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Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

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Edgy MD Feb 28 2020 07:39 PM

Lionel is a gumshoe. He and his three colleagues do the grunt work at the detective agency while their tight-lipped boss is the face on the agency. This is OK by Lionel, who has Tourette's syndrome (though the name never comes up explicitly) and prefers to stay out of social situations lest his tics start firing up at the wrong time. This compartmentalizing means that they get part of the picture on cases, but only the boss, Frank, has all the pieces. This becomes a real problem when Frank gets killed working a case that none of them really knew anything about. While the other shmoes are looking to move on, Lionel has a loyalty to his boss, who showed faith in him despite his embarrassing condition, and so he puts his neck out and picks up the case, trying to put together the pieces of a very complicated puzzle. Hyjinks don't ensue. Based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem, but a pretty different story. [FIMG=780]https://assets.www.warnerbros.co.uk/drupal-root/public/mb_horizontal.jpg[/FIMG]

Willets Point Feb 28 2020 09:10 PM Re: Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

I read the book ages ago and can't imagine it as a movie. And if it's a different story, apparently the filmmakers couldn't imagine it as a movie either.

Johnny Lunchbucket Feb 28 2020 09:56 PM Re: Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

I heard this sucked. I read the book too

Edgy MD Feb 29 2020 07:18 AM Re: Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

Willets Point wrote: I read the book ages ago and can't imagine it as a movie. And if it's a different story, apparently the filmmakers couldn't imagine it as a movie either. Yeah, it's mostly a different story based on the book's characters. Ed Norton bought the film rights in 1999, and you'd figure that with a misbegotten, orphaned urban misfit protagonist, it was an attractive property for him. And the fact that the hero has a neurological disorder probably led him to smell Oscar fumes coming out of the book. But twenty years in development changes things, and Norton as a member of a crew of young adult sleuths became more of a stretch as time passed, and now that he's about a half-century old, the group and he have become a cast of youthful-looking, if world-weary, middle-aged dudes, and their mentor a Social Security-sniffing Bruce Willis. But if you've seen, say, A Walk in the Woods or Wonder Boys, you're used to actors forgetting how old they are when they read, and casting themselves as much younger literary characters. Once you get that out of the way, as I noted, Norton as Lionel Essrog isn't that much of a stretch, but after throwing out the coming-of-age aspects of Jonathan Lethem's story, they kept throwing out. The late-seventies/early-eighties nu-wave-era setting gets tossed (along with all the Mets references) and replaced with mid-fifties and be-bop. Norton said that he thought taking it back to the fifties would make it more consistent with the noirish aspects of the story, but I think keeping the setting in living memory would have too-much underscored how he had aged out of the character in the decades since the book's publication. He nonetheless puts work into reconciling these elements. Lionel's tics actually find some confluence in the explosive syncopations of the be-bop of the city, and a character who is seemingly a stand-in for Miles Davis sees him as a kindred spirit. The almost all-new story has a lot of such cut-outs, with Lionel caught up in a battle between a thinly disguised fictionalization of Robert Moses and a thinly disguised fictionalization of Jane Jacobs, and even though the tone is very different, the film at times feels like a spin-off of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, with similar settings, similar fashions, and even a scene that looks like a re-shoot of Mrs. Maisel's version of the Jane Jacobs rally in Washington Square Park. So, you know, fans of the book (and I am one) will have a lot to get past dealing with what this movie isn't. But what it is isn't entirely worthless either. Alec Baldwin's Robert Moses-guy has a tic-issue of a different sort, in that you keep seeing elements of Baldwin's mimicry of President Trump popping out of him. But about two-thirds of the way through, you start to see that this isn't that unintentional, and the story that Norton is telling is more than a little bit of an allegory for the Trump era, and Moses' cold-hearted populism is framed as a smarter version of the current president. And any look through a different facet at our insane era has its merits. And the commentary of a nutty Willem Defoe twisting with frustration over what his nemesis is allowed to get away with is all of us right now.

Vic Sage Mar 10 2020 07:53 AM Re: Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

just saw it. i haven't read the book, so i had nothing to be disappointed by. So i liked it ok as a noir-ish adaptation of THE POWER BROKER. I had no problem with the era it was placed in, or the ages of the characters. And this was the first decent Willis performance in maybe a decade. But I found the Tourette's thing a pointless affectation and unnecessary for the story. You could have made the character an outsider/loser in any number of less distracting ways.

Frayed Knot Mar 20 2020 06:21 PM Re: Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

More than a bit of CHINATOWN in it, eh?

Vic Sage Mar 23 2020 09:47 AM Re: Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

Frayed Knot wrote: More than a bit of CHINATOWN in it, eh? yeah, if CHINATOWN had a happy ending. which is part of the problem here.

Frayed Knot Mar 23 2020 01:05 PM Re: Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

There's a new book out on the making of CHINATOWN which, according to the review I read, claims that the writer, Robert Towne, originally had a happy (or at least happier ending but that Polanski, not surprisingly a much darker personality given the number of deaths within his own family, insisted on the darker alternate conclusion we all now know: "The girl dies, that's it!" Towne, still alive at 85, was pissed off enough over it to never work with Polanski after that although reportedly much later admitted that, with hindsight, the Polanski-dictated ending was better. But other than that, both flicks had the noir feel, private eyes in a mid-20th century urban setting, powerful insiders getting away with whatever they want while swatting minorities out of the way, and of course questionable parentage involving a main character.

seawolf17 Mar 23 2020 01:43 PM Re: Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

Just grabbed the book from the library before lockdown. Guess there's no rush to finish it and get it back.