3 Short Paragraphs: Motherless Brooklyn

2019, Edward Norton (Keeping the Faith) -- download

I began my love for film noir (misspelled it nori which suggests a whole new sub-genre of Japanese detective flicks) when I was in high school, finding myself as the "cool kid" who liked 30s/40s black & white movies. I loved the distinctive characters, the gritty seedy urban underbellies and the period lingo. And, of course, the dames. Who doesn't love a hard-boiled mouthy dame. Now, you can do contemporary noir but something about the time period, the fedoras and trench coats, the cars and the architecture, all the etched in brownstone tropes, makes the genre more palpable. So much so, that Norton, when writing the movie (from a novel by Jonathan Lethem) he moved it back in time to the 50s.

Motherless Brooklyn follows Lionel, a gumshoe (who chews a lot of gum) working for Frank (Bruce Willis, Unbreakable). Lionel has Tourettes, which makes him a challenge to work with, but also an asset given one of his ticks is that he has to unravel things, physical objects and even plots. Early on, and in film noir this is no spoiler, Frank is killed; so Lionel takes it upon himself (donning Frank's fedora) to solve the case -- why was Frank murdered and what had he stumbled into. Lionel has to step from the shadows as Frank's comic relief support, control his personal demons and find out what is what.

If Chinatown was about water and land and people trying to control the money it makes through extortion and murder, then this movie is about "slum" demolition for the sake of NYC's expansion, and the men who benefit from it, and the (black) people who are dispossessed. It's a long, meandering movie, while staying focused on its statement that the grandeur of NYC today was built by paving over the communities of people unable to fight back. Lionel's ticks make for a memorable character, but they struck me as softened, as I always associated Tourettes with more graphic barks and explicit exultations. Meanwhile, Lionel says something mildly embarrassing or amusing, and people just smile or giggle, and then move on. The strife in race relations also seemed somewhat softened, as if Norton was afraid to write some of the truly harsh realities black people would have had to deal with, and likely still do. Everyone, even the bad guys, seemed reasonable or even affable. Maybe after the slap in the indifferent face of Watchmen, I want to be truly challenged by race relations stories. Make me feel bad, not just kind of agreeing that in order for NYC to become as we see it now, someone had to pay.