Brooklyn is a film that was added to my watch list as one of the notable releases of last year but I honestly wasn’t expecting too much from it. One Broken Forum poster called it pleasant but somewhat pointless. Director John Crowley appears to be known more for theater work than for his films and though Saoirse Ronan has been in a few high profile releases, she’s not an acting heavyweight. In the event, my initial impressions were largely proven correct and my biggest surprise is how much my wife liked it.
Ellis Lacey is a typical young woman in Enniscorthy, Ireland in the early 1950s. With no prospects back home, she leaves for a job in the United States, leaving behind her mother and her sister. An Irish priest helps arrange a job in a department store for her as well as a boarding house full of Irish girls in a similar situation, At first, she has a hard time adapting to living by herself and is plagued by fits of homesickness. Then she meets a young Italian plumber who is romantically interested in her and their relationship helps her to think of New York more as her new home. When tragedy strikes, she returns to Ireland to comfort her mother and eventually finds that she has to choose between her new home and her old one.
The film is light, breezy and as my wife notes, heavily tinged with a sense of nostalgia for better times long gone. Ellis’ story is practically that of the ideal immigrant. There are many ways things could go wrong for a young woman travelling thousands of miles away to live and work by herself but nothing truly dark ever befalls her. Throughout the entire film, I kept expecting some betrayal or other. Perhaps the kindly priest has nefarious motives, perhaps the dashing young man would abandon her before they got married, perhaps her supervisor would poison her career, but Brooklyn just isn’t that kind of film and Ellis ends up living an unrealistically charmed life with the just the right opportunities arriving at her doorstep at the right moments to help her overcome whatever challenges life might throw her way.
Still despite it not having the requisite amount of darkness to ground it as a serious film and the prevalence of giggly housemates, there’s plenty to like in Brooklyn. I enjoyed the nostalgic moments and Ellis is a character that any member of the audience can easily sympathize with. I was surprised by how much agency her character has. She isn’t a girl who gets chosen by guys, she’s the one who chooses them. At all times, it’s clear that she and she alone has ultimate control over every aspect of her life and ultimately her own destiny. My wife seemed to really enjoy what a slow boil the romance here. This is exactly the kind of slow-paced, one step at a time, take the partner to meet the family before anything significant happens romance, that mothers everywhere prefer their children to go through. It’s certainly quaint and almost impossible to see in modern western films.
Finally, I’m pleased at how powerful an argument this film makes in favor of immigration. Both Ellis and her Italian beau are immigrants. Though this film doesn’t show it, Irish immigrants at that time faced plenty of vitriol and discrimination too, including insults that equated them to animals. Yet no Trump supporter today could coherently deny that they’re Americans through and through. It’s a lose-lose argument for them and I love how Brooklyn aptly shows that without needing to talk about the issue at all.