Perhaps no film this year represents more from a cinematographic standpoint than The Brutalist. A continents- and decades-spanning period piece shot on VistaVision––the first English-language feature to do so since Marlon Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks in 1961––and projected on 70mm implies (or demands) uncommon visual strength. That it actually meets such heights is thanks in no small part to Lol Crawley, Brady Corbet’s now-longtime cinematographer who’s helped set a new kind of standard for how productions of such ambition are achieved on a scale of just $10 million.
With The Brutalist playing in New York and Los Angeles before a larger theatrical rollout (and thorough awards campaign), I spoke to Crawley about the film’s half-decade life between discussion and production, as well as insight into its ambitious shooting and projection methods.
This interview contains mild spoilers.
The Film Stage: You and Corbet started talking about The Brutalist in 2018, when Vox Lux wrapped.
Lol Crawley: That’s right.
And then you finally started shooting it in 2023, which is, you know, quite a while. What does that length of time do for the conception of a film? Images that will carry from your first conversation to the final cut, good ideas with which everybody grew disillusioned––those things.
Well, yeah. It’s an interesting question. I mean, both Brady and I sort of worked on other projects over that period and it was soft-soft prep. I didn’t have a script at that point, although I had a script fairly soon after that, and really it was an exchange of ideas and photographs and references. When Brady and I weren’t seeing each other, which we would from time to time––either in London or New York––then there was kind of a steady stream of photos and references that were kind of coming through from all sorts of areas. Either paintings or other films or photography.
So it was a kind of continual dialogue, and then when [production designer] Judy [Becker] came onboard, that obviously solidified things, and then they had trips to Hungary without me, where they were looking; they were talking about Poland at one point and then Hungary. So there were sort of different developments that happened during that time, and then of course with COVID, we all know that story. And then obviously there were just the usual things that sort of happened, but it was longer gestation than normal.
Are there things that you could point to that kind of retained the longest? A certain image that you guys had initially talked about and I actually got to see onscreen in the final film, or things that you had ambitions towards that eventually you realized don’t quite work and you fell away from?
You know, it’s my third collaboration with Brady, and even since Childhood of a Leader, it’s clear that Brady is an incredibly assured director. He’s always regarded the film as both maximalist and minimalist aesthetic in some regards. I mean, the obvious thing to say is: the act of the build itself––the actual design of the institute––and the sort of scene with the Carrera quarry, the introduction to the whole Italy sequence, is incredibly sort of maximalist in many ways. But then there’s also a real sort of intimacy and a mixture of sort of formalism, and then this almost intimate handheld––definitely not like social-realist, but definitely a much more sort of naturalist or a natural aesthetic to the film. Brady was very clear about a lot of that––about that aesthetic and where handheld would come in and where Steadicam would come in. I mean, across all films, Brady will have these very ambitious ideas for, like, camera movement.
For example: he knew very early on that the first time you meet Laszló in the bowels of the ship and he awakes, he wanted to feel sort of disorientating, and then it’s this one shot that continues up, handheld, all the way through––kind of like an ascendancy, and then this joyous liberation where he kind of exits on the deck of the boat in New York harbor. A lot of the time, Brady will come to me with ideas and then either they evolve in some way or they change over a period of time, or it may just become my task to execute that. So one of the examples of this is when Erzsébet, Felicity Jones’ character, accuses Van Buren of rape. He said, “Listen, I want this to be all in one take. It barely fits on the length of a roll of film, and I want it to be Steadicam that then turns into handheld and then turns into Steadicam, but I still want it to be one shot.” That was an incredible sort of challenge; I’d never really done anything like that. So that was a case in point where, really, it was about the performance and the camera-operating at that point, and it was on me to just keep all the lights out, to light the scene appropriately, but also in a way that meant we could just put the camera wherever we wanted.
Like, when I get the script from Brady, there are… the intermission in the movie and the wedding photo? That was in there. That was all written in the script. We didn’t necessarily know that the length of the film was going to be the length that it was, but it was, you know, a significant number of pages in the script. There was always a sense of scale, always a sense of this epic story. I mean, it’s kind of extraordinary to discover that Laszló Toth is not a real architect. All three films have a common language, or share a common language and themes, in the sense that all of them are kind of depictions, examinations of a life that wasn’t ever lived. Either from Tom Sweet’s character or Celeste in Vox Lux, and this is a kind of über version of this. This is taking it to an extraordinary length. If you take the scene in the boat, for example, he starts in this area of confusion and darkness and claustrophobia and disorientation, right? And then, within that one scene, it ends with this joyous ascension. I mean, in many ways, that’s the whole movie personified.
