting image of people for whom freedom comes with fear.

After a quick, and notably graphic, encounter with an immigrant sex worker, László travels to Pennsylvania, capital of industry. He’s warmly reunited with his cousin Attila, played by Alessandro Nivola with subtle indications of a fraternal generosity that has limits. Old-world erasure is evident in his tempered accent, his blonde shiksa wife Audrey (Emma Laird) and in the name of the childless couple’s furniture store, Miller & Sons: “Folks here like a family business.” He even converted to Catholicism before marrying.

Potentially important new client Harry (Joe Alwyn) hires Miller & Sons to redesign the gloomy library in his family’s gated mansion as a surprise for his father, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), away on business. Attila entrusts the project to László, and the architect takes on young Black single father Gordon (Isaach De Bankolé), whom he met on a mission breadline, as a construction hand. The architect’s perfectionism causes delays, but the resulting transformation creates a retreat of serenity and light, with the room’s valuable collection of first editions cleverly protected from damage.

Van Buren Sr.’s reaction is not the surprise his son intended. Unimpressed with the new library, he’s furious to find his house turned upside-down and “a Negro man” on his property, dismissing the contractors in a fit of bellowing rage.

When Harry refuses to pay due to roof damage, Attila blames his cousin. Audrey has already been nudging László to move out since a supposed transgression during a drunken evening at home. Attila uses that tension as further justification to kick him out. He lands in a shelter with Gordon, taking construction work to get by and using opium to numb the pain of his war injuries.

László is surprised when Harrison turns up at a building site, brandishing a copy of Look magazine with a photo spread calling the library a triumph of minimalist design. The industrialist has a folder of research on the architect, including photos of notable proto-brutalist buildings he designed before the war. Given that the Reich deemed the work of László and his colleagues “un-Germanic,” he’s moved almost to tears, having assumed all photographs were destroyed.

That scene is one of several in which László’s emotional response to architecture points to the director’s kindred passion for the art form in relation to its time. The fictional protagonist was partly inspired by the life of Marcel Breuer, with Louis Kahn and Mies van der Rohe also among Corbet and Fastvold’s references.

Harrison sends a car for László the following Sunday when he’s just staggering home from a night of excess; he finds himself at a formal luncheon, where a Jewish lawyer offers to help get Erzsébet and Zsófia to America. The guests are then instructed to follow Harrison as he marches them in blistering cold to a hilltop overlooking all of Doylestown. He shares his vision for a vast community center to be designed by László, who will be installed in a guesthouse on the property while construction is underway.

Financial compensation and artistic opportunity shape a turning point in the story, as does the arrival of Erzsébet and Zsófia, the former physically broken by war and famine and the latter initially rendered mute by the horrors she experienced. But almost from the start, László’s dream project is fraught with difficulties, each one chipping away at his sense of control and his ego.

Having the work overseen by Harry, who makes no effort to disguise his dislike for László, is merely an annoyance at first. But when a contractor and another architect are brought in to assess costs and city-planning representatives start making demands, László feels compelled to cover budget overages out of his own fee. The project is stalled by a rail accident involving a train delivering materials, eliciting a sharp reminder of the rage Harrison displayed at their first meeting.

Tension in the architect’s marriage is released but not resolved in a knockout scene in bed, during which Erzsébet, in perhaps Jones’ strongest moment, reduces László to tears by expressing how well she understands him. She’s supportive but not subjugated, chafing at the way he shuts her out of decisions affecting all three of them. As she puts it later, “László worships only at the altar of himself.”

While a degrading incident between Harry and Zsófia plays out offscreen, it doesn’t slip by László, and though the matter is never discussed, it foreshadows a shocking development years later, after work on the project has resumed. That climactic moment happens in Italy, where Harrison accompanies László to the marble quarries in the mountains of Carrera.

In an extraordinarily beautiful passage of writing, Orazio (Salvatore Sansone), a friend and associate from before the war, shares his deep feelings about marble and its significance to his time as a Resistance fighter, about the weight of the geological miracle both in European history and foundational America. That such a moving declaration precedes strung-out László’s brutal debasement only amplifies its shattering wallop.

