Nick Hornby is an author rather synonymous with the modern beta-male psyche, having written such acclaimed and beloved novels as About A Boy and High Fidelity, to name but a few. Recently, however, he has been busy carving something of a different path for himself.
Following on from screenplay work on the itinerant Wild (2014) – the biopic of single and grieving Cheryl Strayed, as she took the 1,100 mile Pacific Crest Trail – he has now adapted Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn: a love story from an Irish girl’s perspective in the 1950s, as she comes of age with a devastating two continent/two suitor dilemma.
Matters focus on Ellis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), a spirited girl taken from the dull, sterile quietude of her verdant hometown and into the enticing glamour of a new life in the States. Having immigrated to Brooklyn, she settles in a house share headed up by matriarch Mrs Kehoe (Julie Walters in fine form) along with other Irish women who have taken the same trip.
For Ellis, immersed in the expat Irish community in her host city, the lines are drawn away from the other migrant pockets of nationalities, which includes the hot-blooded Italian set. Each will keep to their own. However, when circumstance leads to her encountering the charms of earnest Italian plumber Tony (Emory Cohen), we have a 1950s controversial culture clash that reminds of the interracial love match in De Niro’s impressive directorial debut A Bronx Tale (1993).
While romance appears to unexpectedly blossom, events call for Ellis’ return to her homeland, where she once again encounters local lad Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson). What plays out is sensitive and heart-wrenching in the manner of the best romantic dramas. Along with the aforementioned, there are gentle echoes of Arthur Miller’s evergreen A View From The Bridge, Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were (1973) and even Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945), although not quite in the league of the latter, it must be said.
Toibin’s source novel is a thought-provoking study of the circumstantial rifts that can occur between obligation, family and affairs of the heart. Director John Crowley’s lavish presentation and sympathetic eye compliments the delicacy of these topics. Similarly, Ronan manages to encapsulate the prim decorum of a bygone era and also the fierce, tumultuous emotions that insist under her character’s surface. It’s no easy feat.
In Brooklyn, there is no good or bad guy. The two men are not diametrically opposed in terms of their nature, merely geographically so. It is certainly more genuinely authentic, realistic and believable than the unfathomably, but stupendously, popular The Notebook (2004).
This is a work that may appear to some to (prima-facie, at least) veer too closely towards melodrama, but it has enough about it to emerge out the other side as a moving and provocative piece of cinema deserving of both plaudits and a broad audience. You too might ponder what constitutes our ‘home’. Is it the place? The pervasive culture? Or is it the people? Even if it all shifts, one thing is for certain, once decided on where it is, there is no place like it.
