Brooklyn

Brooklyn (2015) follows a young woman emigrating from Ireland to America in the fifties. Eilis lives in a small town with no work and no future. Through a priest a job and a boarding house in Brooklyn are arranged. She takes the ship. The first part is the emigration itself: sickness on the crossing, immigration, the first night in a city she does not know, the constant urge to cry while working in a shop. The film stages no dramatic event; it shows homesickness and that is enough. Then she settles. She meets an Italian man named Tony, takes evening classes, and has a life of her own. In the second part news of a death takes her back to Ireland. Everything there has changed: there is work, there is a man, there is her mother, and she is asked to stay. That is the real subject. Emigration is not going somewhere but being between two places; what Eilis has to choose is not which life she wants but which person she is. It is adapted from Colm Tóibín's novel, with a screenplay by Nick Hornby. Saoirse Ronan was nominated for best actress. It was shot in Ireland, Canada and New York. The conflict is deliberately kept low; nobody is bad and all of the choices are reasonable. It runs 112 minutes. Good for: stories of emigration, period drama, and quiet storytelling. Less good for: the plot is very calm and anyone looking for tension will not find it.