Brooklyn

Brooklyn

This film plays more like a fairy tale than a drama. Ellis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), the pretty young Irish girl sails to America on a ticket bought by her sister, stays at a nice boarding house and has a job waiting for her in a upper class department store (upper class for Brooklyn that is). To a real immigrant of that period these events would be fantastic.

The first hour of the movie is a bit slow and is used for plot set ups. Ellis manages to find her place in the boarding house with the other white Irish girls. At work she is mildly reprimanded by her superior for being too moppy since it depresses the customers. Her moppiness comes from homesickness. This is soon cured when she meets an Italian-American fella. At this point the film gets more interesting.

Things really get going when she returns to Ireland. Not to give too much away there are entanglements back home. Ellis’ has some difficult dilemmas straining her moral compass.

All the actors did a fine job. None of the roles were too demanding. Ronan had some emotional moments but no great tragedy. Domhnall Gleeson is infatuated with her. His most demanding scene was swimming in the Irish Sea. The Irish and Italian immigrants all get along (another fantasy). The movie had a brightness to it. Everything was clean, the streets, the cars, the immigrants, everything! The film literally glows.

This is a great date movie. The movie gets interesting when things go bad. Rather than being a victim of circumstance, Ellis’s injuries are self-inflicted.