There is no Brutalist-style church in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Brady Corbet's inspiration is St. John's Abbey Church in Collegeville, Minnesota. Based on the plans by Hungarian-born, Bauhaus-educated modernist architect Marcel Breuer from 1953, the complex was completed in 1961 and includes a church, library, dormitory, science department, and center for ecumenical research. Constructed to accommodate 1,700 people, it is trapezoidal in shape, with a white granite altar end raised on a circular platform. The church is naturally illuminated by low windows, the entrance, and an amber roof-light. A crucifix is suspended above the altar. St. John's Abbey is part of the campus of St. John's University, and appears in What Happened to Josh? (2022).
The Toth character is based on two Jewish Hungarian architects of the same period, Marcel Breuer and Erno Goldfinger. The library furniture pays homage to Breuer's designs, and Goldfinger's modern architectural work so upset neighbor Ian Fleming that he named the eponymous villain after him.
The marble sequence was shot in the same quarry where Michelangelo carved The Pietà - a statue of Mary cradling the body of Jesus Christ after his crucifixion at Golgotha. The same statue stands in the Vatican's Saint Peter's Basilica, and it was vandalized on 21 May 1972 by a geologist who struck it 15 times with a hammer, breaking an arm off. The statue was restored and is now protected by bulletproof glass. The geologist's name is Laszlo Toth, the same as the protagonist of this film minus diacritics, and he was also born in Hungary.
The film was shot almost entirely in VistaVision, a widescreen format that runs 35mm film horizontally through the camera to create eight perforation film frames, twice the size and resolution of standard four perforation 35mm. The film was then released in theaters with 70mm film prints. This is the first American film in 61 years to be entirely shot in the format, the last being Mes six amours et mon chien (1963). Director Brady Corbet explained: "It just seemed like the best way to access that period (1950s) was to shoot on something that was engineered in that same decade." Star Wars: Épisode IV - Un nouvel espoir (1977) reintroduced VistaVision to create high resolution plates for visual effect shots.
At 3 hours and 34 minutes, this is the fifth-longest film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, after:
- Cléopâtre (1963): 4 hours and 8 minutes.
- Autant en emporte le vent (1939): 3 hours and 46 minutes.
- Lawrence d'Arabie (1962): 3 hours and 42 minutes.
- Les Dix Commandements (1956): 3 hours and 40 minutes.