Review: ‘Brooklyn’

Did you know that the name Saoirse is pronounced “Seeir-sha?” Well, now you do.

With that out of the way, “Brooklyn” stars Saoirse Ronan as an early 1950s young Irish immigrant, heading to America in search of a life better than the one she could have at home. This is a love story, but it is more than that as well, as our main character is in a state of transition and we see her start to realize some of her potential and find her place in the world.

Eilis (Ronan) starts out living with her mother and sister in Ireland, where she can’t get a job because the economy is rubbish and for whatever reason she can’t find a decent enough fella. Her sister pulls some strings, though, and Eilis finds herself on a freighter heading for America, where a job at a department story and a room in a boarding house await her. Initially she is miserable, as she has difficulty getting along with the other girls in the house and can’t stop thinking about home and how much she misses her family. But then she meets a nice dude (Emory Cohen), and she starts to get along with the people around her, and before you know it, she’s finally making a nice life of her own.

Which is why it sucks when a family matter has her going back to Ireland for an extended period of time, possibly screwing all of that up for her. When she gets back to Ireland, she is reminded of how beautiful and totally not crowded her homeland is, especially when compared to the densely populated concrete jungle that is New York City, and she reconnects with old friends and makes new ones. She also finds a job opportunity, and people all around her start to push her to marry an eligible young bachelor (Domnhall Gleeson), who seems like a perfectly nice fellow and a good match for her, and she is faced with a decision – does she leave her family behind a second time to go back to the life she has waiting for her in New York, or does she stay and live this one that other people have set up for her?

It is a testament to the story and to the character work in this movie that I actually cared about the outcome, I wanted to know which life she would choose, and I even had an opinion as to the choice I hoped she would make. We watch the character go through quite a bit in a relatively short time, and we see her become more open, more confident, become more adult-like, and it is satisfying to watch this person grow and change, so that when she then has a huge change in her life thrust upon her, we can’t help but feel for her. She’s come so far, she’s overcome some hard emotional times, and now she has to deal with a whole other set of problems and worries, as she has to make some pretty big decisions regarding where she would be living. And remember, this is the early 50s, so moving to another country isn’t as easy as it is today, and global communication is obviously nowhere near what it is now.

In addition to the story being very good and well told, every actor involved does great work. Saoirse Ronan communicates so much with just simple looks and gestures, and she has expressive eyes that beg people to wonder what is going on behind them, so she is kind of perfect in being able to convey so much change in a person over a period of time without having to “act” so different – in just the way she addresses people and in the way she walks we can tell this mousy girl is becoming a full fledged adult. And both of her suitors, Cohen and Gleeson, are pretty great in their smaller but still significant roles. By this point we know what Gleeson is capable of, as the son of Brendan has shown that the acting chops don’t fall far from the tree, but Emory Cohen has had far fewer big gigs and here he shines as the lovable Italian plumber from Brooklyn who loves Irish girls almost as much as he loves the Dodgers. He comes in and sweeps Eilis off her feet, along with the audience, and it makes it hard not to root for this guy to get this girl because they seem to make each other so happy. Which means when Gleeson’s character shows up and he seems super nice, too, we can understand why this would contribute to the problems Eilis would have in choosing a path for herself.

Speaking in terms of genre and tone, this definitely has that period piece love story thing going for it, with everything lovingly shot, gorgeous colors everywhere, with a presentation of an idealized version of 1950s New York City, and it also has a decent amount of humor and comedy interwoven through it so that the film isn’t all overly sappy emotions or nonstop scenes of general longing. This is all balanced quite well, which makes “Brooklyn” a movie that could be considered easy to watch.

This is a very good movie, for sure, that’s why so many people like it and are responding well to it, and it is easy to see why. Great acting, nice to look at, a compelling story, universal in its specificity, “Brooklyn” is a film that even people who wouldn’t normally see this kind of thing would find themselves enjoying.