THE BRUTaLiST

What the awards favorite's use of AI technology says about the future of authenticity in film.

Don’t you hate it when something you’re looking forward to is spoiled?

Adrien Brody portrays the titular Brutalist: mid-century architect László Tóth.

That’s how I felt when, just days before I was set to finally see The Brutalist (2024), Brady Corbet’s three-plus-hours-with-an-intermission epic about Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth¹, Twitter² erupted with news that the film had allegedly used artificial intelligence in post-production. At first the news was just an uncredited screenshot; however, the official Redshark News article began to circulate, in which the film’s editor, Dávid Jancsó, discussed the film’s “subtle and sensitive use of AI”:

Much of the film’s dialogue is in Hungarian, the filmmakers went to great lengths to make it as accurate to a native speaker as possible. This included judicious use of AI from the Ukrainian specialist Respeecher.

Jancsó explains, “I am a native Hungarian speaker and I know that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn to pronounce. Even with Adrien's Hungarian background - (Brody’s mother is a Hungarian refugee who emigrated to the U.S in 1956) - it's not that simple. It’s an extremely unique language. We coached [Brody and Felicity Jones] and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference.”

Tweaks were needed to enhance specific letters of their vocal sounds. “If you’re coming from the Anglo-Saxon world certain sounds can be particularly hard to grasp. We first tried to ADR these harder elements with the actors. Then we tried to ADR them completely with other actors but that just didn’t work. So we looked for other options of how to enhance it.”

Brody and Jones were fully onboard with the process guided by Respeecher which started with recording their voices to drive the AI Hungarian delivery. Jancsó also fed his voice into the AI model to finesse the tricky dialect.

“Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there. We were very careful about keeping their performances. It's mainly just replacing letters here and there. You can do this in ProTools yourself, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process otherwise we'd still be in post.”

Much to sift through here, but wait — there’s more!:

GenAI is also used right at the end of the film in a sequence at the Venice Biennale to conjure a series of architectural drawings and finished buildings in the style of the fictional architect. The overall effect is so impressive you might find yourself headed to Wikipedia to double check that László Tóth existed.

“It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn't be,” he acknowledges. “We should be having a very open discussion about what tools AI can provide us with. There’s nothing in the film using AI that hasn't been done before. It just makes the process a lot faster. We use AI to create these tiny little details that we didn't have the money or the time to shoot.”

This article immediately sparked backlash, with Corbet swiftly releasing a statement in which he says, per ABC News:

"[Adrien and Felicity Jones] worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents. Innovative Respeecher technology was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy. No English language was changed."

He added, "This was a manual process, done by our sound team and Respeecher in post-production. The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicity's performances in another language, not to replace or alter them and done with the utmost respect for the craft."

In the same statement, Corbet also comments on the second alleged use of AI, saying that the architectural drawings “were hand-drawn by artists. To clarify, in the memorial video featured in the background of a shot, our editorial team created pictures intentionally designed to look like poor digital renderings circa 1980.”

Brody and Felicity Jones, who portrays Tóth’s wife, Erzsébet.

The rapid and widespread use of AI has pervaded just about every industry (not to mention every day life), and has been a majorly contentious subject in the arts/entertainment world. You might remember there was a writers’ and actors’ strike not too long ago where AI use was a major sticking point in those months-long negotiations. Not only is there the existential dread that AI is coming for everyone’s jobs, there are the awful environmental impacts that running generative AI has on our already-rapidly-heating planet.

All to say: AI, not great! And given the particular baggage this technology has in artistic circles, it’s shocking that a film like The Brutalist would rely on it at any time of its creation. Regardless of how miniscule the use, it seemingly goes against everything the film has come to represent: an original film, made by an under-the-radar director³ on a $10 million budget, over three hours with an intermission, filmed on 70mm film, underestimated by studio heads. These production notes combined with film festival reviews that placed the movie in the same sentence as The Godfather (1972) propelled it to High Art status. Corbet, who is clearly well-versed and passionate about the art of cinema, has furthered this ethos in interviews and awards appearances. Take his speech at January’s Golden Globe Awards, where he declares: “Final cut tie-break goes to the director” and “films don’t exist without the filmmakers.” Corbet values his art and the art of others, which is admirable, but that admirability is undercut when the film’s AI use comes into focus.

