'Motherless Brooklyn': Edward Norton Pulls The Thread On A Knotty ‘Chinatown’-Esque Detective Noir Mystery [Telluride Review]

One of the finest actors of his generation, Edward Norton is also one of the best thespians we have, period. Known for his refined taste, and good choices, the three-time Academy Award nominee, Golden Globe and SAG Award winner is also recognized for his sharp filmmaking sensibilities, offering substantial, though usually uncredited, rewrites on several films he has starred in over the years, (“The Incredible Hulk,” “Frida”)— in one case, having his cut favored by the studio over the director’s for the final theatrical release (“American History X”). More so than the average actor, Norton seems to know how to diagnose and fix issues with problematic movies and actually do the work himself. The man is a natural filmmaker.

Which makes his long-delayed sophomore directorial effort, the unwieldy, puzzling, but well-intentioned “Motherless Brooklyn,” something of a head-scratcher. It’s extremely ambitious and sprawling, getting better along the way as it finds its footing, but it’s also tin-eared, sometimes filled with corny, “what’s the big idea, ya palooka mug!??” detective noir clichés and definitely overlong (almost 2.5 hours and feels at least that short).

20 years after receiving author Jonathan Lethem’s blessing to transpose the modern-day setting of the prize-winning novel to the 1950s—to exploit the gumshoe mystery aspect of the story and apply those cinematic steam-rising-from-the-New-York-pavement noir aesthetics— Norton’s adaptation finally arrives at the screen, but it’s with decidedly mixed results. As a knotty story of power, greed, ambition and the secret history of New York and how-it-was-built mystery, “Motherless Brooklyn” excels, especially in the intriguing last act. As a socio-political drama about gentrification, race, class, poverty, and the overlooked common man getting pushed to the fringes by big money, Norton’s film is sincere and even affecting, especially when the exceptional Gugu Mbatha-Raw, a beautiful young activist lawyer, is involved. But when it lands in hepcatty bebop jazz caricature territory or, the often cartoon-like characters of the seedy, hardboiled detective world, or even the mental illness that plagues the protagonist Norton plays, ouch, some of this stuff is awkwardly written and performed and nearly feels like parody (baggy, typical sleuth-noir voice-over doesn’t help either).

“Motherless Brooklyn” stars Edward Norton as Lionel Essrog, aka the Human Freakshow, a fixated, OCD/Asperger’s-y detective with Tourettes and photographic memory. Lionel is a snoop who works for tough private eye Frank Minna (Bruce Willis), a father figure that took him under his wing at a young age, seeing value in his remarkable recall, where others just saw a weirdo. But when Frank is bumped off in a shady job that goes sideways, Lionel’s life turns upside down. Unable to let the mysterious circumstance of his mentor’s death go, the protégé obsesses and obsesses and pulls on each and every single thread that may lead to a clue as to who killed Frank and why he was murdered.

What begins to untangle in the mess of hints and signs is a thorny and expansive tale of betrayal, deceits, real estate conspiracies, age-old lies, and digging through the pockets of a dead man, perhaps finding things one may not like. The complex odyssey takes the wily dick to jumpin’ Harlem jazz joints, protests in Washington Square Park, the underworld of political corruption centered in the New York mayor’s office, and back again. “Motherless Brooklyn” was once lumped into the list of unfilmable novels, and Norton does fall down the rabbit hole a few times of his own byzantine story.

Granted, there’s a superb cast in the movie, including Willem Dafoe, Bobby Cannavale, Leslie Mann, Cherry Jones, the ruthless power-broker played by Alec Baldwin and inspired by “master builder” Robert Moses, and Michael K. Williams cool cats it up as hipster jazz trumpeter. But a lot of “Motherless Brooklyn” is really broad and generic and the actors fall into this trap too. Leslie Mann is a classic dame and woefully miscast and Williams fares much better, but he’s still playing that smoothed-voice brotha, you might see in a lampoon of jazz movies.

It’s essentially “Chinatown” in Brooklyn— with some “Rain Man” and “L.A. Confidential” thrown in for good measure— with the notion of big money collusions and futility to fight against the powers that be, everywhere, but nowhere near as effective. Perhaps one gets accustomed to it, eventually but Norton’s tic-laden performance is really rough, sometimes unintentionally funny too, as is some of the wacky dialogue that fires out of his mouth during his outbursts (sure, much of it ripped straight from the book, but it rarely translates well).

The movie is all smoky, atmospheric cinematography and moody period ’50s music—something of a cliché itself if not handled with subtly—but then suddenly Thom Yorke is wailing in one of his typical sad ballads, next to a dream sequence and what film are we watching? “Motherless Brooklyn” can be really odd and definitely takes time to acclimate to. There’s definitely at least a mild air of narcissistic vanity project to it at times, as well.

Ultimately, where “Motherless Brooklyn” begins to gel, late in the movie, is around its soulful ideas about empathy. Lionel really cares about Laura (Mbatha-Raw), Baldwin’s disgraced engineering genius brother (Dafoe), his dearly departed boss and everyone being marginalized by Baldwin’s mad tycoon plans to transform Manhattan into a futuristic paradise for the wealthy and affluent. Lionel desperately cares about the truth, what’s right and has principled moral code—the movie can’t resist a sideways dig or two at Trump—and it’s here where a lot of the characters begin to shed their aversion for Lionel and see him for what he is: an afflicted and complicated human being trying to be an honorable person.

“Motherless Brooklyn” has lots of layers, but not really that much depth. It’s a well-meaning movie but doesn’t mean that much. Yet, as clunky as Norton’s movie can be, it’s lovingly-made and its semi-last-minute tenderness and blossoming sense of humanity suggests that buried underneath the shadows, rain-slicked streets and the dense thicket of plot, lays an orphan of story that might have been better served elsewhere. [C]

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