Review

Brooklyn

Before we begin, let me say that Brooklyn is the sort of movie that any decent person ought to enjoy. It is full of heart and longing, and if it fails to stir something inside you perhaps you should consider that it is you, and not John Crowley's exquisitely crafted movie, that is at fault.

I mean this, though I'm compelled to confess that Brooklyn bored me silly when its gorgeous green-screen process shots weren't stinging my eyes. It is an extraordinarily well-made film, and Saoirse Ronan's central performance is nuanced and entirely credible. You will believe in her character, even if you can't completely grant her your empathy.

Brooklyn

85 Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters

Director: John Crowley

Rating: PG-13, for a scene of sexuality and brief strong language

Running time: 111 minutes

So I will try to do what a remarkable number of letter writers have urged me to do over the years, which is to offer an objective review. Adapted from a beloved novel by Colm Toibin (which I have not read), and adapted by the generally reliable Nick Hornby, Brooklyn is the story of Eilis Lacey (Ronan), a quiet and dutiful Irish girl who in 1952 emigrates from her rural village in County Wexford in southeast Ireland to the titular borough across the river from the high buildings of Manhattan.

Eilis is more or less forced to leave her beloved, capable sister (Fiona Glascott) and fragile mother (Jane Brennan). Since there are simply no viable prospects for her at home, the Church has arranged the trip for her. Once in America, she'll be met by the ever helpful Father Flood (Jim Broadbent, overqualified but welcome), who has secured her a room in a boarding house and employment in an upscale department store. To refuse the offer would be churlish, so off she goes, mouse-meek and susceptible to being abused by her steamship suite mates. When she arrives she finds the bustling foreignness of the place unsettling.

Yet she persists and finds her place among the brassier, older Irish girls (a colorful pack consisting of Eve Macklin, Emily Bett Rickards, and Nora-Jane Noone) who gather around the table set by their stern but fair landlady Mrs. Kehoe (a splendid Julie Walters) every night. At first Eilis has trouble adjusting to the banter and to her new job in the cosmetics department, where her chilly boss (Jessica Pare) instructs her to smile and engage the customers. But poor Eilis is so sad, a stranger in a strange land populated by loud and pushy Americans.

But slowly she gains her feet. She begins to dress better, she aces her night classes in accounting. She fights through the homesickness by writing letters home and eventually finds herself the object of a boy's affection -- an Italian boy, as it happens, or rather an irascible American boy of Italian descent named Tony played with some charm by Emory Cohen. Tony is irrepressible and ambitious but uncommonly warm and understanding. He loves Eilis, he really does. She comes to love him too, in her deliberate, Old World way. Enough finally to plot a future with him.

But then a tragedy sweeps Eilis back across the ocean and she finds her familiar old town has changed. It seems less narrow and gray, and best of all it welcomes her. Suddenly tumblers begin to click, possibilities present themselves. She is home, and a young tavern owner (Domhnall Gleeson), recently come into his inheritance, takes an interest in her. Perhaps she could have a life here after all.

But what of the boy across the sea?

There are some genuinely wonderful things about Brooklyn. It is a movie that recognizes how complex human interactions sometimes are and how strong bonds of family and kith can be. No doubt some will feel empathy with Eilis' "dilemma," though I saw it as no dilemma at all. We all make decisions we have to live with, and all of us have roads we choose not to take.

What most people who love this movie are responding to is the way Brooklyn marries old-fashioned cinematic virtues (graceful camera movements, spot-on period details, high production values) with psychological precision and emotional specificity -- it feels very much like someone's grandmother's true story.

While it is sentimental, it avoids bathos. Most of the characters feel like decent, responsible people. There are a couple of lively dinner table scenes -- we could have done with more of Tony's family and the boarding-house ladies. While the film feels old-fashioned and sentimental in a lot of ways, it doesn't insist on unalloyed heroes or villains (there's only one character in the movie who could be fairly called reprehensible). And if Eilis' quandary doesn't rise to the level of Sophie's, it's one with which a lot of folks identify.

Just not me. Perhaps I have watched too many Abel Ferrara movies or damaged myself with South Park and Archer. All I know is that the experience of sitting through it made me want to act out in the theater, to audibly groan. Watching Brooklyn I felt like a vampire exposed to a crucifix or a sanitizing sunrise -- destroyed by its goodness.

MovieStyle on 11/27/2015

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