section_path: Reception/Critical response
section_name: Critical response
paragraph_text: Critical response
  
  On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 319 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Structurally beautiful and suffused with Adrien Brody's soulful performance, writer-director Brady Corbet's immaculately designed The Brutalist is a towering tribute to the immigrant experience." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
  
  The film received a five-star review from The Guardian ' s Peter Bradshaw, who called it "an amazing and engrossing epic". He continued: " The Brutalist obviously takes something from Ayn Rand, but also from Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow in its depiction of the US immigrant adventure and the promise of success – but maybe Corbet and Fastvold go further and faster into how dizzyingly sensual and sexual it all is". Bradshaw concluded: "It is an electrifying piece of work, stunningly shot by cinematographer Lol Crawley and superbly designed by Judy Becker. I emerged from this movie light-headed and euphoric, dizzy with rubbernecking at its monumental vastness." In a review for Vogue, the cinematography, score, costumes, and production design were described as "sumptuous", "impressively stylish", and possessing a "staggering ambition". Some reviews criticized the film, including The Ringer ' s Adam Nayman and The New Yorker ' s Richard Brody, with the latter writing that "Brady Corbet's epic takes on weighty themes, but fails to infuse its characters with the stuff of life." The film's use of VistaVision led to a revival of industry interest in the format, with Paul Thomas Anderson using it to film his 2025 film One Battle After Another, as well as Yorgos Lanthimos 's Bugonia (2025) and Alejandro González Iñárritu 's untitled 2026 film starring Tom Cruise.
  
  On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 319 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Structurally beautiful and suffused with Adrien Brody's soulful performance, writer-director Brady Corbet's immaculately designed The Brutalist is a towering tribute to the immigrant experience." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100, based on 57 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
  
  The film received a five-star review from The Guardian ' s Peter Bradshaw, who called it "an amazing and engrossing epic". He continued: " The Brutalist obviously takes something from Ayn Rand, but also from Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow in its depiction of the US immigrant adventure and the promise of success – but maybe Corbet and Fastvold go further and faster into how dizzyingly sensual and sexual it all is". Bradshaw concluded: "It is an electrifying piece of work, stunningly shot by cinematographer Lol Crawley and superbly designed by Judy Becker. I emerged from this movie light-headed and euphoric, dizzy with rubbernecking at its monumental vastness." In a review for Vogue, the cinematography, score, costumes, and production design were described as "sumptuous", "impressively stylish", and possessing a "staggering ambition". Some reviews criticized the film, including The Ringer ' s Adam Nayman and The New Yorker ' s Richard Brody, with the latter writing that "Brady Corbet's epic takes on weighty themes, but fails to infuse its characters with the stuff of life." The film's use of VistaVision led to a revival of industry interest in the format, with Paul Thomas Anderson using it to film his 2025 film One Battle After Another, as well as Yorgos Lanthimos 's Bugonia (2025) and Alejandro González Iñárritu 's untitled 2026 film starring Tom Cruise.