THE BRUTALIST: Severe Trauma & Complicated Guilt

Why do so many people who’ve suffered severe trauma live with complicated guilt? Guilt that has nothing to do with anything they’ve actually done? Or, like László Tóth in Brady Corbet’s 2025 The Brutalist – guilt about lesser things that is blown way out of proportion? This irrational guilt is because trauma involves unfair blame, gaslighting that makes you doubt your perceptions, and constant criticisms and accusations that break down your self-regard. And, then, you’re left, like László Tóth, to fight off that guilt with typical trauma defenses (numbing and anger) in equally complicated ways. You can only fight for so long. And, as he encounters more, and more, brutality – pure cruelty – as The Brutalist goes on, László’s defenses begin to unravel.

Severe Trauma

Severe trauma means terror. Cruelty. Before The Brutalist begins, László Toth has suffered persecution for who he is. Threats of death. Beatings. Enslavement. Starvation. Not knowing if he’d make it out alive. And when he does, he believes he’ll never see his wife and niece again.

Trauma lives inside your bones. In the memories, you try to forget. Trauma is remembered in your injuries, like László’s broken nose because of jumping off a train. In hunger. For food. And, love.

Because of how deeply he knows hunger, László stands up for Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé) and his son, William, when the boy is denied a piece of bread in the Soup Line. People chant: “Help the Homeless. No one deserves to be on the streets.” No one should be tortured or starved.

The War is over, but it’s not. And even when there’s a chance to begin again, hope is fragile.

(Fragile) Hope

László Tóth (Adrien Brody) excitedly and happily arrives in NYC to an upside-down Statue of Liberty. (Why?) America is the land of freedom and opportunity. Right? Wrong. Not for everybody.

But László has hope. He’s persevered. Survived the cruelty and persecution of the Nazis. Lived through Buchenwald. László’s alive. Determined to start a new life. His cousin Atilla (Alessandro Nivola) eagerly awaits him. They warmly embrace. Yet unbeknownst to László, Atilla has changed.

WWII may be over. Yet wars – in trauma’s aftermath – persist inside their victims. Perhaps worse, the hate that fuels wars lives in the nooks and crannies of everyday life and within seemingly ordinary people, more or less obviously, as we’ll see. In Atilla’s wife and Harrison Van Buren.

When you’re lonely, scared, and hungry for respect or love, you can find yourself in situations that repeat the trauma (s) you’ve already endured. This is what happens to László Toth in The Brutalist.

Hunger & Loss in The Brutalist

Loss is an inevitable part of trauma. Of people you love. Safety. Self-esteem. Trust. László has no idea that his beloved wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) are alive. He believes them dead. So, broken, lonely, hungry for comfort, sex, he finds himself with a hooker.

Each is cruel to the other. Their guards are up: defensive. She looks for reassurance, broken too. Wants to be told what parts of her body he loves and asks if her legs are too thin. He can’t give her what she wants. Living with guilt and loss, he can’t be open. Meanness is a self-protection.

Nothing happens between them. Nastily (but significantly), László says: “I don’t like the space between your brows.” She retaliates, equally unkind: “Space is ugly.” He replies: “I know that.”

He knows that the ugliness of space is the reality of loss. The belief separation is permanent. That you’ll never see your loved ones again. You live with a hunger that spreads into “eternity.” Space is the years of trauma, terror, and distance between László Tóth and his wife, Erzsébet.

(At the end of The Brutalist, we see that he puts Dachau next to Buchenwald at the Van Buren Center he builds (to spite the “orders” of Van Buren himself). In its Brutalist style, László reveals the truth that antisemitism still exists. He puts no space between the two concentration camps where he in one and his wife in another were taken.  As his niece Zsófia (Ariane Labed) says: “He would never be separated from his beloved wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), ever again.”)

Yet, before the Van Buren Center is unveiled, László Tóth endures much more cruelty and betrayal at the hands of those he wants and needs to trust. That happens to traumatized people.

More Cruelty & Betrayal

The last thing László needs is to be treated with coldness and hate after surviving the trauma of Buchenwald and Hitler’s war on Jews. The upside-down Statue of Liberty bodes poorly for him.

After a warm welcome from Cousin Atilla, things quickly begin to go sour. Attila’s name is now Miller. He and his wife, Audrey (Emma Laird), are Catholic. And Audrey, it becomes clear, doesn’t want László living with them in the storage closet he’s been “offered,” in return for work.

László, a renowned architect in Hungary before the Nazis took him, is there to save Attila’s furniture line. Slave labor, once again, by a cousin who uses him unfairly and doesn’t protect him.

Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), son of Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), a wealthy, entitled, and temperamental man (just like Harry himself), hires Attila’s firm to transform his father’s old library into something special as a birthday surprise. However, Harrison dislikes surprises.

Harrison comes home and abusively rails against László and his team, which includes Gordon, who has become a lifelong friend. When things go wrong, not László’s fault, Atilla blames him.

On top of this abuse is Audrey’s antisemitism. She treats László hatefully, undermines him, cares nothing about his trauma, and lies to Atilla that he made a pass at her. Atilla, who has his fear and self-hate, sides with Audrey (László was a “womanizer” when they were kids, so Attila has doubts).

He cruelly kicks his (formerly loved) cousin out onto the street with no job or place to go: “I know you’ve been through a lot, I told Audrey that too, but I can’t keep you anymore. Got that?”

Beaten down and scared, László begins using heroin, with Gordon, at the homeless shelter.

Numbing & Going Along

László goes numb, with drugs. Desperation will do that. Trauma, too. He has nowhere to turn after he’s betrayed by his cousin’s wife (and Atilla’s accusations). He’s waiting for Erzsébet and Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) to arrive in America. Yes. They are alive! He must have a job and a place to live.

