Motherless Brooklyn (2019)

Edward Norton based his screenplay for Motherless Brooklyn on Jonathan Lethem’s novel of the same name, and this may be one instance when seeing the film before reading the novel will make no difference at all. Norton made so many changes to the story that it upset several reviewers, from what I have read online, and earned the film a mixed reception. It may be easier for me to say this because I haven’t read the book, but I think that the mixed reception is undeserved. The film stands on its own and should really be approached without comparing it to the novel.

I know I just said that the film shouldn’t be compared to Lethem’s novel, but that doesn’t mean the differences aren’t interesting to read about. An online search for the film’s title will probably bring up plenty of sources to read, but I found the following to be both interesting and succinct:

◊ Marissa Martinelli’s article at Salon.com: “All the Ways the Motherless Brooklyn Movie Departs from Jonathan Lethem’s Novel: Edward Norton’s Adaptation Changes More Than It Keeps.” Click here.

◊ Wikipedia’s entry for the film. Click here.

The title, by the way, comes from Frank Minna’s nickname for Lionel Essrog. This is true in the film, but I haven’t read the novel (not yet anyway), so I can’t speak on that point.

One of the major differences is that Norton moves the time period to the early 1950s, when films noir were still being released by Hollywood. Some of the characters, including Lionel Essrog (played by Norton), the main character and narrator, are detectives working for Frank Minna (played by Bruce Willis), who runs his own detective agency called L&L Agency. Frank Minna is murdered early in the film, and Lionel spends the rest of the story line investigating Frank’s death and uncovering corruption in Brooklyn in particular and in New York City in general.

(This article about Motherless Brooklyn contains spoilers.)

Lionel’s voice-over and a shot of a 1950s car on a city street starts the narrative. Lionel tells viewers a little bit about himself and about his boss Frank Minna, for example: “He [Frank Minna] was more philosophical than your average gumshoe, but he liked to do his talking on the move, so here’s how it all went down. I got something wrong with my head. That’s the first thing to know. It’s like having glass in the brain. I can’t stop pickin’ things apart, twistin’ ’em around, reassembling ’em. Words and sounds, especially. It’s like an itch that has to be scratched. . .” At this point, Lionel is already on screen and seated next to his fellow detective, Gilbert Coney, in the car. Gilbert sits at the wheel and continues eating something that he has brought on this “sit,” as they call a stakeout. The only time Gilbert says anything is to tell Lionel to stop unraveling the sleeve of his sweater. He is accustomed to Lionel’s tics and outbursts. (Lionel suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, although he himself never uses that term in the film.)

Frank Minna comes down the sidewalk to the passenger side of the car to give instructions to Lionel and Gilbert. Neither one of them know the details of Frank’s case. Frank tells them, “I gotta keep this one under my hat, boys.” (Frank’s hat plays a significant part in Lionel’s ability to solve Frank’s murder, but viewers don’t know that until late in the film.) Frank is meeting three men in an abandoned building that still has a working telephone, which Frank uses to help Lionel overhear the group’s conversation from a public pay phone. Two of the men become angry with the information that Frank provides to them. They tell Frank that they might not pay him for the information because it isn’t what they asked for and because they want original documents, not copies. They insist on driving him to the location where he has hidden the originals. Lionel is listening to all of this on a pay phone after calling the telephone number that Frank gave to him earlier.

Lionel and Gilbert follow Frank in the other men’s car, but they lose it temporarily. They arrive in time to see Frank shot in the back. Lionel and Gilbert pick up a badly wounded Frank (and his gun and his hat, at Frank’s insistence) and take him to the emergency room. His injuries are too severe, however, and he passes away soon after they arrive at the hospital.

Back at the L&L Agency offices, Lionel and Gilbert break the news to Danny Fantl and Tony Vermonte, their detective partners and Frank’s other employees. Lionel takes Frank’s possessions to his wife Julia Minna. She’s angry with Frank for dying and not talking to her about what he had been up to recently. Lionel promises to find out who killed Frank, but Julia doesn’t want him making any promises. Lionel then goes home, distraught about Frank’s death.

The next day, it becomes obvious that Frank had been working on something big. Julia Minna comes to the detective agency, which has already been ransacked, to tell the four remaining employees that her home has also been ransacked and that Frank left the detective agency to her. She puts Tony Vermonte in charge. After Julia leaves, Tony says that Frank gave them a lifeline when they were in the orphanage (Lionel, Gilbert, Tony, and Danny all met in a neighborhood orphanage when they were quite young), but he never confided in them. Tony just wants to continue with the business and avoid risking his life. Lionel feels a sense of loyalty and duty to find out what happened to Frank, and he starts digging into the circumstances of Frank Minna’s death.

It’s true that Frank never confided in his detective employees, and Lionel is practically on his own when he decides to investigate Frank’s death. Based on what he overheard during Frank’s last conversation with the three men in the abandoned building and what Frank was able to say right before he died, Lionel puts the pieces together and starts to collect more clues that don’t make much sense at first and don’t seem connected at all.

