Film Review: Motherless Brooklyn

Motherless Brooklyn is the second directorial effort from actor, Edward Norton, who also wrote the film, adapting it from the 1999 novel of the same name by Jonathan Lethem. This has been a project that Norton has been trying to get off the ground since first reading the novel upon its 1999 release, but has struggled in doing so for one reason or another. Now, basically 20 years after setting his eyes on bringing the book to life, the film has finally made its way onto the screen to a…let’s just say “less than stellar” response from its festival debut.

I should be up front in that I haven’t read the source material, so I can’t speak to how much it sticks true or strays away from the book. The only difference I’m aware of is the widely discussed change of time period. The book takes place in the 90s, but the film takes the story and takes it back to sometime in the 50s as a way to give the noir elements a more appropriate feel, at least, according to Norton.

The story being told here does feel like a classic film noir in many ways. It follows a small time private investigator Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton), who is faced with the sudden murder of his boss/father figure, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis). He looks into the crime, hoping to make sense of what happened. He noticeably struggles with his yet undiagnosed Tourette syndrome, but he is able to utilize his excellent memory to piece things together. As he investigates, he uncovers a plot much bigger than he realizes, which involves a shady city developer, Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin), a political activist, Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), and a mysterious man who seems to be connected to all this, Paul (Willem Dafoe).

In many ways, Motherless Brooklyn is deeply flawed. It has that certain stink of a vanity project where an actor writes, directs, and stars in an overlong passion project that goes for broke in terms of scope and prestige heft. Norton fills his performance with numerous tics, some of which are actively played for laughs. Unfortunately, the scope that Norton wants to explore is so vast that he just doesn’t have the time to give each of his fascinations their due, and as a result, the film can be very blunt and broad in its depictions and explorations of American politics and the ways certain communities are forced to deal with the consequences of bad policies. Especially in the case of black neighborhoods, which are seemingly the target of full removal so that Moses can get his urban planning projects on the move.

Then there’s the filmmaking, which is perhaps the one thing that irked me more than just about anything else. The film was shot digitally, and that’s not inherently a bad thing, since many period films have been made that can use digital photography to great effect, just look at something like Zodiac, or even Mr. Turner, which was shot by Dick Pope, who also serves as the cinematographer of Motherless Brooklyn. Unfortunately, while there are some striking compositions at many points, the overly bright, glossy nature of the way the digital footage was handled doesn’t do the film any favors. It makes the film look like a bunch of grown ups playing dress up. Everything on the set is too clean. There’s no grit to it.

However, as flawed and misguided the film can be at times, I still found myself deeply engaged with it. As someone who adores mysteries and the stylistic trappings of a film noir, this film scratched an itch that hasn’t been scratched in a good while. While I was underwhelmed visually, the score by the always wonderful Daniel Pemberton gave the film an ominous yet melancholic mood. It truly does most of the film’s heavy lifting, along with the performances, which are strong across the board. Norton is certainly the showiest of the bunch, but there is a lot of great moments from the likes of the always excellent Mbatha-Raw, Dafoe, Baldwin. Even smaller roles from folks like Cherry Jones, Bobby Cannavale, Michael K. Williams, Leslie Mann, Ethan Suplee, Dallas Roberts, and Fisher Stevens take material that is scarce, and makes them feel fully lived in.

I’m perhaps being softer on Motherless Brooklyn than I should be, but I can live with that. I have my qualms with it, but I was ultimately won over. I admire its ambition, I like its timely thematic elements, the score is ravishing, and it ends on a well earned emotional beat. Maybe a part of me is simply settling for less on the kind of movie that studios don’t typically invest in anymore, and that could very much be true. But even as awkward and sloppy the film can get sometimes, the passion that Edward Norton had over the course of 20 years trying to get this made does ultimately come through, and that’s not nothing. There is so much that is simply fascinating about this that is hard for me to ignore, and I think, given people watch with an open mind, it can find an audience who can appreciate what Norton going for, warts and all.