Film Review: Motherless Brooklyn
Warner Bros.
In this noirish crime drama played out on the gritty streets and neighborhoods of 1950’s Brooklyn, we first meet a pair of gumshoe detectives on a stakeout. The unlikely pairing of the typical bumbling detective Tony (Bobby Cannavale) and the cerebral OCD Lionel (Edward Norton) are waiting for instructions from their boss, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), smartly dressed and very sure of himself. The caper goes terribly wrong and Frank ends up dead. The vacuum left by Minna is significant as he is the head of the agency and sort of a surrogate father to Lionel, who has Tourette Syndrome. Lionel feels driven to find out who killed Frank and make them pay for it. We learn that it was Frank who found Lionel in an orphanage in Brooklyn and began mentoring him when he was a kid and ultimately got him out and gave him a job. Lionel will not let this go unpunished.
Warner Bros.
Important to note here that Norton, who wrote and directed the film, based on Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel of the same name, took serious liberties with the book, which was placed in 1998 Brooklyn. By placing it in the 1950’s he could introduce characters around which to build a different story. New York in the ’50s was surely a hotbed of civic corruption and social upheaval at the center of which was the larger-than-life power broker and master builder, Robert Moses, who was re-shaping New York city in major and disruptive ways. For a long time, he had unfettered power to do whatever he wanted, running roughshod over poor and underprivileged neighborhoods – bulldozing them and moving people around like chess pieces. It was a dark and cynical period in New York with the rise of powerful people enriched by bribery, blackmail, and general corruption.
The character that Norton has created as the Robert Moses stand-in is a thinly disguised Moses Randolph, played with a perfect combination of suavity and venality by Alex Baldwin. The plotting is way too twisty to go into but it involves political activists, agitating for the rights of the soon-to-be dispossessed. One of them, Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Rose), is singled out by Lionel as a way into the movement, which appears to be lead by a white powerhouse based on Jane Jacobs (Cherry Jones). This all works for me. Laura Rose is initially deceived by Lionel, who is pretending to be an investigative reporter. Not such a stretch. When a genuine friendship develops between them and he outs himself, Lionel is altered and he suddenly sees things differently and recognizes that he can use his skills as a way to effect positive change.
Warner Bros.
Edward Norton has created such an indelible character in Lionel Essrog who, I believe, will become a touchstone in the film canon equal to Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man.
The way that Norton manages the uncontrolled ticks and twitches, outbursts of sounds and words which interject themselves into almost every interaction is truly masterful. His awkwardness is charming and appealing. The atmosphere of 1950’s Brooklyn is beautifully rendered, ravishingly filmed and enhanced by a fantastic jazz soundtrack provided by Winton Marsalis. At the same time that it is evocative of the 1950s, it feels equally relevant to 2018 under Trump.
