Imaginary servants of the people. Review of Motherless Brooklyn
The historical unhurried neo-noir about post-war morals and false ideals, which are used as a cover for those in power, who are ready to do anything for the sake of profit and maintain the status quo, returns to America in the 1950s to remind everyone of the events of recent times, which are still relevant. Detective Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton) with Tourette's syndrome after the murder of his boss Frank Minna, who groped for some big scam at the top - played by Bruce Willis, who appeared on the screen for just ten minutes - begins his own investigation, which leads him to solving problems completely different scales. Major urban planner Moses Randolph (Alec Baldwin) is trying to reshape the New York City map and demolish slums, which African-American lawyer Laura Rose is bravely and desperately opposing, defending the rights of citizens of color. who are homeless in the Brooklyn area. Lionel gets to the heart of the matter and discovers what has been carefully hidden under a veil of lies and collusion.The second directorial work of Edward Norton, where he also acted as a screenwriter and, in fact, the leading actor, is an order of magnitude more intelligible than his debut film "Keeping the Faith". Renowned for his rebellious character at work and always striving to become a co-author of the films in which he acts, Norton clearly found an outlet in the creation of "Orphaned Brooklyn", which can be considered entirely his creation. Despite the fact that the film was based on the story told by Jonathan Leatham in the detective "Motherless Brooklyn", Norton did not spare the original and significantly modified it, moving the action from the 1990s to the 1950s and inventing new characters. According to him, the idea of the film matured and insisted for almost twenty years, but nevertheless remained in tune with the spirit of the present.  In the novel, Liteham Norton was hooked by Lionel's character with an unusual feature in the form of a nervous tic, which the actor recreated on the screen, thereby replenishing the filmography with another memorable role. An emotional attachment to a touching gifted detective turns out to be even more important than the plot, which is rather difficult to follow. Barely having time to surface, evidence, clues and scraps of memories seem to dissipate in the viscous cigarette smoke that fills the jazz club. Lionel is an eccentric, but not a city madman, although this is how he looks in the eyes of officials who get in the way, wanting to complete his investigation to the end and help Laura Rose. He has nothing to lose, because he is the "Orphan Brooklyn" - this nickname was given to him by Frank, who once took him under his wing from a Catholic orphanage. Because of Tourette's syndrome, Lionel has different voices in his head that live their own lives, they can ironically joke at the most inopportune moment and prevent meeting an attractive person. This disagreement seems to be generated by the era of jazz itself - the music of dissonance, born out of chaos and deliberately incompatible motives that merge into a unique sound. Dissonance is also characteristic of the film, whose organization, containing many lines, characters and intersections, does not always gather into the same harmonious disharmony as a jazz composition, and resembles an irregularly functioning mechanism.  However, this is the era not only of Chet Baker, but also of bandits who have concentrated power in their hands, who think that the law is not their decree and that the city is their property. Brooklyn is truly an orphan, because its so-called guardians - racist officials - believe that the end always justifies the means and that lives can even be sacrificed to implement a large-scale housing renovation. “Oh, how wonderful it is to have a giant power, but cruel to use it like him,” writes Shakespeare. Moralism is also an integral part of Norton's film, where the unambiguously good and unambiguously evil face each other. It is important to just help people, Lionel repeatedly emphasizes this, in general, understandable and familiar to every axiom. In the end, it turns out that the film stands for all good against all bad,  However, Motherless Brooklyn is still entering the field of topical political commentary, and this is predictable, given that the role of the main city planner, who imagines himself a servant of the people, but in fact personifies the Hobbesian Leviathan, was played by none other than Alec Baldwin. The actor parodies Trump so often in movies and television shows that it feels like he alone has a license to do so. From the latter, one can recall at least a small caricature role of a racist professor in Spike Lee's "Black Clanman". Orphan Brooklyn, where Baldwin's hero is a real tyrant, reminds everyone that any organization is an elongated shadow of just one person. It was so in post-war America, and it remains so now. This order of affairs runs counter to Norton's humanistic views, therefore, with his film, he seems to be trying to instruct the audience and show what an individual simple person is capable of.  The neo-noir detective, twisting from one plot node to another, creates a panorama of society and political life of that time, only this portrait is polished and very conventional. Conventionality persists from the very beginning with an epigraph from Shakespeare to the finale, which Norton arranged like the last act of a theatrical play. However, the fourth wall still remains intact, although it was supposed to be destroyed, as, according to the film, the New York ghettos. The Topic of Article: Imaginary servants of the people. Review of Motherless Brooklyn. |
