The Venice Film Festival is buzzing over director Brady Corbet’s monumental historical drama The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce. The film won’t officially premiere until Sunday night, but the thunderous applause and rapt excitement that followed the film out of its first press screenings on the Lido has many festival-goers speculating that it’s the movie to beat for this year’s Golden Lion.

With a 3.5-hour runtime and a ten-minute intermission in the middle, the film has all the thematic heft and intellectual rigor befitting its subject: the historical trauma and artistic vision that gave rise to the great works of mid-century American Brutalist architecture.

The Brutalist chronicles the journey of Hungarian-born Jewish architect, László Tóth (Brody), who emigrates to the United States in 1947 to experience the “American dream.” Initially forced to toil in poverty, he soon wins a contract with a mysterious and wealthy client,...