Brooklyn

3 out of 4 Stars

Brooklyn is a warm and lighthearted film about the struggles of finding love and finding a place in the world. Set in the early 1950s, Saoirse Ronan plays Ellis, a young woman who leaves her home in Ireland for America and learns about the hardships of leaving home while working at an upscale department store in New York City. Helping Ellis adapt to her new surroundings is a benevolent priest (Jim Broadbent), a sharp tongue and tempered boarding house mistress (A very funny Julie Walters), and letters from home penned by her sister, Rose (Fiona Glascott). As soon as she acclimates to the Big Apple, Ellis meets Tony (Emory Cohen), an Italian-American plumber who is over the moon for her. It isn't until an unfortunate event occurs that Ellis has to go back to Ireland where she meets the suave Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson) and she becomes torn between her new home in Brooklyn
and her Irish homestead.

The film is nothing new in terms of immigration love stories (i.e. Goodbye, Columbus and America, America), yet it shines from Nick Hornby's romantic and humorous script along with John Crowley's direction. Unlike other Irish-based films, like Angela's Ashes, Brooklyn does not fall into a pit of dreariness or into a cesspool of schmaltz as the film finds a balance that makes the experience enjoyable thanks to a solid cast of actors. Carrying the film from being a ho-hum romance is Saoirse Ronan as she gives a stunning and poignant performance as Ellis as she weathers the storms of conflicted emotions with such grace and heart, which is what Brooklyn is all about.