A reviewer on Radio 4 admitted that when he saw this film he started crying after only a few minutes and didn’t stop until the end. I knew the relatively simple narrative structure of the film before I went into the screening but I suspected that I would fall in love with Saoirse Ronan’s character Eilis early on and that I would be similarly affected. In the event I didn’t blub quite so much but I was duly smitten by Ms Ronan and my critical faculties were definitely hindered by my response to her performance.
If anyone has managed to avoid the publicity, Brooklyn is an adaptation by Nick Hornby of Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel, directed by John Crowley. Eilis is a young woman in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford (Tóibín’s home town) where she lives with her mother and older sister Rose in 1952. With nothing on offer in Ireland she accepts the chance of one of the two escape routes for young Irish people of the time – to go to North America where a priest, Father Flood (Jim Broadbent), has found her a job in a department store. (The other route was to England.) In her Brooklyn boarding house, Eilis is homesick until she meets an Italian plumber, Tony (Emory Cohen). But when she is forced back to Ireland because of a bereavement she falls for a local young man, Jim (Domhnall Gleeson). Will she return to America?
Saoirse Ronan’s performance has already been touted as a contender for an Academy Award. I’m not sure how these awards are really judged. What I would say is that Ms Ronan is perfectly cast and that she has a face that she can transform from blank passivity to the most eloquent display board. She also has the body and the movements and gestures to wear the fabulously ugly clothes of the early 1950s. This is a film for costume fetishists. It also proves the possibilities of digital video, not just in the colours of the clothes but the fantastic detail of the weave of the cloth presented in HD. I’m tempted to say that for me this is a film about casting, costumes and locations (in Ireland and Montreal, doubling for Brooklyn). But clearly it is also about direction, script and performances. IMDB carries useful comments from audiences. The film is seen (not negatively) as an example of old-fashioned, classical filmmaking. The in-joke is that in New York, Tony and Eilis go to see Singing in the Rain and The Quiet Man. Saoirse Ronan is no Maureen O’Hara but she does very well as a ‘real’ Irish girl from 1952. The performances in the supporting roles are terrific. Julie Walters (the Brooklyn landlady) and Jim Broadbent are as good as expected and the two young men do well but I was most pleased to see Eva Birthistle as the experienced traveller who takes Eilis under her wing on the ship to New York from Cobh) – under-used for me since her wonderful performance in Ken Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss (2004). (I enjoyed visiting Cobh in 2014 where the station has a heritage centre which details the migration experience. At one time a mail train ran from Cobh to Cork and beyond simply to carry letters back from North America.)
If you like romances, Brooklyn is a good ‘un. If you are a fan of the book, the jury is out on whether Nick Hornby has done a good job on the adaptation. I haven’t read the book, but the script works for me.
The Case for Global Film 