David Cronenberg weighs in on ‘The Brutalist’ AI backlash: “We mess with actors’ voices all the time”

David Cronenberg has shared his thoughts on the backlash The Brutalist faced throughout awards season for using AI to alter the voices of its leads.

• READ MORE: ‘The Brutalist’ review: an unmissable giant of a film that deserves all the Oscars

The Oscar-winning drama, which follows the fictional Hungarian-born Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) as he moves to the US with his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), was subject to criticism after editor Dávid Jancsó shared that AI was used to alter Brody and Jones’ Hungarian accents.

Soon after, director Brady Corbet clarified the details, saying: “Adrien and Felicity’s performances are completely their own”, adding that “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”.

Nevertheless, the performance was seen as tainted by some, particularly those who were a fan of Timothee Chalamet’s work in Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. His fans took to social media to say it “shows how little the academy actually cares about true acting skill” that Brody walked away with the Best Actor award.

Now, legendary horror director Cronenberg has weighed in. Speaking at London’s Royal Festival Hall with collaborator Howard Shore, he said: “I must confess, there was a scandal [with] The Brutalist,” (via The Hollywood Reporter).

“There was a discussion about Adrien Brody, but apparently they used artificial intelligence to improve his accent. I think it was a campaign against The Brutalist by some other Oscar nominees. It’s very much a Harvey Weinstein kind of thing, though he wasn’t around.”

They went on to discuss Cronenberg’s 1993 film M. Butterfly, which follows French diplomat (Jeremy Irons) as he becomes infatuated with a Chinese opera performer, Song Liling (John Lone). Their affair lasts for 20 years, and they subsequently marry, but Irons’ character is either unaware or wilfully ignorant to the fact Liling is a man.

The director continued: “We mess with actors’ voices all the time. In the case of [John Lone], when he was being this character, this singer, I raised the pitch of his voice and when he’s revealed as a man, I lowered to his natural voice. This is just a part of moviemaking.”

The Brutalist was named one of NME’s “absolutely unmissable films” coming out this year, while it was also given a glowing five-star review. “An epic about the literal building blocks of America, sure, and a big historical immigrant story, absolutely, it is deliberately never an easy watch,” wrote Paul Bradshaw. “The unholy union of art and money isn’t meant to be palatable, and obsession never looks pretty if it’s done properly.

“The Brutalist earns its title even when it’s being occasionally hilarious and the running time isn’t the only thing about it that will leave you emotionally wiped out by the finale. But even though Corbet probably does a bit too much to make his film come across as a masterpiece, it’s impossible not to think it also actually is.”

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