Brady Corbet’s move from acting to directing has produced films we recommend with reservations. He gives performers time to hold our attention, but too often repeats what a performance or an image has already made clear.
Fi1m perspective
In The Brutalist (2024), Adrien Brody’s László Tóth comes out of a ship’s hold into daylight. The camera swings, leaving the Statue of Liberty upside down above him. We were caught off guard by how much that shot affected us, despite understanding it immediately. Corbet makes the image work without explanation, then struggles to stop explaining it for the rest of the film.
Corbet’s acting work took him through Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011), Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) and Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (2014). He largely left acting behind around 2014, making his directing debut with The Childhood of a Leader (2015), co-written with Mona Fastvold. Vox Lux (2018) followed, a film with a good idea that never found a coherent way to tell it.
Fastvold is his regular co-writer, and cinematographer Lol Crawley is another recurring collaborator. The first hundred minutes of The Brutalist justify Corbet’s taste for scale and patience: an émigré architect and his American patron become absorbing company before the film presses its point about money and art. Brody carries this stretch, with Corbet giving the performance time rather than hurrying towards the next explanation.
After the interval, however, Corbet keeps restating what the relationship has already shown us. Jancsó’s editing cuts on as though the film has settled a question that it has barely examined. Corbet has already made his point about what patrons do to the people they pay, and repeating it more forcefully does not make it more convincing.
The writing problem returns in The Testament of Ann Lee (2025), directed by Fastvold and co-written with Corbet. Its congregation sings, stamps and spins to Shaker hymns, and the film is at its most persuasive when it stops to watch them. Between those services, the narration explains too much, despite Amanda Seyfried’s remarkable performance. There is enough life in the singing to make the interruptions frustrating. Start with The Brutalist, but take the interval; Corbet’s demands are easier to meet after a pause.
Biography
Brady James Monson Corbet (born 17 August 1988) is an American filmmaker and former actor. He began his career as a child actor with roles in films including Thirteen (2003), Mysterious Skin (2004) and Funny Games (2007), before retiring from acting in 2014 to concentrate on directing and writing.
Corbet made his feature directorial debut with The Childhood of a Leader (2015). He has since directed and co-written Vox Lux (2018) and The Brutalist (2024), the latter earning him the Silver Lion at Venice, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for Best Director, along with Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. He co-wrote The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) with his partner and frequent collaborator Mona Fastvold.
