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“They’re Having to Rediscover That Connection They’ve Dreamt About”

Dec 21, 2024

Summary

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with The Brutalist star Felicity Jones.

During her Ladies Night conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, Jones looks back on how Like Crazy changed the game for her, and joining film franchises via The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Jones also details her experience working with Brady Corbet on The Brutalist, including what it took to pull off one of the most unforgettable scenes of the year.

Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is epic. In fact, it’s a three hour and 35 minute epic that afforded Felicity Jones a rather unique performance opportunity. Her character, Erzsébet Tóth, doesn’t appear on screen until about halfway through the film, after its 15-minute intermission.
The Brutalist begins by focusing on Adrien Brody’s László Toth, a famous architect who flees post-war Europe with hopes of building a new life in America. Separated from his wife, Jones’ Erzsébet, during the war, he settles in Pennsylvania alone with hopes she’ll join him there soon. Eventually, László gets what appears to be a dreamy offer from a wealthy industrialist, Guy Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren. After coming to learn about László’s famed work overseas, Harrison hires him to craft his own dream project, to build a grand scale community center in honor of his late mother. It’s an opportunity for László to establish a foundation in his new home no doubt, but it’s also one that’s riddled with complications involving legacy and power.
While Jones may not appear on screen during that period, Erzsébet’s presence is felt via her own voice over and what she means to László. Essentially, the audience spends half the film awaiting her arrival and fantasizing about how it might play out. When the moment does finally come, anticipation is through the roof, and Jones makes the most of it. When Erzsébet enters the picture, alongside their niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), it quickly becomes abundantly clear that she is an undeniable force determined to build the best possible life for her family in their new home.
With The Brutalist now playing in select theaters, Jones joined me for a Collider Ladies Night interview to revisit the path she’s carved for herself in cinema thus far, and to discuss making The Brutalist with Corbet, including her experience working on one particularly intense emotional beat that might very well be one of the best scenes of 2024.
This Double Oscar Nominee Inspired Felicity Jones to Become an Actor

“There was something really punk about her.”

As with every Collider Ladies Night conversation, I began by asking for one of Jones’ earliest influences, and she immediately veered toward an acting legend well known for giving every ounce of herself and then some to her roles, Samantha Morton. Jones explained:

“It was definitely watching Samantha Morton in her early work. Morvern Callar, I remember, made such a huge impression on me. I think it was just that she was so real, and her naturalism and her commitment. Also, she went to a drama group where she grew up, and I went to a similar one where I grew up, which was run by the same company, so I always felt I was looking at her going, ‘Well, what’s she doing?’ I felt like I had this affinity with her, and then just watched her performances grow. Everything she does, she’s never phony. She never just takes an easy choice. She does interesting work. There was something really punk about her, as well.”

Everything Changed with Drake Doremus’ ‘Like Crazy’

Image via Paramount Pictures

Jones would employ a similar compass while building a filmography, but there’s one particular movie she credits with cracking the door open to the type of work she was most eager to do. It was the 2011 Drake Doremus movie, Like Crazy, a performance that earned her a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
Here’s what Jones said when asked for the first film to best represent how she wanted to present herself to the industry as an artist:

“I’ve definitely had that, where you’re doing parts and work, and you’re like, ‘It wasn’t really representative of what I want to say.’ I think definitely Like Crazy was quite a moment of feeling, ‘Oh, this.’ I very much had wanted to do that kind of work. I loved watching independent film growing up, and so that film suddenly felt like, ‘Oh, I’m sort of doing what I was planning to do.’ Probably with that film, it felt like everything sort of came together in the right way.”

Jones added, “Like Crazy opened the world up for me in many ways. I didn’t anticipate that I would ever do this much traveling and have this life, and that film was very much the gateway.”
Like Crazy proved to be a gateway to a wealth of wonderful opportunities, but an especially significant one wound up being The Theory of Everything in which she starred opposite Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking as Jane Hawking. That performance scored her a Best Actress nomination at the Academy Awards.

“There’s something that’s nice about it, that you feel like your peers, that other people are seeing your work and enjoying it. I guess on that level, it’s quite nice. But you’re sort of sensible self comes, ‘That’s not what it’s about. It’s not about that.’ And you can’t make that the goal, really, because who knows? You don’t know. You don’t know where the zeitgeist is gonna go. You just keep coming back to what the thing that I do love doing is — creating these funny characters and putting them in the world. As long as I can keep doing that, then that’s good. Everything else is the cherry on the cake.”

