Write Reader(s), we’re counting down the minutes to the start of the show, and Brooklyn is the second to last film to be reviewed on our list. 
Of course, it’s difficult to absorb a simple film like Brooklyn when you’ve just watched Matt Damon fly through space in The Martian, but I am prepared to do this.
Brooklyn is a film directed by John Crowley and written by Nick Hornby, and based on the book Brooklyn by Colm Toibin. Because everything this year is based on a book. I digress. Brooklyn stars Saoirse Ronan playing Eilis Lacey, Emory Cohen as Tony Fiorello, and a bunch of other delightful folks. Brooklyn is based in 1952, although it feels a whole lot earlier to those of us “children” in the audience (I sat in the theatre with some lovely older women who gasped to see 1950’s New York City, as though greeting an old friend). It has been nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay (as they all are) and Best Actress for Ronan.
Since it’s possible you hadn’t heard about this film, as I hadn’t, there are definitely going to be some spoilers in your future. Here they come.
A young lady named Eilis (pronounced Ay-lish) is living in a small town, somewhere in Ireland. She lives with her mother and her sister Rose. She works in a shop for a terrible old lady, and for some reason altogether unfathomable, she doesn’t want to stay in Ireland. Luckily, this kind father (priest) has found her a place to work and papers to get to New York and so she leaves. She has a rough time of it on the ship, what with sea sickness and food poisoning, but she manages to survive the trip with advice from her bunk mate. She makes it to Brooklyn, which is apparently where all of the Irish people live in New York, and begins working at a department store and lives in an Irish boarding house. Naturally, she is miserable. She doesn’t have many friends, and her family is far away, and life is altogether too hard. Until, of course, boy meets girl. The boy goes by the name of Tony Fiorello, and has already pronounced that he loves Irish girls. They meet at an Irish dance (I don’t really know what that means per se, aside from the fact that there are probably a number of Irish people there) and they get along famously. He’s sweet, and takes good care of her, and doesn’t talk too much about the Brooklyn Dodgers, which is an important quality in a man we discover.
The good father enrolls Eilis in bookkeeping classes, where she excels, and generally Eilis goes from being downright miserable to being happy as a clam. Tony even takes Eilis to meet his family, and tells her she loves him. Yes, this good, old-fashioned man tells her first, without any expectations. What a gentleman. That is, until her sister Rose dies. We don’t know why Rose dies, but we do get some foreshadowing that perhaps the two will never meet again. So Rose has passed, and Eilis decides to go home and visit, to stay and comfort her mother. Partially to appease Tony and I assume also because it makes her happy, before she leaves, she and Tony get married at City Hall, and tell no one about it. Eilis gets back to Ireland to find that her best friend is getting married. Since Eilis’ friend has introduced her to a young man named Jim, Eilis finds herself spending a lot of time with Jim. So much so, in fact, that she begins to develop feelings for him, and the whole town is wondering what will happen between them. Eilis even stops responding to Tony’s letters, and ends up working at a store where her sister used to work as a bookkeeper. However, just when we’re not quite sure if Eilis is going to actually go home, she is called to the old shop where she used to work, for that terrible old lady, who has somehow found out that Eilis is married to Tony. Eilis, naturally, is irritated at having been called on the carpet in front of a lady she no longer has to answer to, and announces that her name is Ellis Fiorello, and she marches out. She tells her mother, in a heartbreaking moment, that she is married, and that she is going home tomorrow. Her mother says she only wants to say goodbye once, insinuating that she won’t see her daughter ever again, and goes to bed. When Eilis gets back to New York, she sees her husband and they embrace.
Brooklyn is an incredibly subtle film, the most subtle of the bunch, in fact. I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to see until I got there. And when I did, I found an extraordinary gem of a film, hidden underneath absolutely nothing, and somehow entirely unknown to me. There is no artifice in this movie. Nothing explodes, there are no traitors or spies or double agents or plot twists (unless you count Jim, and I don’t). It’s not even particularly romantic when you get down to it. Eilis decides that she loves Tom not in a passionate embrace but after an evening of giving it careful consideration and asking one of her suite mates. It’s entirely a different sort of movie. And it’s beautiful.
Brooklyn gave me the feeling that I’m sure many immigrants felt upon coming to America. I couldn’t really tell the film was made in the 1950’s, aside from the kind of yellow cabs driving down the street. I feel this surprising amount of heartbreak with and for Eilis, I don’t know why it’s surprising, but somehow when you meet people in this country who are Irish-American, you just sort of think that they’ve always been here. Some people feel “new” to the nation, those people whose parts of them we haven’t always seen, like Syrians or Malasians. And yet, we all feel that longing for home. We all know that we don’t quite come from this place, that we’re somehow attached to somewhere across an ocean, and we kind of long for it, even if we never really think about it. Brookyn made this longing, this deep, innate homesickness rather present and aware.
I loved the very clear picture the director, writer, and actors created for me of the 1950s, which were extraordinarily different from today. The relationship between Eilis and Tony is stunning and quiet. I was amazed at how much tension comes from not touching someone, how much feeling and passion is created at arms length. It seems like it’s standard now-a-days for all of us to be all over each other, to be joined at the hip, to be embracing out in public and generally running around like we can’t stop touching (a trait I noticed in the high school students I taught). This very different feeling was not any less passionate, not any less important, in fact, because they managed to stuff their feelings insides their skin it is bursting to get out. The intensity with which Eilis and Tony finally embrace, after they are engaged, is overwhelmingly beautiful.
The boarding house girls provide a very fun, New York City fashion element to the film, and provide contrast to Eilis’ quiet upbringing and the difference between life in small town Ireland and life in the Big Apple. They are, unfortunately, quite giggly girls, but they seem to know a lot about dances, and lipstick, and about eating spaghetti such that you don’t splash sauce on your boyfriend’s family members. The woman who runs the boarding house, Miss Fontini, also creates a lot of atmosphere, and gives us that 1950’s repressed feeling I’m sure we’ve all been longing to experience.
Brooklyn is also beautifully rendered, with stunning footage, great camera work, costume design, and sound design. The underscoring is particularly lovely, and the silence is as well-placed as the sound. It is, on the whole, quite reminiscent of Amour, not in content per se, but in the quiet loveliness with which it conducts itself. It’ as though the whole of the film industry is vulgar and gauche compared to this quiet, poignant film which isn’t really about anything, and yet about everything that matters. I don’t know if it’s well-known enough to take the votes for Best Picture, but no matter whether or not it wins or loses, this film is a triumph for everyone involved.
Live, Love, Learn,
Rebecca &