Why Brady Corbet dedicated ‘The Brutalist’ to Scott Walker
“In memory of Scott Walker” – After the three hours and 35 minutes and a whole 15-minute intermission in the middle, the final end credits of The Brutalist feature this closing dedication. From director Brady Corbet to musician Scott Walker, it’s a nod to a man who profoundly impacted his life and career.
While Corbet is still only really in his infancy as a director, he’s already done a lot. After starting out as an actor, his turn to directing has seen him establish himself quickly as a truly visionary filmmaker. While The Brutalist has become a love-hate film, splitting opinions, no one can deny the incredibly bold and adventurous build of it. Extended way beyond the typical movie length and making the decision to pause it halfway for a break, it is epic in the grandest sense of the world, in every area, from the actual run time of the movie to the story told and performances involved.
Bold is certainly one of the words used to describe Scott Walker’s life and career. As a musician, he was a man who seemed to live a thousand lives in his 76 years. Starting out first as part of the 1960s pop group The Walker Brothers, he then became more and more avant-garde and adventurous. Over the years, his songs morphed from storytelling ballads into left-field genreless pieces and then finally in total carnage as his later albums saw him get truly experimental, doing things like punching meat with his bare hands to get certain sounds on The Drift.
By the time he was in his old age, Walker seemed to be doing whatever he wanted, both regarding his own music and the projects he said yes to. He provided the music for plays and ballets, he collaborated with other artists and then, in 2016, he was asked to do the music for Corbet’s feature directorial debut, The Childhood of a Leader, and he said yes.
Working on that project and others, Corbet and Walker struck up a mutually inspirational relationship as they returned to their collaboration again. “Scott is a major inspiration for me and always has been; that’s why I asked him to do the score for my first film,” Corbet told The Skinny, “I loved working with Scott. It was one of the highlights of my professional life.”
“He and I liked the same films and had the same points of reference, so I always found our conversations to be quite easy. We spoke the same language,” he said, explaining how and why the pair connected.
After Walker died in 2019, before Corbet even began The Brutalist, he dedicated the film to the musician in the absence of his work on the project.
How Scott Walker inspired The Brutalist score
“There’s just no way to replicate what Scott does,” Brady said of the absence left by the loss of his friend and collaborator. However, Daniel Blumberg’s score for the film is epic all the same.
Blumberg’s work is different to Walker’s, but there’s definitely a level to which the film’s score honours the late musician. It was made with the help of Peter Walsh, who worked extensively with Walker. Having witnessed the duo working together, Blumberg told Composer Magazine how inspiring that had been. “I really noticed how Scott worked with Peter. They’ve collaborated for more than 35 years, and I thought there was some overlap with how I improvise,” he said, “It was after this that my own collaborative relationship with Peter began.”
So while the movie was dedicated to the memory of Scott Walker in the absence of his music, the decision to ask Blumberg to work on it, alongside Walsh, was a way for Brady to keep his old collaborator close in spirit.