Why Felicity Jones Signed On for ‘The Brutalist’

“I knew that it would be distinct.”

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Brady Corbet’s epic is one of the most stunning films you’ll see this year.

Many are predicting there might be another cherry on the cake for Jones in the near future. She’s currently a potential contender in the Best Supporting Actress category for her work in The Brutalist. And that’s not the only category The Brutalist is expected to pop up in. A Best Picture nomination, a Best Director nomination and then some are likely in the film’s future for a multitude of reasons, but a big one being something Jones clocked about the project early on — it would be “distinct.”

“I had a strong sense that he would do something interesting, having seen his previous work and how careful he was. Even when he was acting, he seemed to work with the greatest auteurs in the world, from one to the next. And then you could see from having done two films, just how important each film is to him. So, I knew there was so much promise that when we chatted, I mean, we chatted about so many different things. We’d actually known each other socially in our 20s, so it was really nice to see him again, having not seen him for some years. But I felt, instinctively, there was such emotional intelligence in the writing of the script, and there was such ambition in it that I knew that it would be interesting in some way. I knew that it would be distinct, and that’s what is so key, particularly now, is making things that are distinctive in some way.”

The Pressure That Comes With Not Appearing Until Halfway Through a Film

“You don’t want to disappoint when you do finally arrive.”

Image via A24

The finished product certainly ticks that box in a number of ways, one of which is a rather unique performance challenge for Jones — the challenge of not appearing until about one hour and 40 minutes into the film.

“It definitely increases the pressure and the stakes when you don’t appear until halfway through the film, so you don’t want to disappoint when you do finally arrive. [Laughs] But in many ways, part of the character, so much of it was building it through her voice, and you hear her so much in that first half. I’ve talked about it as though she sort of is haunting László in many ways, and so we feel like we know her. Then, obviously, it’s quite a shock when we meet her, and we see the effect that malnutrition has had on her, which László isn’t expecting”

The reveal that Erzsébet is a full-time wheelchair user due to her osteoporosis clearly rattles László, but from the moment the viewer meets her in the flesh in the film, her fortitude is undeniable. Jones continued:

“Very quickly, I felt that with Erzsébet, you feel her humanity, and there’s a toughness, there’s a strength of mind, and it’s someone who, no matter what she has been through before, and you feel she’s been through great trauma, that she is totally committed to making it work for her and her family, and that whatever’s gone before, she, in many ways, just wants to look forward. She’s choosing to not look backwards in some ways at that point that we meet her, and she’s very pragmatic and she’s gonna do what it takes to make it work, and she wants to build a new life and a foundation.”

Erzsébet’s determination to build that new life and foundation kicks off with great weight in “Part 2: The Hard Core of Beauty” due to how her presence is established in “Part 1: The Enigma of Arrival,” but also because of Corbet’s choice to incorporate a pre-war photograph during the film’s 15-minute intermission.

“I feel there’s something in the photograph that you have in the intermission that gives you a little clue as to their former life. It gives you a window into their profound connection but also a certain amount of innocence. And then, what you realize is that, in many ways, when they’re reunited, having not seen each other for eight years, they’re starting again. They’re having to recalibrate. They’re having to get to know each other. They’re having to rediscover that connection that they’ve dreamt about for so long. So, it’s not totally straightforward.”

Looking for even more from Jones about her experience working on The Brutalist, her thoughts on tackling franchise films like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and more? Be sure to check out our full Collider Ladies Night interview in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the chat in podcast form below:

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The Brutalist follows visionary architect László Toth and his wife Erzsébet as they flee Europe, aiming to rebuild their legacy in modern America. Their journey takes an unexpected turn when a mysterious and wealthy client alters the course of their lives, intertwining ambition with the challenges of a new world.

Release Date

December 20, 2024

Director

Brady Corbet

Cast

Adrien Brody
, Guy Pearce
, Felicity Jones
, Joe Alwyn
, Raffey Cassidy
, Stacy Martin
, Emma Laird
, Isaach De Bankole
, Alessandro Nivola
, Michael Epp
, Jonathan Hyde
, Peter Polycarpou
, Salvatore Sansone
, Ariane Labed
, Jeremy Wheeler
, Jaymes Butler
, Matt Devere
, Natalie Shinnick
, Stephen Saracco
, Peter Linka
, Robert Jackson

Main Genre

Drama

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The Brutalist is now playing in select theaters.
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Disclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by filmibee.
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