Movie Review: Motherless Brooklyn

Motherless Brooklyn ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Edward Norton.

Written by Edward Norton based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem.

Starring: Edward Norton (Lionel Essrog), Bruce Willis (Frank Minna), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Laura Rose), Willem Dafoe (Paul Randolph), Ethan Suplee (Gilbert Coney), Alec Baldwin (Moses Randolph), Leslie Mann (Mrs. Minna), Michael Kenneth Williams (Wynton Marsalis), Bobby Cannavale (Tony Vermonte), Dallas Roberts (Danny Fantl), Cherry Jones (Gabby Horowitz), Josh Pais (William Lieberman), Robert Wisdom (Mr. Rose).

 

You can fault many things about Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn, but lack of ambition isn’t one of them. This sprawling 1950s set noir tries to tell a complex story about race, sex, murder and political corruption – all through the eyes of Norton’s Lionel – a P.I. with Tourette’s, which caused him to twitch and say inappropriate things at the most inopportune times. But he also has a genius level memory – and he needs it to untangle the web he inadvertently steps into when his boss and mentor, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis) is gunned down on the streets of New York, and Lionel wants to figure out why – leading to a very complicated story. Too complicated a story as it turns out, because over the nearly two-and-a-half-hour runtime, Norton’s film gets so bogged down in the plotting, that nothing else really gets its proper attention.

 

In the film, Norton’s Lionel starts to pull at the loose threads of his sweater, before he starts pulling at the loose threads of the bare bones information he has on the people Frank was meeting, and who gunned him down. This will lead him to the height of power in New York – involving city planner Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin) – who wants to displace a lot of people to make way for his genius. It also leads him to a jazz club, and the daughter of the owner, Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who is working against Moses – and to a lot of other people, like another genius – Paul (Willem Dafoe) with a brain as scattered as Lionel’s, but without Tourette’s. And many, many other characters.

 

The film is basically all plot – and is based on a well-regarded novel by Jonathan Lethem – but as a screenwriter, it feels like Norton didn’t know how to streamline the novel down to its essentials, so the film tries to do too much, and never quite finds its footing. Perhaps Norton was drawn to the material for the opportunity to play Lionel – it is a very showy performance from Norton, allowing him to act out ticks and rantings, which however accurate to Tourette’s is basically a distraction from everything else going on. Norton is at his best in the performance when Lionel has some degree of control over his Tourette’s, and we aren’t watching him act out those ticks. When he settles down – he’s actually quite good. Norton has assembled a talented cast to support him – the problem is, he has to rush from one narrative element to another so quickly, that none of them really get a chance to be anything other than one note characters – characters there for the convenience of the plot.

 

To make matters worse, Norton and his usually great cinematographer – Dick Pope (a frequent collaborator with Mike Leigh – including on the stunningly shot Mr. Turner) give the whole film a kind of brightly lit sheen to the film – which is all wrong for noir. Odd for a noir, much of the film takes place during the day – and the whole thing is too brightly lit, too colorful – and never really gives the feel for noir. The film looks best at night – or in the darkly lit clubs it sometimes ventures into. But for the most part, it plays like a bunch of people playing dress up, more than a noir film.

 

I do give Norton some credit here – he clearly had ambitions for his long awaited for sophomore film as a director (he made his charming debut with 2000’s Keeping the Faith, and he has always struck me as the type of actor, I want to see behind the camera – exacting in his attention to detail in his performances). He is reaching for something here – something beyond that actors showcase the movie clearly is. But he doesn’t get there with Motherless Brooklyn. I still hope Norton directs again in the future – I still think the chops are there for him to be a fine filmmaker. But Motherless Brooklyn is a pretty big disappointment. A messy film that tries to do so much, that ends up doing nothing all that well.