That’s going from the cells of Dachau to the liberation of this new world, in some ways. And it echoes the institute that he’s building, you know? Like, half of it is subterranean––half of it is buried and denied of light within the ground––and then there are these tall towers and these concrete, very, very tall… like, height is incredibly important to him because it’s his way of representing a sense of control over his confinement. So at the end of the movie, it’s made very clear to the audience that some of the spaces in the institute are represented––the exact measurements of the cells in Dachau, right? But then he makes the ceiling so much higher with this light coming down. And it’s his way of kind of regaining control and liberating himself, you know? Like the brothel, the jazz club. There’s a lot of these subterranean, you know, spaces within the film. And then there are kind of, either with Italy or the very ugly scene where Joe Alwyn says to him, “We tolerate you.” But it’s really interesting because the scene is incredibly ugly, but there’s this scudding clouds and blue-sky quality. So I feel like there’s all that going on within the film.
I do wonder if, with this much time knowing about the film and thinking about the film, there could come some risk of overthinking. We talked for White Noise, a project you joined after a DP left during production; you were coming in quick. But on The Brutalist there could be years spent thinking “scene 34 should look exactly like this,” and then the day you get there, the clouds aren’t hitting in the right way, or the actor’s hungover and refuses to be shot head-on. That sort of thing. What are some of the thoughts about that––the risk of overthinking it?
I honestly think that with Brady and myself, that is unlikely to happen. The reason being that we don’t really sit down and heavily shot list, and we don’t really storyboard––apart from one sequence in the movie, which was the dome sequence because there were a lot of moving parts. The actors were on a roof, so there’s safety concerns––there’s stunt concerns, there’s SFX concerns, there’s art department concerns––and a scene like that takes several meetings to really kind of figure out how to do it. However, the one takeaway from that was Brady and I were like… working from storyboards and being prescriptive in that way is not the way we like to work. We like to be informed. We like to be prepared, but we also like to respond to what’s in front of us. The danger with shot lists and storyboards is that you’re looking at a blueprint and you’re looking down and trying to work out how to put A to B to C when you should really be… well, you should try and be conscientious and responsive to the performance and the space without, you know, wasting time, of course, and without frustrating the producers and the first AD by just not being sure what you’re doing.
But Brady and I have, from the very beginning, shared such a kind of commonality in terms of taste and how we respond to light and spaces and things. Which is unusual. Like, even within our first film together, I felt there was a lot less time talking about something or disagreeing, and it was almost kind of instinctual. Our sensibilities were just sort of aligned, you know? And also, if you combine that sort of shorthand, let’s call it, with minimal, minimal coverage, that’s how you shoot a film like this in 33 days for under a million, right? As soon as you add other shots, not only does the discussion increase; like branches of a tree, each shot you have has another six takes, so exponentially, all suddenly, your whole day is filled with just… whereas you could try and ambitiously do it in one shot, or maybe three shots, and it’s a much more economical way of shooting. So yeah: I don’t think there’s ever a danger of overthinking in that regard.
Also, Brady is incredibly sort of like… we were talking about this, how directors often are fixated on one thing. For example: we found the house, the Van Buren estate, and there were scenes in the bedroom, right? And there just was no bedroom that clearly existed there. A lot of directors might be like “well, okay” and they throw the baby out with the bathwater and find another place, and then maybe that takes time, and then you end up having to come back to the first place because it doesn’t exist. Brady is very pragmatic and he’s just like, “Okay. Well, you know, we’re 80, 90% there with this location. I’ll just rewrite that scene. We’ll just place it somewhere else and we’ll do that.” And I think it’s that level of flexibility that means as long as the themes and the message of a scene comes across, he’s open to all ideas of how to achieve that. It’s a kind of wonderful balance of working with a director who’s incredibly assured and in control of the movie they’re trying to make, but a wonderful collaborator at the same time, which doesn’t feel like it’s a prescriptive exercise. It really feels like it’s a true collaboration and melding of ideas.
I saw The Brutalist at the New York Film Festival on 70mm––got to be very enraptured by the 70mm image––and I wanted to talk about VistaVision a little bit. I mean, I love how the opening credits kind of are a little Easter egg for the VistaVision heads, the way that it travels through.
[Laughs]
And I’m curious about the physical aspects of it, because I know Attila Pfeffer has been credited as a Steadicam operator on the film. I’m wondering if you did much operating and how that might have worked. Corbet has talked about how the weight of VistaVision will actually cause the camera to tilt over.
Yes.
I’m curious about the physical and prep processes.
So obviously Attila did all of the operating that was on Steadicam, and then I was operating the handheld and, you know, everything else in the movie––apart from the second unit that Ádám Fillenz shot. Yeah, the VistaVision camera is an unergonomic camera. The camera that we had, even though the camera system exists from the 1950s––Hitchcock was using VistaVision for Vertigo and I think some North by Northwest, if I’m not mistaken––but our body that we were using came out of London was from the 1970s. So it was still a technically challenging piece of kit because the R&D––any developments, anything to do with optics or the video tap that sits off to the side of the camera that takes a feed to the monitor so everyone can see what’s going on––all of those things were, you know, slightly outdated and that made it difficult. Like, the optics tended to vignette a little bit on the viewfinder; things like that. It was technically challenging.
