For better or worse, it’s been impossible to escape “The Brutalist.” Directed by wunderkind Brady Corbet, this mammoth 3.5-hour study of a Hungarian architect surviving the Holocaust and emigrating to America was a production seven years in the making, and it’s clear that “The Brutalist” didn’t waste a minute of its remarkable production.
Combining an immaculately written script, fearless inquiries into the price of creative freedom, and masterful central performances from Adrien Brody as architect László Toth and Felicity Jones as his wife Erzsébet, Corbet and co. have created this year’s boldest and most dominant Oscar frontrunner. I’m proud to call “The Brutalist” my favorite film of 2024, and it’s truly a new American masterpiece.
However, news that the film’s editor, Hungarian-born David Jancsó, used an AI-powered software called Respeecher to blend his own voice with Brody and Jones’ in order to “perfect” instances of Hungarian dialogue has prompted a second, far more critical conversation.
Complicating matters is the revelation that, after failed Automated Dialogue Replacement sessions, Brody and Jones consented to the artificial altering of their performances.
“It is controversial in the industry to talk about AI, but it shouldn’t be,” Jancsó stated in an interview with RedShark News last month. “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.”
Backlash was swift and bitter, with some social media users going as far to question Brody and Jones’ Oscar eligibility. I can’t say I was surprised. Every reason I love “The Brutalist” can be distilled into its story’s rich celebration of human artistic integrity. Jancsó’s admittances are not only complete rejections of that celebration, but rejections of an unspoken filmmaking code of ethics. In a post-strike era when the threat of AI is forcing Hollywood creatives to increasingly question their career security, the idea that two actors consented to the artificial alteration of their performances is chilling. Even more unnerving is the idea that an editor might so proudly flaunt this as standard procedure.
However, as “The Brutalist” and its digital haters continue to weigh heavily on my mind, I find myself asking an entirely different question—a question less to do with ethics and more to do with intentions: Why did David Jancsó even need Respeecher?
While Hungarian speech is certainly a crucial element in the film, the vast majority of “The Brutalist” is in English. I don’t believe for a split-second that Brody, an Oscar winner who happens to come from Hungarian descent himself, and Jones, one of her generation’s greatest actresses, were so bad at language adaptation that a film editor felt the need to ADR their lines or artificially alter them with his own voice. And even if they were, would non-Hungarian speakers notice?
“Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own,” Brady Corbet wrote in a recent statement to Variety defending the film. “They 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.”
The short, frustrating conclusion I’ve come to is that “The Brutalist’s” main issue is stupidly unnecessary. Because Corbet uses the ever-dangerous term “perfect” to describe his actors’ accents, it’s more likely that, instead of providing innovation, Respeecher provided these filmmakers with a prime opportunity to satisfy their perfectionist tendencies. This isn’t exactly new, but a fresh example of an all-too-common struggle.
“By no means am I unique,” Emerson professor Brian Truglio said in an interview with The Beacon. “Many, many, if not all editors struggle with this. I have perfectionist tendencies too.”
Truglio, an experienced documentary editor with decades of credits, describes a simple phrase he imparts to all his students: “Perfect is the enemy of the good.” We all hate the idea of losing our livelihoods to machines, but in a world where more and more people are already losing their jobs, we shouldn’t just blast “The Brutalist” and move on as our fast-moving popular culture tends to do. Instead, as Truglio alluded to, we should be using this as an opportunity to keep our nastier tendencies at bay, thereby securing our own futures.
“When it does come to areas where you are crossing over into performance, we’re going to have to be transparent about it,” Truglio said.
I have no doubt transparency statements will continue to be crucial as the AI debate rages on. Artificial intelligence usage must not only be noted, but explained in a way that emphasizes necessity and minimizes threats to professional creatives.
A positive example of this came in 2021 with the release of Peter Jackson’s beloved Beatles documentary “Get Back”, a film practically marketed around its usage of groundbreaking machine learning software. As Jackson explained in a 2021 interview, AI-based audio editing technology allowed his team to “expose the private conversations” the band were having during the “Let It Be” recording sessions. These were pivotal conversations that helped build the film’s “key” moments and deepen its narrative.
“The Brutalist” is an incredibly important film, but its complicated reasons for tampering with Brody and Jones’ performances simply don’t make enough sense. While this probably won’t affect its Oscar chances, it may turn off future viewers who would have culled something truly meaningful from its brave interpretation of the American dream and the immigrants who built it.
That, in my eyes, is the real tragedy here.
