The Brutalist star Felicity Jones has been telling RTÉ Entertainment why she thinks the 215-minute epic has connected with audiences.
Directed by Brady Corbet and co-written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist tells the story of László Tóth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian architect who survives the Holocaust and comes to the United States to rebuild his life.
There, László is hired by industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) and is finally reunited with his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) as he pursues the American Dream and work that will stand the test of time.
Recently, Jones told Empire magazine that although everyone involved with The Brutalist knew it was a very good film, they did not expect it to connect with a wider audience in the way that it has.
When asked by RTÉ Entertainment if she had any further thoughts on the subject since that interview, Jones replied: "I think there's a universality to it. I think, you know, it's about the struggle of life and everyone has somehow tapped into that.
"I think also there's something in its modernity... there's an incredibly sort of contemporary quality to it that mixed with these more old-fashioned elements of the interval [during the film] that somehow it feels very unexpected.
"As a cinematic experience now, to get people into the cinemas, there has to be something unexpected. It has to have a feeling of going, 'Well, I want to see something that I haven't quite seen before'. And somehow The Brutalist is fulfilling that need."
The Brutalist is in cinemas from Friday.
