Edward Norton’s second directorial sally, 19 years after, KEEPING THE FAITH (2000), his long-in-gestation passion project MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN should have been awe-inspiring even it is only for the sake of its sententiously orchestrated retrospective flair, transcribed the story (in Jonathan Lethem’s source novel, published in 1999, the temporal frame is contemporaneous) to NYC in 1957, the film takes a nostalgic leaf from cinema’s archetypes of gumshoe mysteries in a bygone era, not least Roman Polanski’s exemplary CHINATOWN (1974). A fedora-donning Lionel Essrog (Norton), shadows suspects and pieces together paper trails in the aftermath of the unceremonious liquidation of his mentor Frank Minna (Willis), who runs a detective agency, and to whom Lionel, the titular “motherless Brooklyn”, owes everything, as an orphan taken under his wings.
If one unavoidably feels the Norton-penned script nearly slavishly adhere to a familiar template of unfolding the seamy lowdown step by step with great patience, it only attests that audience’s aesthetic taste and viewing habits are a-changin’ through times, maybe the film would have reaped a less muted response were it to be made a decade ago (which it should have in a perfect world), it conjures up a noir-ish ambience at a slow pace that only suggests imminent danger or revelation, and a diligent procedural narratology that doesn’t flaunt the immediacy of adrenalin rush or lurid stimulants. Instead, Norton pays heartfelt homage to Harlem’s hepcat subculture and submerses the film deeply in a cynical world that is poisoned with the corrupted power, emblazoned by the opening caption“it is excellent to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”extracted from Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure”.
Enlisting a fine dramatis personae: Gugu Mbatha-Raw is daintily unperturbed in a role that in our MeToo era can be roundly accused as another damsel-in-distress stereotype protected by a white male savior, not to mention her character Laura Rose is unilaterally to be kept from the concealed truth, on the pretense for her own safety, a decision made solely by her male counterpart; Bruce Willis is in a glorified cameo and really dies hard this time; whereas Willem Dafoe is too much of an eager beaver to his expository duty, Alec Baldwin fares better as theéminence grise behind the sweeping slum clearance project, not entirely steeped in the tired vileness, but a man with conviction undermined by his own frailty, the film saliently boasts Norton’s finer performance as a sympathetic snoop afflicted by Tourette’s syndrome (Lionel’s tics and spouting involuntariness are integrated organically into the plot as either a litmus test for other people’s reactions or simply comic relief) , but also endowed with a total recall, and Norton is totally at ease in toning down the occupational skepticism to furbish Lionel with a tad credulous veneer (even himself in reality is itching the half century mark) that is both old-fashioned and too congenial to quibble, in concert with Daniel Pemberton’s dulcet, emotive retro-fused string score, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN might be an anachronism, still, it is a fond labor of love holds its own against the mercurial ethos of our turbulent times.
referential entries: Roman Polanski’s CHINATOWN (1974, 8.7/10); Robert Aldrich’s KISS ME DEALY (1955, 6.2/10).