So, László can’t afford to feel much anger or shame when Harrison Lee Van Buren comes knocking. Neither pride nor refusal to re-enter an abusive situation will do him much good. And, of course, he needs to feel better about himself than he does when not on drugs – so he’s easily seduced.

Harrison wines and dines him – sending his chauffeur, dress clothes; and lavishing flattery for László’s architectural feats, awards, and expertise. It’s all true, but that doesn’t mean Harrison isn’t who he is. A man who must have control – be at the head of the table, so to speak.

And, we’ve seen Harrison’s temper and abusiveness. No manner of seeming benevolence means that’s gone. Sure, he and his friends help get Erzsébet and Zsófia over the border. Give them all a place to live on his estate. Harrison (“the big man,”) although demeaning about Erzsébet being “the woman behind the man,” helps get her (an Oxford-educated, journalist) a job.

Harrison expects obedience to his whims and wishes in return for all he offers them. Neither can stand up to him until much later; they need him too much. Need makes trauma, abuse, and gaslighting harder. Yet, László does argue about the other architect hired to “cut down costs and add a Christian element” to the center. These are more than insults. Drugs are his “out.”

So, in the end, László goes along with it all. (Sort of.) But the gaslighting gets to him.

Gaslighting & Complicated Guilt

Gaslighting means someone denigrates you and tries to convince you they are right. The Brutalist has plenty of gaslighting, leaving László with confusing, complicated, and guilty feelings.

When you have reasons to doubt yourself and have done things you feel bad about, it’s hard to hold your head up and not succumb to shame. Or believe the verbal assaults. Harrison Van Buren and his son Harry gaslight László in many ways: some verbally, while others are in their actions.

When anything goes wrong on the site, they blame László. He’s brutally dismissed when a train accident makes Harrison fear legal liability. In distress, László tears up his drawings and documents, breaks furniture, and yells, “It’s over.” Erzsébet says, “It’s not your fault.” Later, Harrison wants him back. László can’t say no. He’s desperate for success. Guilt eats him up.

The “guilt-hook” for László is that he has done things he’s ashamed of. His addictions to drugs, alcohol, and sex are ways he numbs himself from pain and loss. But he betrays Erzsébet when he’s numb. And, his guilt spirals into self-reproach for everything: including her Judaism. Erzsébet converted to Judaism because she loves László. If not for that, she wouldn’t have gone to Dachau. She wouldn’t be in a wheelchair because of malnourishment. László believes it is his fault.

All his fault. That’s the consequence of gaslighting.

This gaslighting, from antisemitism, torture in the camps, his guilt, and the arrogance of Harrison, seeps deeply into his pores.

And, when Harrison demands they go to Italy to find marble for the Van Buren Center, Harrison rapes a very drunk László who has been with a prostitute, and verbally demeans him: “Who do you think you are? Floating above everyone … because you’re educated? … “You’re a tramp …”

Getting Even in The Brutalist

Harrison Van Buren is the self-hating, guilt-inducing voice in László’s head. László’s been raped too many times. Mostly not as literally. When he returns from Italy, he closes the door on Erzsébet; shuts her out in guilt. He’s locked up inside himself. Won’t attend synagogue. Roams the Van Buren Center construction site, a ghost of his trauma, lost in his resentment and rage.

There are many ways to get even, some twisted and equally cruel; others by refusing to succumb.

László becomes abusive to his crew; rages at Gordon, and verbally lashes a young construction worker, mistreating him as he’s been. He and Erzsébet viciously fight, as he pours out all his truths:

Audrey’s false accusation, Harrison’s rape. “Nobody wants us here. We are worse than nothing.” He’s taken in the gaslighting. Believes it. Drugs and acting out to numb his trauma don’t help.

Knowing these truths is the last straw for Erzsébet (and László). She almost dies because he gives her his heroin for her pain. But before she leaves for Zsófia’s in Israel to be a grandmother to Zsófia’s daughter, she begs him to come and tells him she’ll never stop calling him until she’s dead.

But, first, Erzsébet goes to Harrison’s house – and gives him a piece of her mind, his dinner guests as witnesses. She screams: “Your father is an evil rapist.” Then she demands: “Tell them what you did to my husband.” Harrison lies: “Your husband is drug-addicted, alcoholic … a sick, senile old dog… when dogs get sick, they bite the hand that feeds them until someone puts them down … excuse me, I’ve heard enough of this abuse.” Erzsébet won’t be silenced: “I will not excuse you, Harrison Van Buren.” This is her power. She has found her voice.

What It Takes to Get Free

Getting free from the effects of gaslighting isn’t a simple thing. Gaslighting makes you feel powerless and crushed by the criticisms and humiliation that have settled into your mind.

The first step is not to believe them. This is evident when Erzsébet confronts Harrison Van Buren, the worst of gaslighters and abusers. She exposes him and puts a stop to his abuse.

But caring only about himself, Harrison knocks her down as he runs away.  His daughter, Maggie, tries to help her up, apologizing about her father, while Harry runs off, calling for his dad. Harrison is not to be found; “disappeared,” it seems, from the face of the earth and their lives.

And, if Harrison is gone – in the psychological sense – this is a good sign. He is no longer an internal voice tormenting them, in their minds. It means that Erzsébet and László are beginning to gain some power over their trauma. In a healthy way. Standing up to their abusers, turning the tables.

Not backing down. Letting truth prevail. Not believing “we are worse than nothing.”

Finally, Erzsébet and László expose the truth to the world. in the Brutalist Style of Architecture, fitting who Harrison Lee Van Buren is, László makes the Van Buren Center a Concentration Camp.

He places the blame where it belongs: not against himself. No longer imprisoned in his trauma or his guilt, László can see upwards, into the skies of freedom – and feel the self-respect he deserves.