Brooklyn, a movie directed by John Crowley, starring Saoirse Ronan, about a 21-year old Irish girl in 1952, who comes to live in Brooklyn. Based on a novel by Colm Toibin. Script by Nick Hornby.
The story of Eilis sailing to American, overcoming her homesickness, finding love, and being called back to Ireland by a tragic death in her family is a good story, one that I felt drawn to as a Greek-American. We found good things in the movie, mainly in the actors and their ability to translate the slight plot into bits of suspense, and to generate interesting questions: will Eilis overcome her homesickness? Why did she agree to leave home in the first place? Does she really love Tony the Italian-American plumber? Why doesn't she tell her mother on returning to Ireland that she has married Tony? Why does she lead on that fellow Jim, who courts her in Ireland? The movie stays with me, and I keep thinking of Eilis and the others.
But mixed in are a lot of frustrating bits, and the frustration centers on the characters and their actions being formulaic and sanitized. No doubt there were kindly, knowledgeable Irish priests who miraculously knew what an immigrant girl needed. No doubt there were irascible, stern Irish women who owned boarding houses for girls who had motherly hearts of gold. No doubt there were church dances as chaste and staid as the ones depicted here. No doubt there were Italian American families who ate dinner (the adults with the requisite juice glass of red wine) that were as polite as this one and had as clever a smartaleck younger brother as this one had (as if the actors got their cues from Leave it to Beaver). No doubt there were moments in Brooklyn where the streets were as quiet and suburban looking as those in this Brooklyn. And perhaps on the beach on Coney Island, there were instances where scattered black families sat on the sand mixed in among white families in 1952 (in my memory, beaches were often the scenes of racial conflict). I could go on.
To put all these formulaic characters in one film, without exploring the dark hard-edged realities of life, is risking overt sentimentality, and undercuts the story. The film often has the feel of being made for television (with the slow, thoughtful pace of Masterpiece Theater). The people are well scrubbed, coiffed, and clean shaven, even at the end of the day. The dresses and pants and shirts are perfectly wrinkle-free and clean and stylishly placed. Always. Just as in television.
I did find some scenes that were endearing and moving. I liked Eilis and Jim Farrell (played by Domnhall Gleeson), the young Irishman who courts her. Eilis comes across as a very practical girl who's trying to figure out what she wants. We found ourselves questioning her actions and motives -- and that's great. Except that what we often questioned was the logic of the story and its depictions. I found myself wondering if Toibin's novel had the same formulaic elements.
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