“Motherless Brooklyn,” based on the novel by Jonathan Lethem, premiered in the US on November 1, 2019
Urban Design (and Architecture) And Film
Motherless Brooklyn is a film from Warner Brothers, which premiered at the beginning of November. With a cast of stars—Edward Norton (who also wrote the screenplay and directed the film), Bruce Willis, Alex Baldwin, and William Defoe—it has received good reviews and has impressed some critics. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian referred to it as “…a strong, vehement film with a real sense of time and place," and the New York Times’ critic said it was “…bristling with ideas about history, politics, art and urban planning.”
How often is urban planning (or architecture) featured in films?
Well, land use and ownership issues certainly are the subjects of films—and frequently. They get focused upon in several ways: who controls large swaths of territory (as in the wars and battles of feudal or colonial history, depicted in endless films); how land is treated (and the consequence of various uses, like the conflict between farmers and cattlemen in some Westerns, and notably mentioned in Oklahoma!);, in emotional attachment to the land (the prime example would be Gone With The Wind); and even in manipulations of water sources (as in the Oscar-winning 1974 film, Chinatown.)
The gigantic, inclined slabs of futuristic buildings in Los Angeles—one of the views of the city (and the setting of some of its action) from the 1982 film, Blade Runner.
But urban design (and it’s manifestation specifically as architecture), as a focus, is not often a subject for mainstream Hollywood. Exceptions are typically in the realm of science fiction (films like Metropolis or Blade Runner), or in documentaries. Both types can yield superb, even classic cinema—but they are either depicting the far possibilities of human existence (in the former) -or- are at the edges of public consciousness (and reflected in “low box office” and relatively small budgets) for the latter.
There have been some films with architects as protagonists—but, compared to other professionals (lawyers or doctors), architects-as-characters have had a minuscule presence in the history of film. Columbus and In the Belly of an Architect are interesting exceptions—but the only widely-known movie about an architect or urban designer seems to be The Fountainhead. That 1949 picture had a powerful studio behind it (Warner Brothers), major stars (Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Raymond Massey), a director with a long track record of success (King Vidor), and the direct involvement of the book’s author (Ayn Rand). But even with such firepower, it was not a box office or critical triumph, and—tho’ always adored by architects—only in later years has the film received a more positive reevaluation.
A publicity shot from “The Fountainhead.” Howard Roark (left, played by Gary Cooper) and his Sullivanesque mentor Henry Cameron (played by Henry Hull) seem to be studying a building inspired by Mies’ Luxemburg-Liebknecht Monument—a profound irony, given the film’s philosophy—but that’s Hollywood!
A Film That Engages With Urban Design
So it is a delightful surprise to see urban design get a serious treatment, as it does in Motherless Brooklyn. The film—based on Johnathan Lethem’s award-winning 1999 novel—is fascinating, and skillfully intertwines crime, large urban design conceptions, and personal drama. The film’s plot is too involved to encapsulate (though you can see a useful summary here)—but what is intriguing is to see the power, manipulation, and politics which go into such civic “sausage making”.
The film is based on Jonathan Lethem’s novel, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1999.
Central to the story is a character based on New York City’s mega-planner (and power-broker) Robert Moses, in the film named Moses Randolph (and played by Alec Baldwin). One of the key scenes, between the protagonist detective (payed by Edward Norton) and Moses/Randolph takes place in the latter’s office:
A confrontation between the Robert Moses-like character on the left, “Moses Randolph” (Alec Baldwin) and th protagonist: detective Lionel Essrog (played by Norton). The setting is in the former’s office, and between them is a large model of one of Moses Randolph’s projects. Elsewhere in the office (not seen in this view) are renderings of a project that Paul Rudolph designed for Robert Moses: the Lower Manhattan Expressway (“LOMEX”). [Its inclusion is an anachronism: Rudolph did he project in the decade following the time in which the movie is set—as is the spherical object at the front-center of this picture (which evokes the Unisphere of the New York World’s Fair, which was also a decade into the future.)]
