Bruce Willis is one of the famous actors whose names appear in the credits of Edward Norton‘s ‘Motherless Brooklyn‘, the actor who has been a director for over two decades writing this adaptation of a Jonathan Lethem‘s novel that directed and release now on screens. Detective Frank Minna, Willis‘s character, dies about five minutes after the beginning of the film, which is a sign that it is not one of those action films in which he (otherwise an excellent actor) has specialized in the last decades. But Minna leaves behind a mystery to be solved by his employee Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton) and who will immerse him in a complicated plot with ramifications in the political corruption surrounding New York’s city developments, and us, as spectators in one of the most authentic cinematic experiences, a time travel in the American reality of the 50’s.
The talented actor who is Norton was of course fascinated by the role of the detective struck by a nervous illness (Tourette’s syndrome) that produces mechanical tics and involuntary and ‘unconventional’ verbal expressions. His acting performance is remarkable, but there are plenty of other reasons that make ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ one of the most exciting films of a season among the best in the last decade. To say that the world of New York 60 years ago is well reconstructed on screen is too little. Every detail is compelling and natural, so we have the feeling that we are immersed in this world, with its lights and darkness, with racial inequalities and social injustices, with coin phones and with the fog engulfing the bridges connecting Manhattan to the rest of the city, with nightclubs and the ubiquitous smoke of cigarettes. And then the music – the superb soundtrack of the film, the jazz of the mid-20th century, the sound and rhythm of the city with its joys and despairs.
It would be unfair to mention only Norton‘s acting and omit a team of first-hand actors, some famous, others about to become famous. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is an actress I haven’t noticed before and who is launching, I hope, a great career. Bruce Willis appears little, but enough to remind us of how good an actor he can be, and to trigger the whole plot of the movie. Willem Dafoe is amazingly different here, just as amazingly different and very good as in any role he play. The only one who gives a sense of repetition is Alec Baldwin. I understand his motivation on playing negative roles of tycoons or corrupt politicians, but he does it too often in the same tone, thus risking becoming unconvincing. The message that the corruption of politicians and capitalist sharks seems to have remained the same for more than half a century is obvious and does not require explicit overstatement. ‘Motherless Brooklyn‘ is a film that manages to convince through the mastery of reconstruction, the emotion created by the relationships that are established between the characters and the empathy for those different from the norms of the times.