Should any woman feel obliged to learn how to twirl spaghetti into a spoon, just so she might impress the family of the man who she is steadily falling in love with? This question lies at the heart of Brooklyn, which tells of the immigration of a young Irish lass at the beginning of the 1950s, a blossoming romance with a sprightly Italian plumber, and her uncertain return home after the death of her sister, who has been her cause and confidant until she is discovered unconscious one day by the bed.
Does an Irish rose flourish best on home soil? Or will Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) make a go of it with Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen) in the growing suburbs of New York City? Is this even the authentic way to eat spaghetti? And does it matter, one way or the other?
Brooklyn certainly appears authentic, though even most of the Irish are really rather pretty, and it harks back to a time when department stores were ten-a-penny and could boast interiors grander than most modern-day Tiffany’s. Of course back then, most Irish wouldn’t have heard of spaghetti, probably mistaking the word for ‘tatty’ and offering you some potato or flat bread. Ireland as depicted is suitably earthy, and even though filming took place mostly in Montreal, the scenes across the pond evoke real atmosphere.
Despite the period detail, something about the shape and cinematography of Brooklyn gives it the glossiness of a fragrance commercial, but this glossiness is no bad thing. It seems to capture for us the dreamlike quality of certain heightened moments in life, some of which persist today in the cultural memory, like when Eilis passes through the processing line on Ellis Island and takes a step out of the open door.
Because yes this is a movie about youth and the struggle for a place and some sense of identity, about lost loved ones, the fear of stasis, cruelly curtailed plans, yes it recalls the priesthood before it seemed a byword for perversion, though there’s some truth to this portrayal also, and so says the father and the son, yes it’s about seasickness, about the loneliness of a new city, about boarding houses and dance halls and the comforts and pitfalls of small community life. But most of all Brooklyn is about perseverance in the face of hope. It is a very fine film.
