By the time "The Brutalist" won its seventh Oscar of the night — a record for any single film since "Everything Everywhere All at Once" in 2023 — the audience at the Dolby Theatre had stopped pretending they were surprised. Brady Corbet's three-and-a-half-hour period epic about László Tóth, a fictional Hungarian-Jewish architect who rebuilds his life in postwar Pennsylvania, swept the ceremony in a way that felt both inevitable and, in person, still somehow thrilling. The film won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Original Score.
Adrien Brody, 52, won his second Best Actor Oscar — a rarity in itself, joining only Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks, and Daniel Day-Lewis in that category. His first win came in 2003 for "The Pianist." The 23 years between wins is the longest gap in Academy history. His speech ran four minutes and forty-two seconds, referenced his Hungarian-Jewish heritage, and name-checked his mother, the photographer Sylvia Plachy, three separate times. It did not feel long.
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