Brooklyn – 2015
I just finished watching this Best Picture nominee. I’m still listening to the beautiful music as the credits scroll up the screen. I have a lot to say about the film, but at the same time, I have very little. First, I’ll say that the film’s entire conflict could have been avoided by one simple act: telling the truth. Yes, a lie of omission was the source of the entire emotional substance of this little Indi film.
The movie starred the beautiful young Irish actress, Saorise Ronan, playing the part of the beautiful young Irish girl, Ellis (pronounced Ay-lish) Lacey. Her story is a simple one. She starts out in Ireland in 1951, but hasn’t many prospects for a suitable life. So arrangements are made for her to move to America while her sister Rose, played by Fiona Glascott, stays to take care of their aging mother, played by Jane Brennan. Ellis is homesick for the first year, but suffers through it, whereupon she meets the perfect man in Tony Fiorello, played by Emory Cohen. He is kind, honorable, hard-working, and loves her with a pure and honest love.
When Rose dies unexpectedly, Ellis must return to Ireland for a time. Tony convinces her to marry him before she goes, and the two consummate the marriage. Ellis promises to return. Then she arrives in Ireland, and the lie begins. She tells nobody of her marriage. Everybody manipulates her into staying longer than she had intended. They set her up with a nice young man named Jim Farrell, played by Domhnall Gleeson, who is in need of a wife. They force her into a job and she begins to see how her life could be happy in Ireland, something she had never seen before going to America.
She begins to fall in love with Jim and considers abandoning her marriage to Tony. But when her secret is discovered by the town’s evil witch of a shopkeeper, Miss Kelly, played by Brid Brennan, Ellis is brought to her senses. She comes clean with her mother and books passage back to Brooklyn where her husband is waiting with open arms. The end.
OK, I’ll say it. I have no idea why this was nominated for Best Picture. It was too small, too simple. The drama wasn’t very deep, the pacing was too slow, and the story was one that we’ve seen before. Sure, Ronan did a really great job, but that only goes so far. It wasn’t a bad movie, by any means. It was just sweet and charming, nothing more. I didn’t see anything that stood out to me as unique or gripping. And I know, those things don’t necessarily disqualify a movie from being recognized by the Academy, but I don’t understand why this movie was honored in a category which is supposed to contain films that were somehow better than all the other movies that were released for the year.
So while I don’t have any negative comments about the film, I have to examine what was good about it, and hope that what I come up with will be able to justify the Best Picture nomination. As I mentioned, Ronan was really good in the lead and was nominated for Best Actress, though she didn’t win. She has a natural air of innocence and goodness about her that is utterly charming. I also really liked Cohen as Tony. He played the kind of guy anyone would like to know. And the two of them had a really good on-screen chemistry. I also liked the 1950s aesthetic of the film. All the costumes and sets were spot-on. There is a kind of charm when it comes to the 50s that this movie reflected with an ease that was a delight to watch.
And actually, all that being said, I found myself caring enough to want Ellis to return to Brooklyn to honor her wedding vows. In my mind, all she had to do was tell people in Ireland about her husband and all her problems would be solved. Nobody would be manipulating her to try to get her to stay in Ireland. She wouldn’t be in danger of hurting her mother or poor Jim. And she would have no problems returning to the man she loved in Brooklyn. And if she was worried about her mother spending her remaining years alone, what was to prevent her from moving to America to be with her daughter?
But without those little complications, I guess there wouldn’t have been much of a movie. At least there were a few recognizable actors in the film to pique my interest. Jim Broadbent played Father Flood, the kindly priest who helps bring Ellis to America. And then there was Julie Walters, the good Christian Irish woman who ran the boarding house where Ellis lives in Brooklyn.
The plot was treated almost as a kind of fairy tale. We never saw any seedy realism to mar the sweet and innocent nature of the narrative. And believe it or not, I found that refreshing since most movies today like to portray the harsh, dark sides of real life. Here, everything was clean and bright, the characters were all mostly good, and the most difficult decision our young Irish lass has to face is which perfect man will she end up with. And maybe that was it. Maybe it was that easy feeling of innocence and purity that caught the Academy’s attention, especially compared to all the dark and gritty films that have become the norm in Hollywood these days.