Brooklyn plays like the story your grandmother tells about her and your grandfather. Never mind the schmaltz, embroidered details, and oppressive familiarity, Brooklynplays like it knows it’s the story your grandmother tells about her and you grandfather. Half remembered, inflated, the story becomes consumed by its own mythological romance. You can occasionally see the human beings peeking out, but saccharine trimmings mostly obstruct the view.
Where Brooklyn is directed by John Crowley, Nick Hornby is the name cleanly affixed to all the promotional materials. Along with Hornby comes titles like About a Boy, Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, and An Education all just ready to bolster the credibility of any new trailer.
Nick’s particular skill set seems right at home adapting a novel by Colim Toibin. This isn’t Hornby’s first adaptation, An Education is adapted from a memoir by Lynn Barber, but the two exist as almost polar opposites in a parallel universe. Both are stories focused on young woman confronting their identity and sexuality in a changing world, but An Education has something Brooklyn so visibly lacks, teeth. Brooklyn’s feet never quite touch the ground, and try as the film might, even the most outrageous moments (scatological) whimper.
Our story focuses on Saoirse Ronan as Eillis, a young Irish woman immigrating to America. Where this premise already creaks a bit, the decade is nudged to the 1950’s, and there are no overcrowded tenements, but handsome brownstones on the tree lined streets of post-WWII Brooklyn. Eillis all but had to flee County Wexford back in Ireland because a lack of any real opportunity and she leaves behind her burdened mother and saint of a sister. Arranged by a magnanimous Catholic priest in the States, Ireland is quickly moved into the realm of letters from loved ones read in voice over narrative, and Brooklyn takes center stage.
This opens up the best part of this picture. The story manages to detour its inevitability and this really wonderful character piece glimmers through, if only for a moment. A story of isolation within the abundant promise of a new world, a story about women on their own together, a story about identity in relation to place, and then as all of this exciting potential rests on the horizon, we hit the convergence and head straight into a handsome, slouching young man at a church dance.
It’s not to say the story at the heart of Brooklyn is as wholly one dimensional as boy meets girl, but so much of what we learn about Eillis is portrayed through her relationship to men. She’s confronted with a tragedy back home, and this is where the films grinds to an almost catatonic halt. Where Eillis seemed ready to tell her story, it flattens into a “story of us” as her two worlds—embodied by two competing dudes—wrestle for supremacy. Brooklyn, as Eillis, had so much potential for growth, but it decided to moon over boys instead. An especially unfortunate decision as the moments between Eillis and her sister or mother or roommates or landlady or manager are when Brooklyn uses its voice, and as quickly all of these players are relegated to the margins.
Once the film chooses this path, the orchestra is all but tuned up for the violin tinged embrace. Eillis is tantalized with a few worthy moments, but they’re all bait. Morsels of characterization on a hook leading her down the well paved path to the final credits. She’s imbued with some strength, some domain over her identity, a touch of insight, but these experiences are not used to illuminate her. Instead they all convey her to a relationship, our stand in for resolution. As with any “story of us,” the narrative consumes an actual humanity—or humans for that matter—at the center. The getting (or not getting) together becomes our focus, and the rest is reduced to the gears of a story we’ve heard a million times before.
—Monte Monreal
Where Brooklyn is directed by John Crowley, Nick Hornby is the name cleanly affixed to all the promotional materials. Along with Hornby comes titles like About a Boy, Fever Pitch, High Fidelity, and An Education all just ready to bolster the credibility of any new trailer.
Nick’s particular skill set seems right at home adapting a novel by Colim Toibin. This isn’t Hornby’s first adaptation, An Education is adapted from a memoir by Lynn Barber, but the two exist as almost polar opposites in a parallel universe. Both are stories focused on young woman confronting their identity and sexuality in a changing world, but An Education has something Brooklyn so visibly lacks, teeth. Brooklyn’s feet never quite touch the ground, and try as the film might, even the most outrageous moments (scatological) whimper.
Our story focuses on Saoirse Ronan as Eillis, a young Irish woman immigrating to America. Where this premise already creaks a bit, the decade is nudged to the 1950’s, and there are no overcrowded tenements, but handsome brownstones on the tree lined streets of post-WWII Brooklyn. Eillis all but had to flee County Wexford back in Ireland because a lack of any real opportunity and she leaves behind her burdened mother and saint of a sister. Arranged by a magnanimous Catholic priest in the States, Ireland is quickly moved into the realm of letters from loved ones read in voice over narrative, and Brooklyn takes center stage.
This opens up the best part of this picture. The story manages to detour its inevitability and this really wonderful character piece glimmers through, if only for a moment. A story of isolation within the abundant promise of a new world, a story about women on their own together, a story about identity in relation to place, and then as all of this exciting potential rests on the horizon, we hit the convergence and head straight into a handsome, slouching young man at a church dance.
It’s not to say the story at the heart of Brooklyn is as wholly one dimensional as boy meets girl, but so much of what we learn about Eillis is portrayed through her relationship to men. She’s confronted with a tragedy back home, and this is where the films grinds to an almost catatonic halt. Where Eillis seemed ready to tell her story, it flattens into a “story of us” as her two worlds—embodied by two competing dudes—wrestle for supremacy. Brooklyn, as Eillis, had so much potential for growth, but it decided to moon over boys instead. An especially unfortunate decision as the moments between Eillis and her sister or mother or roommates or landlady or manager are when Brooklyn uses its voice, and as quickly all of these players are relegated to the margins.
Once the film chooses this path, the orchestra is all but tuned up for the violin tinged embrace. Eillis is tantalized with a few worthy moments, but they’re all bait. Morsels of characterization on a hook leading her down the well paved path to the final credits. She’s imbued with some strength, some domain over her identity, a touch of insight, but these experiences are not used to illuminate her. Instead they all convey her to a relationship, our stand in for resolution. As with any “story of us,” the narrative consumes an actual humanity—or humans for that matter—at the center. The getting (or not getting) together becomes our focus, and the rest is reduced to the gears of a story we’ve heard a million times before.
—Monte Monreal
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