The Van Burens are revealed to be the quintessence of moral corruption bred by wealth and power; only Harry’s twin sister Maggie (Stacy Martin) seems to value genuine kindness. The Brutalist becomes a scathing critique of the ways in which America’s moneyed and privileged class gains cachet through the labor and creativity of immigrants but will never consider them equals.

Despite Harrison’s big pronouncements on the responsibility of the rich to nurture the great artists of their time, he’s a cultural gatekeeper in an exclusionary club. Despising weakness, he ultimately cuts László down to size with a pitilessness that in hindsight seems preordained from that first encounter.

Brody has seldom been better, bringing tremendous gravitas but also a pain that gnaws at László’s prideful sense of self, one of purpose and destiny. It’s a towering performance; seeing the architect treated like garbage is crushing.

Jones’ role appears almost marginal at first, but the character grows in stature and forcefulness as the clear-sighted Erzsébet — lonely, unwelcomed and toiling away at a job that’s beneath her — makes a damning assessment of America and their place in it while her husband cracks under pressure. Alwyn does some of his best work, making Harry contemptible without veering into caricature. But the supporting cast’s real standout is Pearce in commandingly chilly form. Harrison is a visionary like László, but his practiced charm is undercut by an absence of humanity.

The movie is dedicated to the memory of composer Scott Walker, who died in 2019 and who scored Corbet’s previous films. Blumberg’s stirring work honors him with subtle echoes, also evoking comparison at times with the jagged edges of Mica Levi or the solemn grandeur of Terence Blanchard.

Editor David Jancso threads the sprawling story with a flow that pulls us along, incorporating archival material for historical context. And Crawley’s cinematography is magnificent, never more so than when prowling the mausoleum-like halls of the unfinished project or the tunnels of Carrera. Together with production designer Judy Becker and costumer Kate Forbes, the DP shows an attentive eye for detail, conjuring the look of midcentury America with a period verisimilitude that feels alive, never frozen in amber.

The Brutalist is a massive film in every sense, closing with a resonant epilogue that illustrates how art and beauty reach out from the past, transcending space and time to reveal a freedom of thought and identity often denied its makers.

“What is a Black movie?”

It was a question Justin Simien, who first grabbed Hollywood’s attention with his debut feature, 2014’s HBCU comedy “Dear White People,” asked a number of top-tier filmmakers. He did not get a defining answer:

“A movie typically with African Americans in leading roles.”

“A movie inspired by, rooted by, influenced and told by Black people.”

“I know one when I see one.”

Simien’s quest to answer that question is the core of “Hollywood Black,” his exploration of the history of Black cinema, highlighting the triumphs and obstacles faced by Black artists. The four-part MGM+ documentary series premiered in August and concludes Sunday with the episode “Dear Black People,” which focuses on recent successes by Black filmmakers, from “Get Out” to “Black Panther.”

Inspired by historian Donald Bogle’s book “Hollywood Black” and sprinkled with insights from several prominent artists — among those featured are directors Ryan Coogler (“Black Panther”) and Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”) and actor Giancarlo Esposito — the project traces the evolution of Black film from the silent era to the present day. A priority of the project was to honor artists and movies that have been “hidden in plain sight.”

“I want everyone to rethink cinema history,” said Simien, who also directed the 2023 reboot of Disney’s “The Haunted Mansion,” in introducing the series. “Because whoever controls cinema controls history.”

Speaking from his Hollywood office, he discussed the challenges of making the documentary, the crushing impact of last year’s Hollywood labor strikes and how there can be more than two film versions of “The Color Purple.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Trying to cover the history of Black cinema in four hours must have been a formidable undertaking.

This entertainment industry is built on top of popular culture that Black people are at the center of. You see it never being in our hands, but you can’t remove us completely because we are the secret sauce in every stage of its development and evolution. So the story is how these people who are so important in the creation of this art form gain and lose and regain control over it. It ends up being a political story, more than anything.

So much of your personal journey was influenced by “The Wiz.” So many people love that film. But it was not a critical or commercial success.

The metrics of success we are all taught on how to value certain films has to go out the window when it comes to Black stuff. It really does, particularly when it comes to something like “The Wiz,” which had a gigantic cultural impact. It’s almost like the Bible, culturally and artistically. That movie has so many accomplishments, not the least of which is bringing Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones together. I would argue it’s one of the earliest representations of ballroom culture in the famous Emerald City sequence. It is one of the most expensive movies ever made with Black people on the screen.