Lionel meets Laura Rose, who works for the Committee for Racial Discrimination in Housing and who tells him that Black and Latino neighborhoods are being destroyed, as are Jewish neighborhoods, but not as systematically. He finds his way to a community meeting protesting neighborhood demolitions, where Moses Randolph, head of the Parks Department and the Borough Authority, is making his case for what we would call urban renewal today. Lionel follows Paul Randolph, who also attended the meeting and protested loudly. Outside on the street, Paul tells Lionel that people like Moses Randolph because he builds parks, but what they don’t realize is that Moses Randolph hates them. He also tells Lionel that the Borough Authority is a fourth shadow branch of government because Moses was appointed to serve; he was not voted into office, and thus he is not accountable to anyone, not even the city’s voters. Moses is aware of the extent of his power, and he is willing to use it to get what he wants. Moses tells Lionel later in the film, “The important thing in this life is to get things done. Those who can, build. Those who can’t, criticize. And I will not obstruct the great work of this world while some chipmunks are screeching about having to relocate their nuts.”

Motherless Brooklyn may be a neo-noir released in 2019, but World War II and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are prominent features of the story and two reasons why the film can be called a postwar film. Several of the characters are war veterans with physical and emotional scars from their time in the service. For example, Danny Fantl is a war veteran who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, Frank Minna is a veteran who fought at Guadalcanal, and Billy Rose (the uncle of Laura Rose, Lionel’s love interest) returned from the war with a disability: He cannot use his left arm and can no longer play jazz. Lionel addresses Frank Minna’s war service directly in one of his voice-overs: “Frank [Minna] was the only person I knew who thought the way we won the war was going to cause us problems. He said, after the Crash [the stock market crash of October 1929], we were diggin’ ourselves out by taking care of each other. Now that we’d seen what we could do with our brute strength, there was no goin’ back. He said, from here on out, the game’s gonna be about power from top to bottom.”

Frank made a point of educating his employees about the reality of a detective’s work. Lionel explains, “Frank told me once, if you’re up against someone bigger than you, someone you can’t beat toe to toe, make ’em think you respect their size, and then cut a deal that lets you walk out in one piece. Then figure out a way to stick it to ’em later without leaving your prints on the knife . . .” It’s advice he considers carefully in his dealings with Moses Randolph. Whatever naïveté Lionel possesses concerning Frank Minna is gone, however, by the end of the film. Lionel learns to take a much more practical and nuanced perspective on his boss, again by referencing Frank’s service in World War II: “Growin’ up, I always thought Frank was a hero. But he was no crusader in the end. He was just a gumshoe tryin’ to make a buck like everyone else. But he didn’t have go to that war. He was old enough to have skipped it, and he went anyway ’cause he actually thought this country was worth fighting for.”

Betrayal is a major theme in Motherless Brooklyn, as it is in many noir films. Motherless Brooklyn has a long list of examples because the stakes are high, and many characters betray one another, either by lying or simply remaining silent:

◊ Julia Minna cheats on her husband.

◊ Tony Vermonte is sleeping with his boss’s wife (Julia Minna), he accepts bribes and tails Lionel Essrog, and he is willing to kill Lionel (and attempts to do so) to keep him from interfering in the overall plan to eliminate Laura Rose and everyone connected to her.

◊ Frank Minna tries to blackmail Moses Randolph and his associate William Lieberman.

◊ Moses Randolph destroys his brother Paul both personally and professionally.

◊ Moses Randolph’s and William Lieberman’s greed for power and money lead them to cheat city residents of their homes and neighborhoods, and they are willing to use violence to achieve their goals.

But there are some examples of loyalty, too. They are few and far between, but they seem to stand out so much more compared to the many levels of betrayal portrayed in the film. Frank Minna and Lionel Essrog, for instance, remain loyal to each other, and Lionel finds proof of that even after Frank’s death. Lionel and Laura Rose fall in love and do what they can to protect one another.

I found the film fascinating for so many reasons. The performances from all the actors, lead and supporting, are great. The setting and the time period are fascinating, and even more so if you listen to Norton’s commentary about shooting on location on the Blu-ray version. The story is full of twists and turns, which always intrigues me. A second viewing was as enjoyable as the first because it was easier to pick up even more details, which gave me an appreciation for the complexity of the narrative and the skill in putting it all together. Motherless Brooklyn is almost two and a half hours long, but I wouldn’t call the film’s length a disadvantage, not at all. And I have seen the film at least twice and listened to Edward Norton’s commentary, too. The DVD version doesn’t include Norton’s commentary, but the Blu-ray version does, and I recommend the commentary, too.

August 30, 2019 (Telluride Film Festival), November 1, 2019, release dates  •  Directed by Edward Norton  •  Screenplay by Edward Norton  •  Based on the novel Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem  •  Music by Daniel Pemberton  •  Edited by Joe Klotz  •  Cinematography by Dick Pope

Edward Norton as Lionel Essrog  •  Bruce Willis as Frank Minna  •  Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Laura Rose  •  Alec Baldwin as Moses Randolph  •  Willem Dafoe as Paul Randolph  •  Bobby Cannavale as Tony Vermonte  •  Cherry Jones as Gabby Horowitz  •  Michael K. Williams as the trumpet player  •  Leslie Mann as Julia Minna  •  Ethan Suplee as Gilbert Coney  •  Dallas Roberts as Danny Fantl  •  Josh Pais as William Lieberman  •  Robert Wisdom as Billy Rose  •  Fisher Stevens as Lou  •  Nelson Avidon as Jacob (aka Jake) Gleason, newspaper reporter

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures  •  Produced by Class 5 Films, MWM Studios