Movie review: ‘Brooklyn' brings smiles and tears
Have you checked out the current crop of movies recently? Let's see: Spies being shot at and shooting back, different spies being arrested and swapped, astronauts being left for dead on distant worlds, monsters jumping out of books and trying to kill kids, another entry in the below-par "Paranormal Activity" series, another Steve (yawn) Jobs story.
If you need a respite from all of that, if you're looking for a nice movie about nice people, look no further than "Brooklyn," adapted from the 2010 novel by Colm Toibin.
We're in County Wexford, Ireland, in the early-1950s. Young Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) has had enough of her every-day-is-the-same life: working in a small shop for her nasty boss, dutifully going to church but always breaking into yawns there. She's tight with her mom and with her younger sister Rose, and she loves hanging out with her best pal Nancy (Eileen O'Higgins). But, she reasons, there's just got to be more, and a decision is made to leave for America to find her future.
A crisply written and directed series of sequences has mournful string music playing at the docks as she's sailing off, followed by a horrific night of seasickness, during which she's given some sage advice by her sassy cabin roommate, and finally arrival in New York, with only a suitcase and a purse to her name.
Eilis isn't stumbling blindly into America. Some plans have been lined up. Kindly Irish New Yorker Father Flood (Jim Broadbent) has arranged for her to stay at a rooming house, and has secured her a job at a department store. The rooming house, run by stern, but good-hearted Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters) provides her with friendly chatter at the dinner table among the other young women living there, and the job is at first challenging, but she'll be fine there.
It's only after all of this introductory business that we realize how far Saoirse Ronan has come since her child star days in "Atonement." She's developed into a mature young actress, able to handle all sorts of emotional range. It's at this point in the film that, despite the welcome Eilis has received in her new world, Ronan reveals that Eilis is sad and lost, and doesn't know what she's gotten herself into.
But remember ... nice movie, nice people. The priest finds her a college class to help her get ahead at work, she meets a young man at a dance. Hold it right there! What's a nice Italian boy doing at an Irish dance? Well, he's looking for a nice Irish girl. Although the script isn't very good about telling people's names, we eventually find out that he's Tony (Emory Cohen), a plumber with a good outlook on life. Eilis is charmed by him, and is able to relax in his company, choosing to talk and talk while he just listens and smiles.
Things are going well for Eilis in America, until things start going wrong back home in Ireland, which is where, even though there's initially plenty of warm and funny content, the story's emotional side starts to get a bit heavy. It hasn't been weighed out on scales, but there seems to be an equal amount of smiling and crying in this film.
Some characters know what they want, others are conflicted. Some make what could be considered rash decisions, then wonder that they've done. One motif in the story is having different people plead with Eilis to do something, then having her not think it through properly. But you're always rooting for her, even when the subject of marriage comes up, and it's made clear that the complexities of the institution, or even its simple, common sense rules, haven't been explored by her.
The plot sends her back to Ireland, for "a short stay," to take care of some family business, bringing with her some personal secrets that, once in the hands of the wrong person (remember that awful boss she had?) threaten to destroy the tenor of the story. But it remains a real charmer of a movie, albeit with sad undertones. Yet it all comes full circle, with a bookend-like conclusion that again puts her on a ship, but now she's the one offering sage advice to a young woman setting out to "find her future."
BROOKLYN
Written by Nick Hornby; directed by John Crowley
With Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domnhall Gleeson, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent
Rated PG-13
Ed Symkus covers movies for More Content Now.