Respond to these rapid questions in our Motherless Brooklyn quiz and we will tell you which Motherless Brooklyn character you are. Play it now.
The most surprising aspect of Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn,” which he directed, wrote, and starred in, is how far it deviates from its source material. A young detective with Tourette’s Syndrome (Norton) is recruited to investigate the murder of his boss and surrogate father (Bruce Willis’ Frank Minna), who abducted him and several other boys from a Catholic orphanage and trained them to be hard-boiled gumshoes. The novel was written by Jonathan Lethem and won the National Book Award. During his investigation, Lionel uncovers a conspiracy that criticizes the gentrification of New York City during the latter half of the twentieth century. Lethem’s novel takes place in the 1980s, but Norton has set the story in 1959, which helps to make Lethem’s playful, retro-tough-guy, Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler impersonations seem more organic while, unfortunately, making the film’s conceptual oddity and specialness feel less distinct and unique. Norton has also combined material from Robert Caro’s classic biography The Power Broker with material from Lethem’s novel, which is either brave or misguided, depending on your feelings about staying true to the source material. Robert Moses, the unelected autocrat who ripped apart New York City’s neighborhoods, making it more hospitable to cars while displacing hundreds of thousands of working-class and poor residents, many of whom were non-white, is the inspiration for the Big Bad, Moses Randolph, played by Alec Baldwin.
The result is another modern noir in the vein of “Chinatown,” “The Two Jakes,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “Mulholland Falls,” and a slew of other period television dramas starring tough guys in hats, in which the investigation of a seemingly straightforward crime propels the stalwart hero up the social ladder until he finally confronts the person responsible for every other character’s misfortune, an embodiment of wealth, power, and venality who In particular, Norton resists the temptation to turn Laurie Rose into a combination love interest and information delivery device, allowing Mbatha-Raw to create a real person with a believable connection to her community. (Lionel’s guide and ward is Gugu Mbatha-Laurie Raw’s Rose, a political activist helping African-Americans resist displacement; they turn out to have more in common than they initially thought.)
Another surprise about “Motherless Brooklyn” is how much of a hit it is with the audience, despite its efforts to be both a stylish period detective story and a lesson in how institutionalized racism, civic corruption and gentrification are intertwined in American life. Even though the film’s storytelling relies far too heavily on verbal exposition, particularly in the second half, it’s remarkable how clearly it lays out its conspiracy and defines every character in its large cast, from Minna’s wife Julia (Leslie Mann) to Norton’s colleagues and former orphanage-mates (Dallas Roberts, Ethan Suplee, and Bobby Cannavale, who is 100 percent credible in his role as a sleazy alpha) to Laurie (standouts include a Miles Davis-like trumpeter played by Michael K. Williams, and a club owner and World War II combat veteran played by Robert Wisdom). The film also features an obscenely large henchman (Radu Spinghel) who looks like Norton should have pulled a “Police Squad!” and cut the top of his head off at the frame line.
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There is a lot of humor and clever character business in the story, thanks to Norton, his editor Joe Klotz, and the movie’s diverse and talented cast. Even the most disturbing or upsetting scenes are laced with the kind of deadpan wit that we used to associate with old detective movies and film noir films—the kind where characters entered rooms preceded by their own shadows, had a cutting remark for every situation, and carried lighters even if they didn’t smoke. Even the most disturbing or upsetting scenes are laced with this kind of deadpan wit.
Motherless Brooklyn Quiz
Character-based suspense that is rooted in personality develops to the point where you expect the characters to act in ways that they always have, even when doing so might jeopardize the success of whatever mission they are currently on. Is it possible that Lionel will say something during an interview with a witness that will jeopardize his tenuous cover story? Are Gabby and Laurie’s activist campaigns in jeopardy because of Laurie’s zeal for justice, which must be mindful of the racial resentment held by the whites who run the city? What effect will Randolph’s desire to immediately break and humiliate any public officials who stand in the way of his plan to remake New York have on his ability to carry it out? In previous eras, when films like “Motherless Brooklyn,” which were genre exercises about realistic characters doing things that could actually happen, were more common on the big screen, these were the kinds of questions which lingered in the minds of moviegoers more frequently.
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In spite of the fact that some critics have suggested that Norton optioned the book twenty years ago in the hopes of winning an Oscar for playing a character with a disability, Norton’s performance as Lionel is largely free of showboating and self-aggrandizement. In delicate conversations, he embraces the unavoidable humor of Lionel’s verbal explosions without transforming the character into a “freak show,” as another character describes him. Lionel and his distinctive characteristics become more apparent as the story progresses, and we find ourselves laughing alongside him rather than at him, and appreciating how deftly he manages a series of life or death tasks despite the burdens imposed by his condition. The fact that he is too old to play the character described in Lethem’s book does not detract from the overall quality of the film. It’s actually more heartbreaking to watch a fortysomething man who is still coping (like Raw’s character) with the wounds of his childhood and societal marginalization make Lionel a sadder, more delicate creation.
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The movie suffers a little as a result of having a villain who is unrelentingly one-note as its antagonist. However, the way Norton, er, integrates the two strands—racism/sexism and lust for power—diminishes the political by grounding it too simplistically in the personal. This is especially true of Donald Trump, whom Baldwin has frequently played on “Saturday Night Live.” With a running time of nearly two and a half hours, “Motherless Brooklyn” is perhaps too long for its own good. With a story like this, it’s easy to imagine the film taxing the patience of audiences who can’t sit through an entire film without checking their phones; it’s the kind of story where, if you look away for a second, you might find yourself getting lost. The period details, humor, strong characterizations, and mostly graceful articulation of complex material, on the other hand, make “Motherless Brooklyn” a mostly enjoyable film to watch.
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The project’s overtly political nature is perhaps the most striking aspect of it all. It’s rare to see a big-budget American film that deals so bluntly with complex issues that affect moviegoers on a daily basis, even if the film is set in an alternate time period and uses a different language. For the most part, Norton’s obsession with “Chinatown” pays off in both subtle and obvious ways, depending on the scene. Adroitly weaving together sociopolitical elements with characterization and plot, the script never gives the impression that the filmmaker is awkwardly pausing one kind of movie and inserting bits of another.
It is at its best when Norton takes the audience right to the heart of what clearly sparked the filmmaker’s imagination in the first place, as when he turns the film over to a public meeting about urban planning and racism. “Motherless Brooklyn” is a powerful documentary that deserves to be seen. The film places Lionel at the back of the room and instructs him to observe and listen while Jones’ Gabby and other citizens confront the officials who are more concerned with money than with democratic principles. The sequence has the feel of a muckraking dramatist like Ken Loach or Spike Lee (who cast Norton as the lead in “The 25th Hour,” among others), and there are many more sequences like it in the film. This is by no means a perfect film, but it is passionate, controlled, and intelligent—a throwback to another era of American cinema, and not just of American life—that deserves to be seen.
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