Page 47Baz
Bamigboye
JACK Thorne is a busy
chap. He has the Harry
Potter play on in London
and Broadway, there are
TV dramas, a play
preparing for off
Broadway and now there’s
the script he has written
for the movie based on
Tim Winton’s novel Dirt
Music, just about the mostbeautifully shot film there
is. It’s set around the
coast of Western
Australia, parts of which I
know well, having got
married there and
holidayed there over
the years. The film stars
Kelly Macdonald,
Garrett Hedlund
and David Wenham.Daily Mail, Friday, September 6, 2019Norton
is going
ga-ga
for Gugu
W
HEN actor Edward Norton
was casting the leading lady
for his second film as a direc-
tor, he knew he wanted an
actress who was a ‘stone-
cold professional’ who wouldn’t need
hand-holding.
When he met British actress Gugu Mbatha-
Raw, he says, ‘I knew I’d found my heroine’.
He praised her work in everything from
Black Mirror to the film Belle. ‘She is
everything that’s best out of the British
system,’ said Norton of Mbatha-Raw, who
lives in Los Angeles but works on both sides
of the Atlantic.
Norton had spent years perfecting his
screenplay based on Jonathan Lethem’s
best-selling 1999 crime novel
Motherless Brooklyn, narrated by Lionel
Essrog, an amateur detective with
Tourette’s syndrome.
As well as directing, Norton plays Essrog.
He shifted the story from the Nineties to
the Fifties and infused it with a jazz vibe.
The resulting movie is right out of the
film noir tradition; dangerously dark
and delicious. At the heart of it is Essrog.
Because of his affliction, he’s almost
invisible. In the film, he hooks up with
Mbatha-Raw’s Laura Rose (an invented
character not featured in the book).S
HE’S a lawyer for a local government
agency that tries to protect the
rights of mainly black apartment
dwellers who are being driven out of
the city by a bullying, autocratic city boss,
played by Alec Baldwin.
It’s a film about murder, women, power
and jazz.
Audiences at the Telluride Film Festival
debated it endlessly. Some thought it too
long, while others couldn’t get enough of
the sexy, sultry movie beautifully shot by
the legendary Dick Pope, Mike Leigh’s
favourite cinematographer.
In fact, Norton said, Pope was a guiding
hand on the film. ‘Dick would go: “I’m only
’umble, but is that what you mean to do?”’
Norton told me, mimicking Pope’s
cockney accent.
The lush and unexpected way of relaying
who’s behind the murder of Essrog’s boss,
played by Bruce Willis, came to Norton as
he grappled with how to present a herowho’s not in the classic mould of ‘the
smooth-talking guy who knows all the
angles’. He added that the noir narrative
allowed him to look at the corruption that
riddles major cities: ‘The truth was that New
York City was being reshaped by a racist
tyrant who wanted permanent poverty for
non-whites.’
Baldwin’s character Moses Randolph is
based on real-life power broker Robert
Moses (long dead). He was, in all senses, a
master builder who ripped the city apart.
Norton said that as he was in pre-
production, Donald Trump was running for
president, adding that his film tackles ‘the
big man problem’.
Mbatha-Raw is terrific in it, as is Willem
Dafoe as an architect who was once close to
Moses Randolph.
A major aspect of the movie is the music.
Norton worked closely with London-based
composer Daniel Pemberton, and
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke who wrote the
film’s potent ballad.
It was a genius decision to hire jazz
visionary Wynton Marsalis to orchestrate
Yorke’s number. ‘It’s the mashing up of
Thom Yorke’s modernism and Wynton’s
classical jazz,’ Norton explained.
The film is also showing at the Toronto
International Film Festival on Tuesday and
will open in late November, which also sees
the release of Pemberton’s score and a
separate soundtrack album.FOLLOW BAZ ON TWITTER @BAZBAMWatch out for...
Scarlett Johansson
and adam Driver, who
excel in Noah Baumbach’s
film Marriage Story (his
masterpiece). Driver was
being feted at telluride while
Johansson was in london
shooting Black Widow. I had
a ten-second chat with
Driver about the brilliant
sequence where he performs
all of the Being alive song
from the musical company.
the song makes the point
that for Driver’s character,
‘alone is alone, not alive’.
Beautifully done. Johansson,
with Merritt Wever and Julie
Hagerty, sings You could
Drive a Person crazy, also
from company. Maybe they
could sing it at the Oscars?
KELVIN Harrison Jr. and
Taylor Russell, who play
siblings raised by well-off
parents including a stern
father (played by Sterling K.Brown) in the film Waves.
Tyler (Harrison Jr. ) is
pushed so hard by his father
to excel in sport that the lad
still participates in wrestling
matches even though he
has crushed a shoulder. He
pops painkillers to beat the
pain, creating more
problems. How far should
we push our offspring?That’s the message of Trey
Edward Shults’s dynamite
drama. I can’t deny I felt
pangs of guilt as I watched,
and I know others at
Telluride did, too. It’s not on
the BFI London Film Festival
list. It must be added.
reNee Zellweger, who
has emerged as a forceful
awards season contender forher outstanding portrayal of
a fragile Judy Garland at the
end of her career in rupert
Goold’s superb film Judy. It
played well at telluride and
will be showing in toronto. I
watched it again, and
realised there were so many
in the audience who hadn’t
been aware Garland was
almost destitute before being
offered concert dates at the
talk of the town.
as well as appreciating
Zellweger’s brilliant work, I
was struck by how good the
supporting roles were, played
by Jessie Buckley, Finn
Wittrock, rufus Sewell,
Michael Gambon, royce
Pierreson, andy Nyman and
John Dagleish. Pathe UK and
BBc Films have a contender
on their hands.Speed kings:
Damon, left,
and BalePictures: MERRICK MORTON/VIVIENE
KILLILEA/PAUL BEST/GETTY IMAGESOnes to watch: Left
to right, Adam Driver,
Taylor Russell and
Renee ZellwegerDream team: Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw