Adrien Brody and Tilda Swinton Get Existential, From ‘The Brutalist’ Suffering to Growing Old and ‘Thinking About Mortality Now’

Adrien Brody and Tilda Swinton both confront themes of life and death in their movies this year. In “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbet’s ambitious “great man” tale, Brody’s László Tóth, an architect and an immigrant to the U.S. from Hungary in the years after the Holocaust, seeks to make a structure that will express his worldview and define his legacy. And in “The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, Swinton’s Martha Hunt, a terminally ill former war correspondent, contemplates suicide. The two have also worked together several times in Wes Anderson films.

TILDA SWINTON: You know that in my house you are described as my tiny child because you actually are my tiny child in “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” I’m your mother — your ancient mother.

ADRIEN BRODY: You did bring me to life.

SWINTON: And what a child you’ve become. “The Brutalist”: many congratulations. It’s a really monumental piece of work and apparently came in under $10 million. I’m sorry to be vulgar and talk about money, but to make a properly cinematic, epic piece of work like that is a huge achievement. And for you to hold it the way that you do is beautiful.

BRODY: It feels very masterful. Brady is a very young man; he’s in his 30s.

SWINTON: There’s an innate proposal that you give us at the very beginning — the suffering of this man — and that just carries us all the way through the film. How did you root yourself, knowing that you were going to have to go all the way carrying that suffering?

BRODY: He has this vision — to leave behind some lasting work that speaks to the traumas of the past — that holds that. Finding and connecting to the suffering of others is … I don’t want to say it’s easy, because it’s not, but there’s so much [suffering] at our disposal. There’s too much of it.

SWINTON: I think it’s a good thing to find it easy. That’s what compassion is, and empathy. A large part of our work is to be able to feel easy about stepping into any experience, particularly suffering.

BRODY: I also witnessed my mother. My mother is a Hungarian immigrant; she fled Budapest in 1956 with her parents, my grandparents, and I witnessed how hard it was for them in that journey, and how they were outsiders and foreign and how language and accents prevented assimilation in a way. It’s very personal to me; I wish my grandparents were around.

SWINTON: But your mother has seen it, and she must be reverberating.

BRODY: This film that you did with Pedro — I think about mortality, now, in a way that I never thought about. As we get older, I think not about death but about life — what I want to do with my time here and who I want to spend that time with.

SWINTON: These are all wise reflections.

BRODY: They come with age and experience. But when you embody someone, like you did, who is forced to come to terms with their demise and take action, I’m curious how that felt for you, and what that process is like.

SWINTON: I’ve had the opportunity and the privilege, several times in my life, to be in the position of Ingrid, the woman who Julianne Moore plays in the film, who is the friend who is asked to be the witness, who is asked to be the companion, who’s asked to be in the room next door.

I’ve learned from the Marthas in my life, not only how I might in the future have wanted to play Martha, but my own attitude to my own death. It’s been an enlightenment for me. And so to have the opportunity to step into those shoes and be the person in the hot seat — to be the person who is mortally ill and very clear that she wants to live right up until the final whistle — was a really extraordinary opportunity, because I’ve seen so many people in my life at very close quarters take that step into embracing their own mortality.

BRODY: I feel lingering aspects of characters live on with me. Do you feel that way?

SWINTON: I feel satisfied that I have been able to play in a film that I feel so connected to. It’s a very personal homage to all the Marthas that I’ve sat with. What Pedro was asking for was me to really bring myself to it and my own responses. As you know, since I am your aged mother, very often I’m goofing around with wigs and teeth and funny faces. But this was really about an absolute authentic response. I’m not a war correspondent. I’m also happy to say that currently I’m not aware of being terminally ill. But beyond that, Martha and I, we’re pretty close.