So does the film’s aim for authenticity. The use of AI in the actors’ accent work is especially troubling to me — because it was allowed at all (again, the actors’ strike from just over a year ago!) and that it was seemingly used for trivial reasons. As a reminder, here’s the film’s editor discussing the reason for AI-ing lead actor Adrien Brody’s Hungarian accent:

“Even with Adrien's Hungarian background - (Brody’s mother is a Hungarian refugee who emigrated to the U.S in 1956) - it's not that simple. It’s an extremely unique language.”

Okay…well if pure authenticity was the goal, wouldn’t the simple solution have been to cast a born-and-bred Hungarian Jewish actor as opposed to Brody? Not necessarily; while I don’t work in the film industry, I do understand a bit about how movies get made, and how now maybe more than ever, movies need name recognition to get greenlit. Brody’s pedigree — he remains the youngest person to win the Best Actor Oscar — likely helped the film get some of its financing.

These thoughts on authenticity and casting made me think of Sing Sing, another Oscar nominated film centered on a group of men incarcerated at Sing Sing Maximum Prison who participate in the Rehabilitation Through The Arts (RTA) Program. Colman Domingo is that film’s marquee star, but is surrounded with a cast of actors, including Clarence Maclin, who actually participated in the RTA program while incarcerated. This choice works, because it gives the movie an authenticity that serves its larger narrative. When compared to Domingo’s excellent, skilled work as Divine G, the performances of his castmates feel lived-in and, perhaps most crucially, imperfect — because unlike Domingo, they are not professional actors.

Colman Domingo (left-center) leads an ensemble of real-life RTA alumni in Sing Sing.

The point of this tangent (other than to get to you check out Sing Sing): Brody’s work should’ve been enough, and the filmmakers should’ve trusted their own work enough to believe that it wouldn’t be toppled over by “certain vowels and letters” not sounding 100% accurate.

The point is that making small tweaks to an actor’s accent work with AI isn’t an attempt at authenticity; it’s an attempt at perfection.

This feels in line with Tóth’s journey in The Brutalist as he overcomes various setbacks to ensure his singular vision for a brutalist-style community center is perfectly rendered — except Tóth doesn’t believe in shortcuts. In fact, he often makes his job harder for the sake of executing his art exactly as he sees it in his head.

It’s just…frustrating, and disheartening, and doesn’t help when filmmakers try to downplay the use of AI as “subtle” or “sensitive.” That only normalizes its use, which in turn makes that use more widespread, until one day The Godfather is retconned and Marlon Brando’s AI-ified Don Vito Corleone is brought back to life. Sorry for The Godfather spoilers, but I had to bring the point home somehow!

But The Brutalist isn’t alone in its AI use: Emilia Pérez, Netflix’s hot mess of a crime-musical-drama, apparently also used Respeecher AI on the singing voice of lead actress Karla Sofia Gascón. That film and Gascón in particular continue to be embroiled in a larger, uglier controversy, but the film shouldn’t be let off the hook for using AI. The revelation that multiple films, especially those up for the American film industry’s top awards, have used AI brings to light what’s likely an unshakeable truth: that many other films are likely using this same technology and we just don’t know it.

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Do I think any of this hurts The Brutalist’s chances at Oscar glory? Not really; next to the Emilia Pérez of it all, the former’s use of AI already feels like it’s being written off as a minor blip in what otherwise looks like a smooth run to the gold. As a viewer, though, it muddies a film with several elements I really loved. Brody is outstanding, but I couldn’t shake the instinct to place where the “subtle and sensitive” alterations of his performance might’ve taken place. The film is immaculately shot and at certain moments breathtaking — yet in the back of my mind, I questioned if certain images I was seeing were as authentic as we were lead to believe.

Some people may be able to look past this — and to a certain extent, I wish I could, too. But my brain and my critical eye don’t work that way⁴. I can appreciate the many things The Brutalist gets right, but because of what it could mean for the future of an art form I love so much, I’ll never be able to fully shake what it gets wrong.

-Dustin

1. Not a real person.

2. Like I said in one of my first newsletters, I will never refer to that app by its new name!

3. Corbet had directed two feature before The Brutalist, and got his start in the entertainment industry as an actor.

4. Let’s blame it on me being a double-Virgo.