Adrien Brody Earns 12-Minute Venice Ovation for "The Brutalist"

Brady Corbet‘s historical drama “The Brutalist,” starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce, dazzled Venice Film Festival on Sunday with a 12-minute standing ovation.

Brody, who stars as a Hungarian Holocaust survivor struggling to revive his career as an architect in the U.S., was overcome with emotion as the clapping raged on, lasting until security ushered everyone out. 

The actor wiped tears away and held his head in his hands, repeatedly trying to direct the applause toward his director and co-stars, but the spotlight kept falling back on him.

The stunningly shot three-and-a-half hour drama, which included a 15-minute intermission, follows Brody’s character, László Tóth, over nearly four decades as he immigrates to the U.S. and begins working for a rich but hot-headed man who wants to build an ambitious community center. 

He helps László reunite with his ailing wife (Jones) and begin to construct the brutalist building of his dreams, but a fateful incident changes all of their lives forever.

The cast also includes Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola, Jonathan Hyde, Isaach De Bankolé, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Emma Laird and Peter Polycarpou. 

In addition to directing the film, Corbet also co-wrote the script with his wife Mona Fastvold (“The Sleepwalker”).

Earlier in the day, Corbet spoke about the length of the film in a press conference, telling reporters that the discourse surrounding runtimes is “quite silly.”

“This film does everything that we are told we are not allowed to do,” the director said. “I think it’s quite silly actually to have a conversation about runtime because that’s like criticizing a book for being 700 pages instead of 100 pages.”

Actor-turned-director Corbet has premiered films at Venice twice before, with his 2015 directorial debut “The Childhood of a Leader” earning him the Luigi De Laurentiis award for best debut film and the Horizons best director prize and 2018’s “Vox Lux” competing for the Golden Lion. 

“The Brutalist” is also in the running for the festival’s prestigious top prize.