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Brooklyn (2015)
Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters. Written by Nick Hornby (based on the novel by Colm Tóibín). Directed by John Crowley.
At the height of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy surrounding the Academy Awards of 2015, Best Picture nominee Brooklyn was held up as an example of the enormous disconnect between the Academy and regular movie audiences. It’s a white, European-accented story set more than half a century ago when people still arrived on America’s shores in boats, at Ellis Island. There is a systemic problem that’s a large part of the disconnect, and I am sensitive to it, but Brooklyn is an unfair symbol of the cause, because although it’s exactly the kind of movie that always gets nominated by the Academy but largely ignored by the public, it’s a darn good picture worthy of its critical laurels, and I wish protestors had picked on something else.
It’s a very simple plot: Ellis Lacey has nothing in Ireland her home, so she comes to America to seek a life for herself. A Catholic priest arranges a department-store job and night-school tuition, and we follow our young immigrant through a newcomer’s travails as she fights through alienation, loneliness, and homesickness until of course she meets a guy.
The guy is charming and ambitious, rough around a few edges but from a loving Italian family, and they fall in love. Just as they begin to make plans together, Ellis has to return home, promising she’ll be back in a month’s time. But the Ellis who returns to Ireland is not the Ellis who left, and of course she meets a guy.
It’s a story that’s been told a hundred times, but it never gets old, because it’s really the story of our nation, part of our cultural identity many seem to have forgotten, one that continues to be written by people with darker skin, slanted eyes, or manners of dress that label them on sight as coming from afar. Ellis’s tale is specifically hers, and the movie succeeds because she’s a likeable character and because the details of her transition are related poetically by the actors, writer, and director. There is nothing special or noteworthy about this character’s immigration experience, and that seems to be film’s point. My mother, your grandfather, our neighbors: they’ve got stories like this too, and they are all beautiful, and they will all make us cry if we sit still and hear them.
It is a lovely, convicting movie that deserves to be more than to be coopted as a hashtag. It deserves to be symbolic of something stronger and more inspiring.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
86/100 (Criticker rating)
Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters. Written by Nick Hornby (based on the novel by Colm Tóibín). Directed by John Crowley.
At the height of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy surrounding the Academy Awards of 2015, Best Picture nominee Brooklyn was held up as an example of the enormous disconnect between the Academy and regular movie audiences. It’s a white, European-accented story set more than half a century ago when people still arrived on America’s shores in boats, at Ellis Island. There is a systemic problem that’s a large part of the disconnect, and I am sensitive to it, but Brooklyn is an unfair symbol of the cause, because although it’s exactly the kind of movie that always gets nominated by the Academy but largely ignored by the public, it’s a darn good picture worthy of its critical laurels, and I wish protestors had picked on something else.
It’s a very simple plot: Ellis Lacey has nothing in Ireland her home, so she comes to America to seek a life for herself. A Catholic priest arranges a department-store job and night-school tuition, and we follow our young immigrant through a newcomer’s travails as she fights through alienation, loneliness, and homesickness until of course she meets a guy.
The guy is charming and ambitious, rough around a few edges but from a loving Italian family, and they fall in love. Just as they begin to make plans together, Ellis has to return home, promising she’ll be back in a month’s time. But the Ellis who returns to Ireland is not the Ellis who left, and of course she meets a guy.
It’s a story that’s been told a hundred times, but it never gets old, because it’s really the story of our nation, part of our cultural identity many seem to have forgotten, one that continues to be written by people with darker skin, slanted eyes, or manners of dress that label them on sight as coming from afar. Ellis’s tale is specifically hers, and the movie succeeds because she’s a likeable character and because the details of her transition are related poetically by the actors, writer, and director. There is nothing special or noteworthy about this character’s immigration experience, and that seems to be film’s point. My mother, your grandfather, our neighbors: they’ve got stories like this too, and they are all beautiful, and they will all make us cry if we sit still and hear them.
It is a lovely, convicting movie that deserves to be more than to be coopted as a hashtag. It deserves to be symbolic of something stronger and more inspiring.
8/10 (IMDb rating)
86/100 (Criticker rating)