The Brutalist goofs

In a 1950s scene set in Pennsylvania, United States, the cash laid out during the card game includes US one-dollar notes printed in bright green ink, identifying them as Federal Reserve Notes first issued in 1963. One-dollar Silver Certificates, which display blue and black ink on their obverse, would be appropriate to the period.

In the film, Leslie Woodrow uses a shipping container as the site office. Shipping containers were not introduced until 1956, yet work on László's grand project begins long before that.

Between Lazlo's arrival in New York and his journey to stay with his cousin in Philadelphia, there is a shot tracking the bus as it travels along a country road. In the sky (upper-left), a jet contrail is visible. Such a contrail would have been highly unlikely somewhere between New York City & Philadelphia in 1947, as the United States Air Force had only just over sixty jet aircraft in service at that time.

As Tóth and Van Buren leave the quarry the next morning, a modern solar panel is visible attached to the wall to the right of the entrance.

When Laszlo visits the solicitor at his office to go over the construction budget with Harry in the early 1950s, a piece of USM Furniture is visible in the room; it was designed in the 1960s and was not commercialised until 1969.

Throughout the film László is portrayed sketching, writing and leading with his right hand. Yet at the end of the first part a close-up shows a left-handed person — implied to be László — composing a letter to Erzsébet.

Zsofia, clad in a bathing cap and swimsuit, is coerced into taking a walk with the ne'er-do-well Harry Lee; she returns to the soirée straightening her skirt and blouse, her hair still unmatted. The wardrobe then suddenly materialises from nowhere.

László claims he was arrested and taken to Buchenwald while living in Budapest, which wouldn't have happened in reality: that concentration camp was situated in Germany and predominantly held German Jews, whereas Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz in Poland.

In Philadelphia the Sun reaches an elevation of only 74° at the summer solstice, yet the prominent skylight is shown casting sunlight vertically down onto the altar. A similar effect is earlier demonstrated by Adrien Brody on a model using a torch. That demonstration would be inaccurate, however, because a torch does not produce a parallel beam of light like sunlight or a laser.

At the Van Buren construction site, Tatra lorries are being used; Tatra is a Czech truck manufacturer. While there is no definitive evidence either way, it seems unlikely that such vehicles would have been imported by US firms, particularly during the Cold War.

The story is set immediately after the end of the Second World War. In an early scene, as Lazlo boards a bus, a vapour trail from a jet airliner is visible. Jet aircraft did not become commonplace until the late 1950s.

Towards the end of the film, László Tóth is said to have been born in 1911 and to have survived Buchenwald some forty years later, in 1951. Buchenwald, however, was liberated and closed in 1945.

Tóth is a highly unusual, if not impossible, surname for a Hungarian Jew to bear, as it is typical of a Slavic minority of Croatian origin in that region. However, he is meant to be a citizen not of present-day Hungary but of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, which included territory along the Adriatic coast.

It's unclear why Laszlo continued to work for Harrison after the rape and apparently never confronted him about it, even though he did tell his wife.