I mean, Attila did an amazing job actually mounting the VistaVision onto the Steadicam. And as you say: the mag sits horizontally so, you know, the film is displaced. But there were certain exceptions. Like, for the scene with the boat at the beginning, I used an Arri 235 35mm camera, purely because the steps on the… well, you know, purely because it’s a better, easier handheld camera, but the steps as well on the boat are incredibly steep inclines. So when I’m following Laszló down the steps or up the steps, if I was following down with a bigger camera, it would literally tip forward off my shoulder. So I needed something that was much lighter where I could hold the handrail. As I’m ascending up following Laszló, I’m literally pulling myself up with one hand on the handrail and then another hand holding the camera. And so there were some points in the movie where we had to find a workaround. But yeah: most of the time the VistaVision was the choice, you know.
Well, I think that VistaVision and the size of the frame it captures contributes to this being the first really good-looking 70 blow-up I’ve seen.
Right. Right.
And I would like to know a little about the film being shown in these different formats. Obviously there’s DCP, there’s 70, but in-between there’s also 35.
Yes, yes.
I’m curious what kind of hand you had in some of the post-processes for a 70 print versus a DCP versus a 35 and how you feel about each version.
Well, obviously the DCP is fairly straightforward in the sense that that was our starting point. Brady and I were grading with Máté Ternyik, who was the dailies colorist, and then that evolved into him color-timing the whole movie, which was a really, really smart decision that we made for that continuity of the aesthetic. We hadn’t worked with Máté before; we will continue to, I hope, because he’s a terrific find. So the DCP, really, we were grading with a film print in mind––grading with a sort of film-emulation LUT, being aware of what the final print would do. You know, the reality is that the latitude––the information you get, the range of stops of information that you get on negative––is different to what you will translate to a final print stock. The print-stock latitude, as it were, is narrower, so you have to be aware of these things. For example: if you’re in a DCP situation and you’re seeing information in the DI––in the highlights and stuff like this––and you’re seeing that full range, you have to be aware that that doesn’t necessarily translate completely to the film print. I mean, it’s pretty good, but it’s maybe, like, nine stops compared to 14 stops or something like that. That’s one thing you have to sort of be aware of and keep an eye on.
And then once we’ve done the DCP, Brady got in touch and said, “Listen, I want to do a 70mm print.” And then we looked at it; we got quotes from FotoKem and we spoke to FotoKem about it. It was, obviously like all of these things, an expensive process, but FotoKem and Andrew Oran at FotoKem really came onboard and worked with Brady to make it achievable––to make it a feasible option. Obviously the financiers and the producers were incredibly supportive of that as well. Then it came back to me––I’m in LA now––so really it was: I looked, before Venice, at the check print for the 70mm and we made a few changes for the reels. I mean, it’s four miles of film or something, I think I’m being told; 270 pounds of film. Like, it’s insane. I’ve never been involved in anything like that before.
But I think Brady was very much like: “Hey, you go to the ballet. You sit for three to four hours. You have three intermissions. It’s a night out. And why are we constantly apologizing for a film being the length that it is? Why not make it a theatrical experience again? Why not make it VistaVision, 70mm, intermission? Why are we constantly in this thing of, like, having to deny that our artform––the art of cinema––can legitimately stand on its own two feet this way?” I mean, I understand the economics in terms of, like, the number of screenings one has a night and things like this, but I really feel that Brady’s just run to the end stop with this thing. He just was like, “This is what we’re doing, and we’re going to make this happen.” I mean, he’s an incredibly tenacious producer and director. If it hadn’t been for Brady, we wouldn’t have a 70mm print and we wouldn’t have a 35mm print. And he’s such a believer, as am I, of the power and worth of celluloid. I said it at Camerimage when I won the Silver Frog: I was like, “Long may FotoKem and all of these labs and Kodak reign.” We will not be beaten into submission and told that digital is the way forward. Whatever we can do, we will do to support that.
And then the 35mm prints, I mean, A24 have been incredibly supportive at rolling out 35mm and 70mm prints––as have Universal and Focus. They’ve all come onboard and really, really got behind this. And I think it’s absolutely wonderful. I hope that it serves as inspiration to people working on budgets of this level and schedules of this level––that when they’re told by producers “this is not achievable,” that they think again. I mean, I shot 45 Years for Andrew Haigh for between £1-2 million on 35mm Panavision cameras. It’s crazy that people are, like, fudging the numbers because they don’t want the hassle of shooting film. I mean, it’s insane.
The movie’s good as it is, but the 70 aspect is just ginning up the works a little more. It’s like, “No, I don’t just have to see it. I’ve got to see it on 70.” It’s just exciting that people are excited about a 70mm presentation.
Yeah. I think also it’s like: there’s that aspect, and the fact that when you finish the movie and you go have a drink or a meal, I’m hoping that the conversations are about an adult-themed movie––an adult theme, an important theme. The reason I got into it, became a cinematographer and got into film, was not to go and see, you know, a tentpole movie. I was inspired by movies that were examinations of humans, not spectacle. You know? Or not purely spectacle. And I really hope that when this film is released, we’re going to see that: we’re going to see that people are sort of hungry for a movie of this type.
The Brutalist is now playing in limited release.