To be clear: the non-cupcake, non-artisinal-pickle Brooklyn. Deserted streets under elevated trains, projects, for-all-we-know authentic slang, half the cast of The Wire (Wee Bey, Omar, Clay Davis). I saw Ethan Hawke in The Cherry Orchard at BAM. Will his Catholic cop with five kids and an asthmatic wife pregnant with twins turn dirty and take drug money to buy the bigger, mold-free house he’s promised his family? Only if Richard Gere’s jaded alcoholic divorced cop seven days from retirement can find some redemption by breaking up a human trafficking ring operating out of the same near-derelict neighborhood where he visits the prostitute whose comfort he’s come to mistake for love. The guy in the next seat over keeps calling Gere “the O.G.,” as in, “Oh shit, here comes that O.G. motherfucker again to take shit down.” Every movie is in 3D.
Every movie is in 4D. Time is real, says Cornel West: after the film you’re two hours older. They say to live is to learn how to die. So what do you have to learn? The autonomy of form. Cheadle’s undercover cop (who lives in a Williamsburg condo?) is in too deep. In prison and on the streets, taking on the shape of a criminal, he has become one. These narrative obstacles are your very own. Reach into your pocket: surprise: a badge, some cash, a gun.
Every movie is in 1D. The energy ball Ben saw, on DMT. A cheerio to my daughter, a child’s booger rolled between the fingers is anti-matter itself. That rubbing point between pads of thumb and index is the locus of serious sensuality, a conjuring- or contemplation-point where the kernel of the present winks in and out. A bit of held emptiness, a thing with no name. There is a secret somewhere in Brooklyn, and Brooklyn lays curled around it like a dragon. More on this when the time comes.
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