Brooklyn

“You’ll feel so homesick that you’ll want to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won’t kill you. And one day the sun will come out - you might not even notice straight away, it’ll be that faint. And then you’ll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who’s only yours. And you’ll realize…that this is where your life is.”

These words, spoken by Ellis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), ring true for nearly anyone who has ever left family behind and moved far away from the home they always knew. It is a universal experience that is not unique to any nationality or race. We all have a place we call home and many of us have grown up, moved away from that home and felt the pangs of loneliness that comes from being on our own for the first time, missing that safety net that is a parent or sibling that can be there for us as we stumble through life finding out who we really are. 

Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel, Brooklyn, struck a note with readers who found a kindred spirit in Ellis. After all, a lot of people in our current world no longer live near the place they were raised. The digital world has made it easier for people to stay in contact with their families and friends over a long distance but, as my wife likes to remind me, “Zoom is no substitute for physical contact.” Tóibín’s novel takes place in the 1950s, long before the invention of the internet and Zoom and during a time when overseas telephone calls were not as clear and convenient as they currently are.  Moving out of state back then was a lot more lonely than it is now. Moving across the Atlantic would have seemed so much more isolating than that, even. 

The novel, and the film that came from it, follows Ellis as she does just that. She lives with her sister, Rose (Fiona Glascott), and their mother, Mary (Jane Brennan) in Enniscorthy, Southeast Ireland, where the sisters share duties taking care of their mother. But Ellis feels like there is no future here with her dead-end job and a lack of romantic prospects. Her sister makes arrangements with Father Flood (Jim Broadbent), an Irish priest in Brooklyn, New York, for Ellis to immigrate to the city for a better life. Ellis goes, comforted in the idea that their mother still has Rose to take care of her. 

While in Brooklyn, Ellis finds work, begins getting higher education, and even meets a young Italian man, Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen), whom she falls in love with. Everything seems to be falling in place for her until word gets back to her that Rose has died suddenly in the night from an undiagnosed heart condition, leaving their mother alone. Ellis wants to return home to see her mother, but Tony, afraid of losing her, asks her to marry him before she leaves. 

I have said it before, and I reemphasize it here: I have yet to see Saoirse Ronan give a bad performance. She is one of those actresses that seems to have been born for this work, and she always seems to choose interesting parts to play that lean into her strengths. Ronan has a timelessness to her appearance that lends well to period dramas like Little Women or The Grand Budapest Hotel, but she doesn’t limit herself to those types of roles either. Just this last year, she was amazing in the criminally overlooked The Outrun, a film about alcohol abuse. At present, she has been nominated for four Academy Awards for her acting but has yet to secure a win. One of those nominations was for this film.

Saoirse conveys not only her sense of loneliness while in Brooklyn but also the emotional struggle she has when she returns home after her sister dies. By this point, she is newly married to Tony but doesn’t know how to convey that information to her mother. Because of that, she also tells no one else in Ireland that she is married lest that information make it back to her mother. This puts her in an awkward situation when not only does her sister’s former employer offer her a job, taking over for Rose, but her best friend, who is getting married, sets her up on a double date. Worst still, she finds herself falling for this man, Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson), who is looking to settle down and marry. Her mother, who is all alone in the world now, is hoping for Jim and Ellis to marry so the two of them can help care for her. The nice job, the local man attracted to her, the feeling of belonging; the absence of these things were the main reason she immigrated to Brooklyn in the first place. Now that they are available to her, she feels conflicted and drawn to stay in her home country. But she has a husband back in America waiting for her, and eventually, she will have to admit to everyone that she is not single anymore and cannot stay.

Not knowing she is single, everyone is putting pressure on her to settle down with Jim, especially her mother. Jim’s parents are retiring and moving out to the country, leaving a big house to him. Mary sees this as an opportunity to have Ellis back and a family to take care of her again. She has a scene with Ellis where she explains how when her husband died, she could bear it because she still had the girls. Then when Rose died, she could bear it because she still had Ellis. But if Ellis returns to Brooklyn, she, Mary, will be all alone in the world. It’s not that Mary is infirm and needs a caregiver; she needs companionship. She needs her family there with her.

And Ellis almost stays in Ireland despite having a husband back in America. She has been getting letters from Tony, but they go unread into her dresser. She is spending more and more time with Jim and at her sister’s old job. At one point, she outright states that had Enniscorthy offered her these things before, she would have never immigrated. But she does love Tony, and eventually, she will have to face the reality of the situation.

Colm Tóibín’s novel was popular enough upon release, but it got a real boost in exposure with the release of this film. Unsurprisingly, a number of years later, he revisited the story of Ellis with a sequel, Long Island. This sequel picks up the story of Ellis, Tony, and Jim twenty years later, showing us how the events of Brooklyn have had long-term effects on the lives of everyone involved. It’s a good read overall, but if you love how Brooklyn ended and want to imagine Ellis and Tony having their happily ever after, this book will snatch that away almost immediately. 

Brooklyn evokes the 1950s and what it is like finding yourself in a world where you have no one to fall back on. Most people immigrate as a family with that support group there to comfort and guide each other. When Ellis immigrates, she has no one and has to learn everything the hard way. One of the final moments of the film is her back on the boat, returning to America and her husband. She is approached by a young girl, much like she used to be, asking her if she is also immigrating. Ellis responds by giving the girl a list of things she learned when she went through the process, a list of things she wishes she had known back then. It is this moment that gives us the quote that I used to open this review. 

Brooklyn also evokes just how difficult it can be for someone to leave behind family and friends and venture out into the world all by themselves, especially into such an overwhelming environment as New York City. A lot of Irish people did just that in those days. The new immigrant woman at the end, speaking to Ellis, believes that with so many Irish immigrants in Brooklyn, it will feel just like home. But as Tony has rightfully pointed out: home is home. There is no substitute for it. You can make a new home in a new country, but it will never be quite the same as the land and the family you came from.

Academy Award Nominations: 

Best Picture: Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey

Best Actress: Saoirse Ronan

Best Adapted Screenplay: Nick Hornby

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Release Date: November 6, 2015

Running Time: 112 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Emory Cohen, Jim Broadbent, and Julie Walters

Directed By: John Crowley