A movie for these times …

… Big Town, Big Talk: On “Motherless Brooklyn” - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The “New York isn’t as good as it was in [insert lionized era here]” bitch session is a time-honored tradition. But there’s a difference between not caring for the creative class revered by a new generation and there not being that class to revere or despise at all. It’s impossible to look at New York today and imagine it being the inspiration and incubator for the disparate likes of Frank O’Hara or Rona Jaffe or Patti Smith or Barbra Streisand or the New York Dolls or the Brill Building songwriters. Nostalgia is a perilous state for the artist or the critic to take up residence in, but when a culture has reduced itself to retread and revenue, you might as well long for a past with some substance to it.

Maybe this is why the 1950s New York in director, screenwriter, and star Edward Norton’s film of Jonathan Lethem’s novel Motherless Brooklyn feels alive in a way that the real New York City no longer does.