Cinematographer Lol Crawley, BSC and production designer Judy Becker collaborated for the first time on The Brutalist (A24) and emerged as Oscar nominees in their respective disciplines. Their work on the film has also earned major recognition elsewhere on the industry awards circuit. Just this week, Crawley won the British Society of Cinematographers’ Feature Film Award. He also is currently a nominee for both an ASC Award and a BAFTA Film Award. And Becker received nominations for a BAFTA Film Award and an Art Directors Guild (ADG) Excellence in Production Design Award.
Crawley and Becker, though, traversed distinctly different paths to The Brutalist, being on opposite ends of the collaborative continuum with director and co-writer Brady Corbet going into the film. Crawley had already shot two features for Corbet prior to The Brutalist—The Childhood of a Leader (2015) and Vox Lux (2018). In sharp contrast, The Brutalist marked Becker’s first time working with Corbet.
Becker recalled seeing The Childhood of a Leader and immediately wanting to design for Corbet. Describing herself as “stunned” by the film, she related that it reflected Corbet’s talent as a filmmaker, his ability to work within a budget on a period movie and still deliver an end product that looked fantastic while brilliantly telling a story.
Becker noted that a big budget period film replete with tons of set dressing, over-dressed locations and the like misses the mark for her. She asked, “Why waste that money?” But when Becker sees a period movie with a pared down budget that looks so good, “I’m really blown away.”
Based on The Childhood of a Leader, Becker told her agent that she’d love to work with Corbet. That coming together, though, did not materialize on Vox Lux. Still, subsequently seeing that film served to only intensify her desire to team with Corbet. They wound up doing that years later on The Brutalist which introduces us to László Tóth (portrayed by Adrian Brody). a Hungarian architect and survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who emigrates to Pennsylvania. Getting by in the working class, he gains the chance to renovate a library for a wealthy industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). Tóth’s stellar work on the library thrusts him back into architecture as Van Buren commissions him to build a sprawling modernist community center/institute. But there’s a dark side to how the relationship between patron and artist evolves.
When the library is revealed about a quarter of the way through the movie, the impact is palpable as we see firsthand the extent of Tóth’s genius. For Becker, the library also reflects the genius and practical adaptability of Corbet. In scouting for a location, Becker and Corbet came across a building in Hungary where one room in particular felt–with a lot of imagination–like it could evolve into the library. However, it was an all-glass winter garden so the conversion to an inspiring library seemed problematic. Where to hang the bookshelves, for example? But Becker roughly sketched a solution–the use of a backing that would eliminate the glass issue, creating a place for the shelves to hang from. The shape of the room was changed in an innovative modernist manner. The biggest hurdle it turns out was the scarcity of wood in Hungary but Becker was able to get the construction material needed. (Hungary gets much of its wood from Ukraine and that supply chain was adversely impacted due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.)
Becker noted that Corbet–who teamed with Mona Fastvold to write The Brutalist–was open to the crudely sketched idea of the glass setting somehow translating into the library. This proposition was a far cry from what was envisioned at the outset yet Corbet embraced it. That open-mindedness is part of what makes Corbet such a talented filmmaker, observed Becker. There are directors who have an environment well defined in their shot lists–and who are lost if that environment is not found. Quite a departure from this is Corbet who’s adaptable to anything as long as it can help to advance the story and its characters. Becker described Corbet as “such an imaginative and creative person. Nothing was daunting to him. If we lost a location, we could make another one work. He knows what he wants to say and realizes there isn’t just one way to say it.” That “flexibility,” she added, is among the many traits that makes him “a great director.”
The library and Van Buren’s institute seem monumental yet they appear as authentic settings and all-too-real examples of architectural and design brilliance. Asked if creating such settings–to tell the story of an architect–added an extra top-of-mind concern to how she approached her work, Becker said that she resisted that temptation. She instead approached The Brutalist as she does any project. Becker knew the work had to look good but she always wants her sets to look good, to look real so people aren’t thinking about the setting. That took priority over any notion that in the story her production design would be a star attraction reflecting the talent of Tóth. She was conscious of the fact that Tóth’s creations had to be inventive and couldn’t appear to copy any other architect. It all had to feel like “it came out of László’s brain” but first and foremost the world being created had to be real.
Helping Becker to make it real was set decorator Patricia Cuccia. Becker shares the Oscar nomination–the second of her career–with Cuccia for The Brutalist. This marks the fourth time they have worked together, starting with director Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. Becker and Cuccia have developed a shorthand over the years and it was a comfort, said the production designer, to team with her again. Becker noted that Corbet sees the value of that comfort and makes a concerted effort to pair artists who have a track record of collaboration. Becker had the bonus of also having an established bond with another team member on The Brutalist, art director Alexander Linde.
