| Brooklyn | |
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by Peter J. O’Connell
Brooklyn. Released:
Nov. 2015. Runtime: 111 mins. Rating: PG-13 for a scene of sexuality and brief
strong language.
Brooklyn is the
story of a young woman torn between two countries and two loves. The film is
directed by John Crowley, with a screenplay by Nick Hornby, based on the novel
by Colm Toibin.
The young woman is Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan). It’s 1952,
and Eilis lives in Enniscourthy, a small town in Ireland, with her mother and
sister. Eilis works in a small store with a nasty woman as her boss. Eilis is
quite intelligent but rather reserved. She does, however, make mocking comments
about the scions of the town’s few wealthy families when the young men come to
a dance. Though she is reserved, Eilis is also restless in the constricted
lifestyle of Enniscourthy. So when an offer arrives from a family friend,
Father Flood (Jim Broadbent), a kindly priest now in Brooklyn, to find Eilis a
job and accommodations there, Eilis makes the momentous decision to emigrate.
In Brooklyn the job is as a salesclerk in a department
store. Eilis has to be mentored by her boss (Jessica Pare) on how to engage in the
outgoing American-style of salesmanship, but she gradually picks up on it. Her
accommodations are in a boarding house for young women run by Mrs. Keogh (Julie
Walter), also Irish. The young women mentor Eilis in the “young women things”
of 1952 Brooklyn, and Mrs. Keogh also adds her more conservative advice, often
in an inadvertently humorous way.
Father Flood senses that Eilis is starting to think of
improving her situation in the land of opportunity, so he has her enroll in a
bookkeeping class at Brooklyn College. Eilis thinks that she might like to
become an accountant, although she knows that there are few women in the field
at that time.
These promising developments in Eilis’ life become even more
so when she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), a plumber, at a dance in her parish hall.
The dance scene is a good example of the film’s fine sense of place and period,
particularly the degree of assimilation prevailing in the neighborhood of many
immigrants. A traditional Irish song is played, and a jazzier song, and a slow
dance tune, and “The Yellow Rose of Texas”!
Tony falls deeply in love with Eilis, who loves him back,
though not as deeply. Eilis has to adjust to the fact that Tony is not Irish,
or even Irish-American, but Italian-American and blue-collar rather than
white-collar, like an accountant. Some humorous scenes result as Eilis has to
be taught how to eat Italian food before visiting Tony’s family and then has to
deal with an account of fighting between Irish and Italian youth.
The romance between Eilis and Tony flourishes, though. At
one point Tony takes Eilis to an area of open, uninhabited fields on Long
Island and says that he and his family are going to move there and advance
themselves by becoming contractors and real estate developers. Then he proposes
to Eilis. She accepts.
Not long after, however, a tragedy occurs necessitating
Eilis’ return to Ireland. Before she leaves, however, the lovestruck Tony
persuades her to marry him in a civil ceremony that they will try to keep
secret until events can be sorted out.
But once Eilis is back in Ireland, events conspire to keep
her there longer than she had planned, long enough for her to meet Jim
(Domhnall Gleeson), one of the scions whom she had mocked before leaving for
America. Now, however, she finds Jim to be attractive—and he her.
Eilis begins to consider whether she should, in fact, return
to America. Sights and sounds cause her to compare and contrast the two
countries and the men in her life representative of each. For example, she goes
with Jim to an extensive Irish beach, beautiful but completely empty, except
for the couple and their two friends. In Brooklyn she had gone with Tony to
funky Coney Island, full of crowds and fun. But. she wonders: Will those open
fields in Long Island ever really become covered with houses filled with
families?
The choice Eilis faces is, to use a phrase of recent years,
between the “known known” (Ireland—a familiar but constricted way of life) and
the “known unknown” (America—land of opportunity, and uncertainty). Eventually,
there is a revelatory encounter that leads Eilis to make her choice.
Saoirse Ronan—tall, pale, somewhat long-faced—is not
conventionally beautiful in the Hollywood sense, but she does emanate a kind of
quiet charisma that makes her vey appealing and is perfectly suited to her
character. She richly deserves her Oscar nomination for Best Actress. The
supporting cast is also quite good. The direction by John Crowley is low-key in
a cinematographic sense, but Crowley’s handling of his fine cast is itself fine
work.
Brooklyn is a
story of an immigrant who does not, as many immigrants did, have to face
exploitation and discrimination, but who did have to make some difficult
choices. It is an Irish story, an American story, a woman’s story, a human
story. It deserves its Best Picture nomination. You should see it.
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