REVIEW: Brooklyn Starring Saoirse Ronan Is a Throwback Love Story That Will Resonate Long After the Movie is Over

BROOKLYN, starring Academy Award Nominee Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, The Grand Budapest Hotel) tells the story of a young Irish immigrant navigating her way through 1950s Brooklyn, recalling an era familiar to many men and women whose mothers and fathers experienced similar journeys to America. The movie is based on the best-selling novel by Colm Toibin with screenplay adaptation by Nick Hornby (Wild, About a Boy, An Education).

At the heart of the movie is  Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) in a romantic drama centered on Eilis having to choose between a life with her Italian-American sweetheart, Tony (Emory Cohen), in New York, and a life with Jim (Domhnall Gleeson) the man back home in Ireland.

If not for Saoirse Ronan (whom you may recall from her role in Atonement), as Eilis Lacey who is torn between her old life in Ireland and her new life in America, the story would be quite boring. She offers a delicately played,  likable and relatable character.  Yes, relatable. This maybe the 1950’s but for those of us who go off to unfamiliar places (i.e. college, travel and move to a new city), the one thing we all experience is homesickness and the longing for the familiar even if you are looking for a better life.

You feel for her making the journey to America by herself trapped in Brooklyn longing for her homeland. When I  remember back to those horrible and somewhat lonely  first months of college where there was not one person from high school, thinking why didn’t I go to a school with my friends I can identify with Eilis plight. Or thinking of my Japanese mother moving to America with her husband and two kids being this lone Japanese woman in a sea of white military wives, I can only imagine how hard it was for her. And yes,  how many of us just want to pack it in but like Eilis but we don’t, we soldier on.

What I found appealing about the movie were the glimpses of 1950’s life, the clothes and the socializing norms of that era. The scenes at the boarding house with the other girls and Julie Walters as the boarding house owner offered funny glimpses of their life, especially their attempts to date.

 

 

The movie is a beautifully photographed and well -paced. Watching the sad little immigrant girl grow into a confident and educated young woman is never boring but quite compelling.  I loved that even in 1950’s Brooklyn that the parish priest ((Academy Award Winner Jim Broadbent) who helped get her a job at a fancy department store sees fit to enroll her in bookkeeping classes so she can become a bookkeeper like her sister back home. Talk about an enlightened priest?

Finally, I always like movies that provide us a twist on an era we don’t know much about.  I think we all know that the Irish escaped Ireland during the potato famine in the 1800’s but who knew that approximately 15% of the Irish also migrated in the 1950’s due to economic hardships in Ireland.

 

Brooklyn Official Trailer

BROOKLYN is a moving romantic drama set in the 1950 featuring an incredible ensemble cast led by Academy Award Nominee Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, The Grand Budapest Hotel), Emory Cohen, and Domhnall Gleeson with Academy Award Nominee Julie Walters, and Academy Award Winner Jim Broadbent that I recommend for it’s quiet but emotional telling of Eilis’s story, the acting of the cast and the stunningly shot film that will resonant long after the movie is over. Note that there is one scene where the two main characters sleep together but it is very tame, last a couple of minutes and  does not contain any nudity.

For more information on Brooklyn starring Saoirse Ronan, visit brooklyn-themovie and to find a theater to see the movie.

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Brooklyn opens in theaters in November and is the perfect movie to see over Thanksgiving with your parents, family and older tweens.

 
 

Disclosure: This post is made possible by support from Fox Searchlight Pictures. All opinions are my own.