The stars of “The Wiz” included Nipsey Russell, left as the Tin Man, Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as Scarecrow. Justin Simien says the film is “almost like the Bible, culturally and artistically.”

(Associated Press)

Another film that Black audiences have mixed feelings about is the 2023 musical version of “The Color Purple,” produced by Oprah Winfrey. Lots of fans of the 1985 film starring Whoopi Goldberg did not embrace it.

I understand it. But on the other hand, I’m glad that Blitz Bazawule, who directed the musical version, got to make his first major feature film. I have an appreciation for the fact that it is extremely rare and an experiment every time a Black filmmaker gets to make a movie. That alone is worthy of our attention. We don’t have the same aggregate of opportunities.

And on a personal level, I long for an adaptation of “The Color Purple” that appropriately elevates the queer message in that text that Alice Walker wrote. If we want to keep making “The Color Purple,” I’m OK. There’s more to be teased out of that text.

I was very struck by the documentary’s focus on artists and films that have not gotten a lot of attention, like Charles Lane, who directed a black-and-white silent film, “Sidewalk Stories.”

The impetus for this project was seeing these movies and being both awestruck and furious, actually enraged. “Sidewalk Stories” came out in 1989. That was a big year for Black cinema — the year of [Spike Lee’s] “Do the Right Thing.” But nobody mentions this other film that happened that did not spawn its own genre of movie that way “Do the Right Thing” did. Part of the reason why is that it didn’t fit in with what was in vogue about Blackness at that time. But it is a masterpiece.

When “The Artist” won the Oscar, I remember liking that movie but was befuddled by its elevation as something important. “Sidewalk Stories” is everything that movie was in terms of using the silent movie aesthetic, particularly in the way Charles is quoting Charlie Chaplin but featuring himself as a dark-skinned Black kid on the streets of New York. He is challenging the viewer, using the same situations, but with a group of people who are Black. Why does it feel different watching the same kinds of relationships on the screen with Black people?

During the first stages of the Hollywood strikes, Black artists feared that they would be severely affected when they ended. There is a lot of pain in Hollywood right now with people being out of work, but has it been worse for Black filmmakers?

Yes. It’s harder than it’s ever been. And it has hit queer artists even harder. I rode that pendulum swing in with “Dear White People” [the film] and felt it swing back out. Then I swung back in by making “Dear White People” into a TV series. I felt it go back and forth during those years, and it is definitely swinging back. It is so difficult.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph backstage at the Oscars in March after she won supporting actress for “The Holdovers.”

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Da’Vine Joy Randolph won an Oscar this year for her performance in “The Holdovers” as Mary Lamb, the head cook at an elite New England boarding school. But her win sparked some controversy, with some observers contending that it continued the decades-long tradition of honoring Black women who play characters subservient to white people or in roles that operate in support of white characters — while honoring them for little else.

That’s an important conversation. But again she is winning an award for her performance. The bottom line is, that the role did not exist for her, for whatever reason, in the hands of a Black filmmaker. What she did with it was phenomenal. For me, that’s what we are rewarding. It’s the same with Hattie McDaniel in “Gone With the Wind.” We’re not rewarding the representation, the caricature or the stereotype. We are rewarding the person inside a pretty not-so-great system that constantly is representing Black people in a very negative way. Inside of that, she was able to do something pretty magnificent and steal the attention from the other white co-stars.

There is so much more that you couldn’t get to explore in “Hollywood Black.” Is there the possibility of more episodes?

I think it would be great. It’s up to MGM and MGM+. You could honestly go over the same periods and talk about completely different artists and still not have enough time. Or you could pick one artist per episode. If someone wants to give me some Ken Burns documentary money, then we can really go.

From teenage model to upper-crust caterer to domestic doyenne to media-spanning billionaire to scapegoated convict to octogenarian thirst trap enthusiast and Snoop Dogg chum, Martha Stewart has had a life that defies belief, or at least congruity.

