Guy Pearce has been nominated for several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his turn as the wealthy nouveau-riche industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren in The Brutalist.
Van Buren represents America’s complex rejection of European Jewish intellectuals and artists post-World War II. Nadine Whitney spoke to Pearce about what makes Harrison Lee Van Buren tick.
Guy Pearce: There is a side of Harrison that recognized artistry and beauty, and he was sophisticated enough to appreciate good design and the finer things of life. He wasn’t just someone who wanted to have power. I think that the two things were difficult for him to balance. Meeting someone like László Toth (Adrien Brody), who clearly has proven himself as a worthwhile architect and artist, makes him envious.
He looks up to László, and he is quite taken aback by that. The admiration is a difficult thing for him to reconcile because he knows he doesn’t have those skills himself. Recognizing it in somebody else immediately makes him want to either possess, control or eliminate it. There is a level of unrest inside of Van Buren.
I think one of the other qualities about László Toth that Van Buren recognized is that, on many levels, Toth naturally feels more confident in himself than Van Buren does. Van Buren only feels confident with the power he’s attained, with the money he’s gathered, and with the people he controls. But, of course, we all know possession is meaningless in a way. So, the appearance of László Toth in his life brings about all sorts of difficulties and excitement for Van Buren. It’s a conundrum for him to deal with.
The great thing about this role for me was that I didn’t feel like I had to build anything. It was all there in the script. It was one of those great experiences where I felt I could see exactly what Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold had created in the characters.
It speaks of the brilliance of Brady and Mona, who flesh out these characters and enable you to see a very developed three-dimensional person on the page. And not just Van Buren, but I would say I’m speaking on behalf of Adrien Brody (László) and Felicity Jones (Erzsébet), Joe Alwyn (Harry Lee), and Stacy Lee (Maggie Van Buren) and the other characters as well the other actors in the film. Through the depth Brady and Mona created, the recognition of the behavior and psychology of each of these characters as actors, all you do is get on board and try and portray what is in the script.
Much of what you see is contradictory with Van Buren. So, he may be behaving in one way in one scene, and then another way in another scene, and then more vulnerable in this scene, and more controlled in another. The characters do feel fleshed out.
An example is the long story that I, as Van Buren, tell about how much my mother Margaret meant to me in conversation with László. Infused in that story is a resentment towards his mother and her control over him. Recognizing there wasn’t enough room for Van Buren’s wife and his mother in his life, so the wife had to go. That is such a complex situation, and I think how Brady had Van Buren seemingly able to rise above it all and present it in a way about how much his mother meant to him is heartbreaking because we can see the cracks in that. There is a discrepancy in the truth of what his family has meant to him, their power over him, and their control over him.
We find ourselves with a man in his mid-fifties, trying to control and have power over everyone around him. Harrison Van Buren is an extraordinary character to find there on the page. For me, it was just a matter of getting on board and trying to splay him as successfully as I could see him in the writing.
I also think that there was something warm, loving, sensitive, and delicate about Van Buren, as well as being a kind Grand Master. We get to see the vulnerability. That’s a beautiful thing for an actor to play, incorporating contradictory behavior.