One of Paul Rudolph’s renderings for the LOMEX project can be seen here, in the background, during a scene in Moses Randolph’s office.
There’s an interesting interview with Norton at CURBED, here. In it, architecture critic Alexandra Lange asks his thoughts about creating a character based on Robert Moses.
Did you then decide you wanted to have Moses himself as the bad guy?
This is not a true story. Citizen Kane is in some ways about William Randolph Hearst, but it also isn’t. If you are going to tell a true story, you need to tell the full true story and stick to the truth. If you want to make a literary version of things—like Citizen Kane does or Chinatown does... Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men is inspired by Huey Long, but it isn’t about Huey Long. That’s the direction I wanted to go.
Obviously, for anybody listening to the dialogue, there are references to a variety of types of power brokers and predators. Alec Baldwin’s character has dimensions and characteristics of a lot of different people.
When Lionel visits Moses Randolph’s office on Randall’s Island, I noticed there were pictures pinned to the wall of the Lower Manhattan Expressway Project, designed by Paul Rudolph, a famous battle between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. [Ed. note: Rudolph designed the famously never-built megastructure in the 1960s—a full decade after the loose re-setting of the film.]
We had a variety of stuff. We had homages to the WPA murals, which a guy like that in the 1950s would still have had in his offices. We had physical models that were referencing things like the Verrazano Bridge and the Queens World’s Fair. And the expressway. We pulled from a variety of inspirations of urban design at that time.
What themes were you trying to underline by having those projects in the background?
We wanted to convey vision. You are set up to believe that this guy is in many ways a monster—he is described as “an autocratic Caesar.” You hear him introduced at the builders’ dinner as someone who—you would have to look to the pharaohs to find someone with the scale of vision.
In that scene he is very seductive. He is clearly more than just an ogre, more than just a brute. He has a philosophy, and he is thinking in Olympian-like terms about cities and what you need to do to transform them. He has a rationale for what he is doing.
In this interview Edward Norton also shares further reflections on urban design, and it shows him to be a filmmaker who is taking these issues seriously.
The Real LOMEX
The Lower Manhattan Expressway project—which Paul Rudolph really did design for his client, Robert Moses—is always worth revisiting. Here are some renderings of his concept—and you can see a fuller set of images at the Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation’s project page for it.
A perspective rendering by Paul Rudolph of the LOMEX project, a portion of which can be seen in the movie scene shown above. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.
A section-perspective, showing Rudolph’s megastructure design spanning Manhattan. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.
A perspective, by Paul Rudolph, indicating the many urban layers—including buildings, transpiration, and information systems—that would be part of the LOMEX design. © The Estate of Paul Rudolph, The Paul Rudolph Heritage Foundation.
The Real Moses?
Norton sought, like any fine filmmaker, to give his characters “roundness”: subtility, depth, and complexity. Thus he did not make his Moses into an undiluted monster, but rather granted that he might have real and positive motivations—a vision for his city and region—and hence reasons for his actions.
But what of the historical Robert Moses?
Robert Moses (1888-1981), seen with a model for his late 1930’s proposed (but not built) Brooklyn-Battery Bridge. Photograph by C. M. Steiglitz, Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.
To date, probably the fairest, concise overall assessment of Moses is the article by urban & architectural historian Francis Morrone: “Longing for Robert Moses”, which you can read here.
Rudolph on Film
Rudolph is the subject of an Academy Award-nominated documentary about him, “Spaces: the Architecture of Paul Rudolph”—-and he appears (or is spoken of) in several others. You can see a summary of Rudolph on film and video in our post, here.
In Motherless Brooklyn, it’s great that some of Rudolph’s work (indeed one if his most visionary projects) gets a viewing—and we’re glad that there’s an acknowledgment of him, by name, in the end credits. We look forward to the great imagination of Paul Rudolph being utilized in future film projects.
Memo to all Directors and Production Designers: we’re always willing to take a meeting!