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FILM Rory Kiberd Eoghan Lyng Jack O’Higgins Shane
O’Reilly illustration: Morgan Motherless Brooklyn Director: Edward Norton Talent: Alec Baldwin, Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Mann Release: 6 December “What happens to poor people in this city wasn’t news yesterday, and it won’t be tomorrow.” – Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) fights gentrification in a detective agency in Motherless Brooklyn, Edward Norton’s directorial adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s 1999 novel. Remember when Edward Norton was one of the hottest actors in Hollywood? Jesus those were the days. Back at the turn of the century, Norton was working with the likes of David Fincher, Spike Lee, and Tony Kaye before he committed career suicide by publicly disowning American History X. About that. One of the reasons Kaye hates the final film so much is its protracted editing process in which his leading star wrestled away control of the film. And it’s wasn’t the last time either. Over the years he’s cultivated a bad rep for getting in scraps with writers and directors. Norton considers it collaboration. Others have called it creative interference. In a sense Motherless Brooklyn is his way of putting his money where his mouth is. This isn’t Norton’s first time in the director’s seat, but it’s notably more ambitious than his rom-com debut Keeping the Faith. Based on the novel of the same name, but given a transplant from the late ‘90s to the ‘50s, the film follows Lionel (Norton), a hapless private eye who’s afflicted with Tourette’s. When his boss is murdered in a shady deal, Lionel decides to find out what got him whacked, uncovering a huge conspiracy that involves gentrification and institutionalised white supremacy. Norton is swinging for the fences with this intricate story, but in the process, he’s managed to whack himself in the face with the bat. Despite its near two and a half hour running time, or perhaps because of it, Motherless Brooklyn feels scattered and indistinct, weighed down by the sheer amount of characters it introThe Kingmaker Director: Lauren Greenfield Release: 13 December In 1986, after a 21-year reign over the Philippines, Imelda Marcos and her despot husband, president Ferdinand Marcos, fled to Hawaii. Protestors tore into their abandoned palace, each claiming what they could from the 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 888 handbags, and 3000 pairs of shoes left behind. On the helicopter, Imelda Marcos sat with bags of inscribed gold bricks and millions of dollars of jewellery. In 1991 she and her family – minus the deceased Ferdinand – returned home, and before long Imelda was plotting the family’s political comeback. Greenfield’s remarkable film uses a mix of archival footage and one-on-one interviews with the First Lady from around the time of her son’s 2016 vice president campaign up until present day to build a fascinating picture of the Philippines. Imelda now uses her ill-gotten gains – spread between 170 hidden bank accounts, something she confesses to on camera while explaining the restraints she lives under – to not only fund her son’s campaign but also it turns out… well, you’ll see. Perhaps the most singularly fascinating and equally enraging element of The Kingmaker is how, on the one hand; yes Imelda Marcos is an incredibly smart and astute woman and also one of the greatest political manipulators of her time. She juxtaposes her ferocious nature with a rather saintly ‘mother of the Philippines’ attitude, the two sides of her woven quite perplexingly together. She sees herself as a saviour of the city, of the poor and of the people in general. When she was anything but. Under the eight years of martial law declared by Imelda’s husband in the 1970s, there were 3,257 extrajudicial killings, 35,000 individual tortures, and 70,000 people were incarcerated. It’s also reported that 737 Filipinos disappeared between 1975 and 1985. All this while the Marcos family amassed an illegally gained personal fortune of between five to ten billion dollars, most of which was never recovered. SOR duces. It wants to say… something about gentrification, but by the time the film concludes, it’s a little hard to parse Norton’s intention. Everyone greets the looming destruction of these communities with a defeated shrug, which you might say is a cynical bit of commentary, but it jars with the achingly sincere build-up. Mind you, it’s the only thing that stops the film from veering into white savior territory. Not helping matters is the fact that Motherless Brooklyn is a very drab film. Cinematographer Dick Pope has done incredible work, which makes the flat lighting and uninspired compositions here even more puzzling. Norton fails to show much directorial flare either, which is a big problem when you’re in well worn noir territory. The material is virtually on its hands and knees, begging someone to put a bit of stank on it, but it gets none. There’s a stacked cast – including Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe and Michael K. Williams – that delivers the creaky monologues and mountains of exposition with consummate professionalism. And Norton admittedly acquits himself well as Lionel, especially considering the potential for his Tourette’s impression to go down like Sean Penn in I Am Sam. But, ultimately, the film is too flavourless, too diluted by its desire to be many things at once. It’s a shame, because buried in Motherless Brooklyn is a good story. Maybe next time Norton can get a little help in the editing room. After all, we know he’s not adverse to a little collaboration. JOH So Long, My Son Director: Wang Xiaoshuai Talent: Wang Jingchun, Mei Yong Release: 6 December A rudimentary online search for information on the classics of Asian cinema will throw up the wonderful sweeping epics the likes of HsiaoHsien Hou’s masterpiece The City of Sadness, Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Blue Kite, Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern and To Live, Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, the list goes on. And while Wang Xiaoshuai’s latest is somewhat reminiscent of these films – there’s a cross-generational timeline told against the backdrop of the cultural revolution – So Long, My Son feels like it has much more in common with the gentler works of Edward Yang’s Yi Yi, Hirokazu Koreeda’s Still Walking or Ozu’s Tokyo Story. Told over 30 years, So Long, My Son is the story of married couple Liu Yaojun (Jingchun) and Wang Liyun (Yong) and their close relationship with another family, both of whom have sons born on the same day. When tragedy strikes, Yaojun and Liyun relocate to another province and lose all touch with their past life, until their past life comes looking for them. Jumping back and forth in non-linear fashion, much hardship befalls Xiaoshuai’s principle characters but it’s interwoven into a seamless 30-year tapestry full of life, love, happiness and sadness. There’s a quieter, deeper examination of the closeness and anxiety of the family unit here, reminiscent of Yang and Ozu, as one generation carefully watches and worries over another. The children grow and the adults lives take on a different meaning as they find their roles in their children’s lives subverted. So Long, My Son also shares similarities with Koreeda’s Still Walking; a similar discourse on parental grief and forgiveness. Both Jingchun as the temperamental husband and Yong as his more pragmatic other half are the heart and soul of the film and rightfully won best actor and actress gongs at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. A modern day Chinese masterpiece, there have been few films of equal stature released this year. SOR 76