Saoirse Ronan is an actress whose career we have followed since she essentially anchored and made Atonement a film that is simply heartbreaking. Since then she been the star in stunning films, such as Hanna, and been part of an electric ensemble, such as her part in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. Now she’s back headlining in Brooklyn.
The work is such a delightful movie, you will simply want to wrap your arms around the entire film and its star and give it the warmest of embraced.
Ronan plays Eilis, a young Irish woman who as our story begins is living her life as her sister and mother has before her in a small town in 1950s Ireland. Eilis toils in a pedantic life where she works in a market a couple of days a week and goes to weekly dances at the church hoping to meet a man. Then, she is given the chance (thanks to her sister and a priest at their local church) at a better life in America. She sadly leaves her sister and mother behind and heads out on a steamship towards the land “whose streets are paved with gold.”
Once in America, she settles into a Brooklyn boarding house, a counter job at a high-end department store in the borough and of course, a church where she still attends dances each Saturday night. Ronan and director John Crowley paint a perfect picture of what it is like to not only be homesick, but also to be a stranger in a strange land. More on that aspect later…
The priest at the local church, Father Flood (Jim Broadbent, awesome as always) sees his charge often and knows just the thing to help her get over her blues. He enrolls her in Brooklyn College and she begins her studies to be an accountant. She has smarts, and it turns out the good Father knew exactly what would help take her mind off of homesickness, as well as provide her with an even brighter future than landing in America had provided with a high-end retail job.
Almost at that same point, Eilis meets an Italian, first generation American, at one of these dances (he has a thing for Irish girls!). Tony (an adorable Emery Cohen) is sweet, kind and the exact example of why his parents came to America. He works hard as a plumber and his talent is so in-demand, that business is good and opportunities are literally flooding in to the young go-getter. But, his clear passion is Eilis. But, just as they profess their love for one another, she is called home for a family emergency that requires her to look at the life she has started in America, the life she has left behind in Ireland and to choose between going forward and going back and all the emotional cost each decision will take on her soul.
Crowley makes a strong statement with Brooklyn about a time in this country where immigrants flooded Ellis Island in hopes of a better life and the struggles they went through to give their children and grandchildren a standard of living that was exponentially greater than any they could have enjoyed in their homeland. Crowley does magic with Nick Hornby’s script (which is based on Colm Tolbin’s novel) and gives us a tapestry of hope, love and realistic innocence that is nothing short of a delight.
There is also a timeless feel to this film, which is also incredible given how it’s clearly set in the 1950s. But what Elias goes through mirrors what every immigrant who came to America went through from the early days of this nation through today. It has a heart and soul that is downright profound, and honestly rare to find on film these days.
Brooklyn is also inspiring. It reminds us that although opportunities may seem more scarce than compared to our parents or grandparents, that this is still a country where hard work is rewarded. If you play by the rules, do your best and apply your natural talents to an effort, most often… that endeavor will be rewarded. Exiting the theater after seeing Brooklyn, it was like a shot in the arm to get back to realizing the goals that first drove this writer to become one who put pen to paper.
Above all else, the highlight of this visit to Brooklyn is the mesmerizing talent of Ronan. She has grown immensely as a performer, which is incredible given the power she showed in Atonement. The emotional compass she has to navigate in this film is massive and demanding, and she handles it with grace, compassion and a clear focus on where this character’s been, where’s she’s is in any given cinematic moment and most importantly, where she is going.
Grade: A