“The Brutalist” Displays Moral Confusion about Both America and the Holocaust

The much-praised film The Brutalist, directed and co-written by Brady Corbet, tells the story of a fictional Hungarian Jewish architect named Laszlo Toth who survives Buchenwald and comes to the United States, where he struggles with poverty and heroin addiction. Eventually he returns to his pre-war profession and—after various hurdles and conflicts—outdoes even his previous success to becoming one of the leading figures of the brutalist movement. Michael Lewis finds much to praise about the movie, but also identifies a fundamental flaw that becomes apparent near its end when Laszlo’s niece declares that his great architectural opus