Opening in select cities this weekend is Brooklyn, the first starring role for young Irish actress Soirise Ronan. With a fantastic, largely unknown, cast, it is a wonderful story of Ireland and New York in the early 1950s. Find this in your town and see it immediately.
Brooklyn (Soirise Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters) – The best young actress in the world (not named Jennifer Lawrence) is not a household name in the U.S. It is Soirise Ronan (her first name is pronounced SEER sha), the Irish actress who first came to prominence here as the evil young girl in Atonement. Key parts in The Lovely Bones, The Way Back, and The Grand Budapest Hotelfollowed but always in supporting roles. The now 21-year-old actress makes her first star turn in Brooklyn, a lovely story of an Irish immigrant who faces life in America.
Eilis settles in Brooklyn thanks to the help of an Irish priest (Jim Broadbent) living in New York in the early 1950s. Aching to find her own life and to break from her seemingly boring existence in Ireland, she sets sails for America with no friends but with a job at a swank department store. Living in a women’s boarding house run by Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters), she is terribly homesick. Her loving sister is a bookkeeper who tends to their mother, and the family is very close. But like so many immigrants, Eilis begins to assimilate, eventually meeting Tony, an Italian boy with a sweet nature and a love of the Brooklyn Dodgers. This relationship blossoms into love and marriage. But when her sister unexpectedly dies, Eilis goes home for a month, which turns into longer. There, she meets a handsome, charming young man, who courts her. He is every bit the caring, sweet lad that Tony is.
The movie centers on the dilemma between home and a new life; between family and independence; and between security and the glorious unknown.
Through it all, Eilis matures, becomes more outgoing, more stylish, and even appears to get taller (she moves from flats to high heels). She gains confidence even as she allows herself to be wooed by a man not her new husband. She is torn between two lovers, not yet feeling like a fool, when she is shockingly jolted back to reality by the Irish town’s nastiest woman.
Brooklyn is unlike any movie in the last few years. It is a period piece with a grainy look and an intriguing story. The film it reminds me most of is Avalon, which is high praise. It tells the immigrant’s story but not from the turn of the 20th century but from the post-WWII period. It presents New York as it was 65 years ago, still very much separate boroughs with a strong ethnic bent and an innocence that much belies its more current reputation. It is a period where Long Island is undeveloped and a vacation meant going to Coney Island.
Ronan appears in virtually every scene of the movie and she carries it brilliantly, quietly, and innocently. Her performance is almost certainly Oscar nomination-worthy and will establish her as a major acting star. She seems drawn to independent films in the Carey Mulligan, Chloe Sevigny, Patricia Clarkson mold. And that is very good news for movie lovers.