It’s an unlikely journey that has been carried out largely in the public eye, which gives R.J. Cutler a particular challenge with his new Netflix documentary, Martha. Maybe there are young viewers who don’t know what Martha Stewart‘s life was before she hosted dinner parties with Snoop. Perhaps there are older audiences who thought that after spending time at the prison misleadingly known as Camp Cupcake, Martha Stewart slunk off into embarrassed obscurity.

Those are probably the 115-minute documentary’s target audiences — people impressed enough to be interested in Martha Stewart, but not curious enough to have traced her course actively. It’s a very, very straightforward and linear documentary in which the actual revelations are limited more by your awareness than anything else.

In lieu of revelations, though, what keeps Martha engaging is watching Cutler thrust and parry with his subject. The prolific documentarian has done films on the likes of Anna Wintour and Dick Cheney, so he knows from prickly stars, and in Martha Stewart he has a heroine with enough power and well-earned don’t-give-a-f**k that she’ll only say exactly what she wants to say in the context that she wants to say it. Icy when she wants to be, selectively candid when it suits her purposes, Stewart makes Martha into almost a collaboration: half the story she wants to tell and half the degree to which Cutler buys that story. And the latter, much more than the completely bland biographical trappings and rote formal approach, is entertaining.

Cutler has pushed the spotlight exclusively onto Stewart. Although he’s conducted many new interviews for the documentary, with friends and co-workers and family and even a few adversaries, only Stewart gets the on-screen talking head treatment. Everybody else gets to give their feedback in audio-only conversations that have to take their place behind footage of Martha through the years, as well as the current access Stewart gave production to what seems to have been mostly her lavish Turkey Hill farmhouse.

Those “access” scenes, in which Stewart goes about her business without acknowledging the camera, illustrate her general approach to the documentary, which I could sum up as “I’m prepared to give you my time, but mostly as it’s convenient to me.”

At 83 and still busier than almost any human on the globe, Stewart needs this documentary less than the documentary needs her, and she absolutely knows it. Cutler tries to draw her out and includes himself pushing Stewart on certain points, like the difference between her husband’s affair, which still angers her, and her own contemporaneous infidelity. Whenever possible, Stewart tries to absent herself from being an active part of the stickier conversations by handing off correspondences and her diary from prison, letting Cutler do what he wants with those semi-revealing documents.

“Take it out of the letters,” she instructs him after the dead-ended chat about the end of her marriage, adding that she simply doesn’t revel in self-pity.

And Cutler tries, getting a voiceover actor to read those letters and diary entries and filling in visual gaps with unremarkable still illustrations.

Just as Stewart makes Cutler fill in certain gaps, the director makes viewers read between the lines frequently. In the back-and-forth about their affairs, he mentions speaking with Andy, her ex, but Andy is never heard in the documentary. Take it as you will. And take it as you will that she blames prducer Mark Burnett for not understanding her brand in her post-prison daytime show — which may or may not explain Burnett’s absence, as well as the decision to treat The Martha Stewart Show as a fleeting disaster (it actually ran 1,162 episodes over seven seasons) and to pretend that The Apprentice: Martha Stewart never existed. The gaps and exclusions are particularly visible in the post-prison part of her life, which can be summed up as, “Everything was bad and then she roasted Justin Bieber and everything was good.”

Occasionally, Stewart gives the impression that she’s let her protective veneer slip, like when she says of the New York Post reporter covering her trial: “She’s dead now, thank goodness. Nobody has to put up with that crap that she was writing.” But that’s not letting anything slip. It’s pure and calculated and utterly cutthroat. More frequently when Stewart wants to show contempt, she rolls her eyes or stares in Cutler’s direction waiting for him to move on. That’s evisceration enough.

Stewart isn’t a producer on Martha, and I’m sure there are things here she probably would have preferred not to bother with again at all. But at the same time, you can sense that either she’s steering the theme of the documentary or she’s giving Cutler what he needs for his own clear theme. Throughout the first half, her desire for perfection is mentioned over and over again and, by the end, she pauses and summarizes her life’s course with, “I think imperfection is something that you can deal with.”

Seeing her interact with Cutler and with her staff, there’s no indication that she has set aside her exacting standards. Instead, she’s found a calculatedly imperfect version of herself that people like, and she’s perfected that. It is, as she might put it, a good thing.