Review: Brooklyn (2015) · 10:46pm Jan 28th, 2016
Brooklyn is a miraculously moving, intimate look at the story of a young Irish girl's maturation and journey from girlhood to womanhood, while framed around the immigrant experience. Far from a flashy film, Brooklyn instead feels like a softly colored impressionistic look at the life of an Irish immigrate, and in tern, becomes one of the most serene and genuinely heartwarming films I've seen in quite some time.
Director John Crowley (Boy A) takes the film along a gentle waltz of storytelling, allowing the story time to breathe and move at it's own gentle, delicate pace. He avoids melodrama and over-dramatics, instead allowing the subtle, nuanced performances from his cast to carry the weight of the picture, in a way that feels very naturalistic, yet undeniably full of life. Coupled with cinematographer Yves Bélanger's wonderfully soft color palette, Michael Brook's deeply moving and emotive score, and absolutely beautiful costume design and art direction, the film is a soothing, almost dreamlike experience, and I applaud it all the more for that.
Saoirse Ronan's Oscar nomination was richly deserved, as her gentle and nuanced portrait of her character, the equally gentle and sweet Eilis is wonderfully subtle and mature in it's performance. Often expressing quite a bit without dialogue, Saoirse's performance steadily goes from a shy, introverted and homesick girl, to a mature, confident woman, taking her character along an arc that is bold warmly familiar yet fresh. her interactions with Emory Cohen's likable and open Italian-American Tony are organic and incredibly endearing to watch, gratefully pure and innocent in their gentle courting, which I completely buy and support for the course of the film. Bonus points for them actually staying together at the end of the story, which is so refreshing in this increasingly cynical world. Her interactions with Domhnall Gleeson's Jim are also organic, albeit in a more mature, platonic way. The rest of the cast, made up of Jim Broadbent, Julie Walters and more, all deliver great performances, and all feel like real people.
An unabashedly romantic and gentle film, Brooklyn provides a wonderfully serene cinematic experience, and one that I highly recommend to you all. Unjustly overlooked in a somewhat tightly packed awards season, this is a film that really spoke to me, and so I really hope it gains the following it deserves.
5 out of 5 stars.