With any big movie like this, there are a ton of themes all in one. The biggest themes are undoubtedly trauma, anti-immigration, anti-poverty, exploitation (both economic and physical).
It's not shown in the movie itself, but Laszlo survived a Jewish concentration (death) camp (Buchenwald), moves to the US to escape Soviet occupation in Hungary, and moves to America, basically because he has family there (Attila).
Attila has history; He's Miller now, not Molnar. He's catholic now (like his wife) and runs a "family business." He makes colonial revival furniture. He has essentially had to change who he is to fit into America - something Laszlo likely refuses to do after having almost been killed because of who he was.
No one essentially treats Laszlo with any humanity (Attila's wife, the Van Buren's), except for other marginalized people (his black friend) and those in the jazz club. The contractor even advises he keep on the other architect cause he's a protestant.
Harrison Van Burren is the epitome of WASPY industrialist. A war-profiteer who uses his money to buy culture. He collects first editions, he collects Madeira (10,000 bottles), his home is a "European" estate.
Harrison immediately treats him with contempt, kicks him out his home, criticizes his work in the library. It is essentially only after Laszlo's work on the library is featured in a magazine does he look at Laszlo with any admiration - after he finds out he was a big deal in Europe.
Harrison then grants him a commission for this massive building - citadel on a hill - allows him to live on the grounds etc. Builds Laszlo up as a visionary, but immediately starts undercutting his efforts, hiring outside advice, cutting back on design etc.
His son, Harry, is more overt. "We tolerate you". Says Laszlo's niece's silence (clearly trauma from the horrors she has endued) is making guest uncomfortable, making comments about her looks, and then likely assaulting her.
But ultimately, his true feelings come out Italy. First calling Italians the "spics of Europe, then in that, rightly-said, surprising rape scene. Harrison sees Laszlo, like all jews, to be nothing but freeloaders and vagrants - to which he has no problem exploiting for his own personal gain.
His quote during the rape scene is certainly poignant:
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what have you done to yourself? It's a shame seeing how your people treat themselves. If you resent your persecution, why then do you make of yourself such an easy target? If you act as a loafer living off handouts, a societal leech, how can you rightfully expect a different result?
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Of course, Toth is a drunk and an addict. Something he became addict to on the boat over as a result of his injury; but, it's easy to see how these problems manifest given his experience during the war. People like Toth witnessed countless horrors but had horror done onto them as a result of who they were - not their thoughts and lifestyle (which as a Bauhaus architect, likely wouldn't have been loved by McCarthyism) but because of his religion and race.
A similar character to that is Adam beach's character in Flags of our Fathers. He is suffering immense trauma due to the war, and turns to alcohol as treatment. His character is routinely called a "drunken Indian" throughout the film as no one is willing to consider the tolls he faced and merely associate it with racist stereotypes.
Again, the movie wraps up fast. Laszlo's wife confronts Harrison about the rape, Harrison goes missing and his fate is left uncertain (although, it appears he kills himself in the building); Laszlo and wife move to Israel and it fast forwards to 1980 when his daughter gives the speech.
The speech itself is essentially stating that the type of work Laszlo performed, brutalist architecture and the building he was to make for Harrison, was a way of potentially processing his trauma (or at least a hidden acknowledgment of it) - prison like surroundings etc.
It ends on this quote:
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"Don't let anyone fool you, Zsófia" he would say to me as a struggling young mother raising my daughter during our first years in Jerusalem, "no matter what the others try and sell you, it is the destination, not the journey."
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It think this is in reference to post-war zionism and the fact that jews no have their home. "next year in Jerusalem" was a common yiddish toast prior to the creation of Israel (perhaps it still is). Centuries of displacement, pogroms, the holocaust, discrimination. Laszlo's journey, like many jewish people during and before this time, was hard. Not a journey to be looked back upon with rose coloured glasses.
America and Canada like to look back at the atrocities of the Holocaust with saviour complexes. How could a people do this? thank god we saved them.
In reality we turned away boats of jewish refugees pre-war, and certainly didnt make life easy for the same people post-war. Americans did not (and many still do not) have great views on jewish people. Go look at some of Patton's quotes - yeesh - and this guy is still largely praised as a war hero but a "true American".
