The Brutalist director Brady Corbet clarifies how AI was used in the film, but has it already damaged Adrien Brody’s Oscar chances?
Update: The Brutalist director Brady Corbet has released a statement to Deadline clarifying the use of AI in the film. “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own. They worked for months with dialect coach Tanera Marshall to perfect their accents,” Corbet explained. “Innovative Respeecher technology was used in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy. No English language was changed. This was a manual process, done by our sound team and Respeecher in post-production. The aim was to preserve the authenticity of Adrien and Felicity’s performances in another language, not to replace or alter them and done with the utmost respect for the craft.”
Brody’s performance in the film has been praised, with many believing that the actor has a very real shot at a second Academy Award for Best Actor. AI is a touchy subject, particularly when it comes to movies, so Corbet obviously wants to make sure that Academy voters won’t write Brody off because of this. But has the damage already been done?
— Original article follows —
With a little more than one month to go before the 97th Academy Awards, it looks as if The Brutalist will be the one to beat, with many favoring it to take Best Picture and Brady Corbet Best Director. The odds have also skyrocketed for Adrien Brody to land his second Best Actor Oscar. But he may be hitting a roadblock, as it has been revealed he has taken the most powerful performance-enhancing drug in the industry today: AI. While Brody has been earning non-stop praise for his portrayal of Holocaust survivor and architect László Tóth, it turns out that AI was used to improve his Hungarian accent.
As The Brutalist editor Dávid Jancsó (a Hungarian native) told RedShark News, despite Adrien Brody having Hungarian heritage, it is still notoriously hard to nail. “It’s not that simple. It’s an extremely unique language. We coached [Brody and Felicity Jones] and they did a fabulous job but we also wanted to perfect it so that not even locals will spot any difference.”
Even still, as great as Brody is, the team went through multiple routes to ensure his accent was perfect. “If you’re coming from the Anglo-Saxon world certain sounds can be particularly hard to grasp. We first tried to ADR these harder elements with the actors. Then we tried to ADR them completely with other actors but that just didn’t work. So we looked for other options of how to enhance it.” Jancsó added, “Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there. We were very careful about keeping their performances. It’s mainly just replacing letters here and there. You can do this in ProTools yourself, but we had so much dialogue in Hungarian that we really needed to speed up the process otherwise we’d still be in post.”
While it’s definitely good that The Brutalist team didn’t immediately try to improve Adrien Brody’s accent with AI (instead wisely trying other methods before ultimately making the decision), that the technology was used – even in an apparent minor capacity – is no doubt going to be a sticking point for many when it comes to Oscar voting. Is this fully Brody at work here or does the nudge from artificial intelligence serve to diminish his performance? Oscar nominations are this week and there’s no argument that Brody will be on the ballot, but will this news hurt his chances as the frontrunner for Best Actor?
What do you think? Was the use of AI justified? Will it cost Adrien Brody the Oscar?
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