Observing that there’s “a new generation of directors and Brady is one of them”–opting for shooting on film, for example, and looking to do as much as possible in-camera. She noted that directors Jacques Audiard, Sean Baker and Robert Eggers all went with the film medium for Emilia Pérez, Anora and Nosferatu, respectively.
Becker is very much director-driven when it comes to selecting her projects. For instance she earlier in her career connected with director David O. Russell for whom she worked on such films as The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle and Joy. She garnered her first Oscar and BAFTA Film Award nominations for American Hustle. And Becker scored ADG Excellence in Production Design Award nominations for that film along with The Fighter and Joy. She’s also teamed with director Todd Haynes on I’m Not There and Carol, the latter gaining her a BAFTA Film Award nomination.
Lol Crawley, BSC
Crawley views his three features with Corbet as “an unofficial trilogy,” the common bond being that the stories examine a central character who’s completely fictitious but in some way iconic and relatable. The Childhood of a Leader shows us the birth of a fascist leader. Vox Lux centers on a pop star who takes an unlikely route to fame. And, of course, The Brutalist has a Jewish immigrant architect as its protagonist. They are all, said Crawley, “incredibly well written and well-rounded characters,” compliments of Corbet and Fastvold.
Working with an auteur like Corbet has been gratifying, continued Crawley, noting that from the outset of their collaborative relationship on The Childhood of a Leader in 2015, he has felt simpatico with the writer-director. “Our tastes have been very much aligned from the beginning,” shared Crawley, adding that he and Corbet have become “firm friends” and have “a real respect for each other.”
Crawley’s respect for Corbet is not just for his creative talent but also a pragmatism that cuts through the extraneous in order to get things done and ultimately realize his vision. This thoughtful, pragmatic approach where Corbet “doesn’t get hung up on the wrong things,” said Crawley, is integral to being able to make a movie as ambitious as The Brutalist over 33 shoot days within the parameters of a $10 million budget. And while that requires meticulous planning, there’s creative latitude to explore and move in different directions. Crawley recalled that only one scene in the movie was storyboarded. He added that filmmaking collaborators are afforded the opportunity, as described by Corbet, to “move sand around in the sandbox.”
That playful expression reflects the freedom provided for talent to create. He explained that Corbet collaborates with him and others to “do the groundwork to allow a looseness and a freshness on set,” part of a culture “open to ideas and change.” This helps to keep “a certain vitality,” nurturing a radical emotion or thought in the film, preventing the story from becoming stale.
Crawley further shared that once a location has been chosen, he loves to go to that space without anyone else–not even Corbet. Crawley related that he comes from a tradition that includes “available light” and “found locations,” adding that he enjoys those so-called limitations. Crawley revels in being able to respond to spaces, to imagine a scene and how it plays out–with every permutation and angle he can conceive of. Crawley then in turn brings all that back to Corbet for feedback and to help trigger an exchange of ideas.
Corbet and Crawley shot The Brutalist on VistaVision, a choice that dovetailed to some extent with the film’s story which in part tackled 1950s’ America. It was a kind of homage to 1950s’ melodrama, a period of filmmaking which included Hitchcockian influences. Crawley affirmed that film was clearly the right medium for this period piece (which has been theatrically released/projected in 70mm and 35mm).
Crawley added that the more he talks about and watches The Brutalist, while reflecting on the contributions of others such as production designer Becker, he increasingly realizes that the entire film is about light and dark. “The institute that László and Judy created,” related Crawley, underscores the dependence on light and dark. “Half of it is subterranean, devoid of light or desperate for light,” observed Crawley. “The other half is reaching up towards the light,” which is revealed at the end of the movie, kind of representing a liberation for Tóth from the concentration camps.
Becker was astute in her design, said Crawley, which entailed embracing the idea of light and how his cinematography would use light to tell the story. The DP noted that her design of the settings was mindful of his having enough light as well as the ability to light as needed.
Crawley’s current ASC Award nomination for The Brutalist marks the second time he’s been recognized by that competition. He was nominated for an ASC Award in the Spotlight category in 2017 for The Childhood of a Leader.
The Oscar nods for Crawley and Becker are just two of the 10 earned by The Brutalist; the others are for Best Picture, lead actor for Brody, supporting actor for Pearce, supporting actress for Felicity Jones, directing, film editing (David Jancso), original score (Daniel Blumberg) and original screenplay.
This is the 15th installment of our weekly 16-part The Road To Oscar Series of feature stories. The 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2.
