[rating=5.00]
Before I begin, I’ll make it clear—there is a lot to love about Brooklyn. It’s a beautiful love story that had me in love with the idea of love. So much so that I wanted to go home and begin courting my wife once more, forcing her to go through the unenviable task of falling in love with me all over again strictly because the movie makes it look so much damn fun. I swooned, I hoped, I cheered, I cried tears of joy. In that way, it’s one of the more romantic love stories to have crept into the theaters in the last few years. But that’s all the first half of the movie. The second half, and I know I’m an outlier here, bored me to tears and I couldn’t wait for it to be all said and done so I could get home to my wife and love her. All of the charm the movie had weaved in its first hour was nearly undone by its second and, to my mind, almost ruined the entire affair.
Brooklyn follows the story of Ellis (Saoirse Ronan), an Irish woman who immigrates to America all by herself, leaving her mother and sister behind. She has difficulty with loneliness and assimilation and keeps mostly to herself, only leaving her boarding house to go to work at an upscale department store. One night she attends a dance, where she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), an Italian-American with grand dreams and a lust for life. The two fall in love and everything is beautiful. However, a family tragedy takes her back to Ireland where she’s courted by Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson). The only problem is that Ellis and Tony secretly married prior to her return trip home, putting her in the position to choose between her old life and her new life.
While Brooklyn works as a study in “you can’t go home again,” it’s difficult for me to get behind the dueling courtship plotline. The movie works so hard to make sure that you love both Ellis and her relationship with Tony that the Jim’s advances don’t really strike any chords. It all feels like a distraction which, hey, happens sometimes with love, but narratively it’s just not really exciting. The problem is that we love the idea of Tony and Ellis so much that the film forces the audience into an awkward position—her only options are either go back to America and stay with Tony, which we really want her to do, or stay and Ireland with Jim and make us hate her, which the movie is clearly never going to do. In that way, it’s all forced drama for the sake of drama, and never rises towards anything meaningful.
It works, I guess, on a thematic level. Her time in America has made her a stranger in her homeland, and much her actions back in Ireland mirror her experiences after moving to Brooklyn. I suppose that’s an issue we all face in way or another at some point in our lives—who among us hasn’t visited home and wanted nothing but to go back to where our lives our now, despite the quaint charms home might bring?—and to that end, it’s handled well, if not dully.
It’s just that this isn’t really the story that’s set up and it’s not the story we’re interested in seeing. Ellis and Tony have all the makings of great cinematic couples and I hated seeing the story diverge from this path. It’s a testament to the strengths of Ronan and Cohen’s performances, as rarely have I seen a couple I so want to get together. Brooklyn is based on a novel by Colm Toibin, and while this might work in that setting, it didn’t translate too well to film.
Then again, I’m well aware I’m outlier, and my distaste for this plot line may, in fact, be indicative that it actually works. Perhaps that’s the point. Maybe we aren’t supposed to fall for Jim Farrell’s advances, even as Ellis seems she might. Maybe we’re supposed to be reminded of all the distractions that exist to threaten the love we’ve created. As I said, it works thematically and I’m sure many, if not most, will fall under film’s spell. It is, after all, a powerful love story and people do love love stories.
Not me though. As much as I loved and adored the first half of the movie—which, again, is amazing—I fought back tears of boredom as Brooklyn moved through its too long and too predictable second half. It’s probably worth seeing just for the first hour alone, and kudos are deserved all around for everyone’s powerful performances. Overall, however, it was a meandering affair that bordered on tedious.
Brooklyn is now playing in theaters everywhere.
5 Responses
You are so right! The first half was very good. Then, like Hancock, it fell into the dumpster in the second half. It was so boring that I am physically exhausted from just trying to stay conscious out of respect to my bride. Turns out she was bored to death by the second half as well.
Not only was the movie boring . It was way overpraised . The Immigrant was a much better film .
The best love story on celluloid this year was ‘Carol’.
Brooklyn was awful. And boring.
The movie was great until they completely disregarded all the love she apparently had for Tony and turned her into a sociopath whore. So many ways they could have gone, but they chose to cuck the husband. Well done Holywood.