Brooklyn: A Beautiful Irish Story from the 1950s

It’s funny to praise a movie for its slow pace, but I’d have to say that’s what gives the new movie Brooklyn its tremendous appeal. It’s the deliberate and held back way that the immigrant Eilis takes to begin speaking when she answers the phone. It’s the pace of the courtship by patient good guy Tony. It’s the long-held face shot, just that much longer than you’d expect, it’s all a clear-eyed and passionate look at life in the 1950s.

The movie is based on the book by Colm Tóibín.

And things were really different back then. From the way a courtship evolved, to the boarding houses that many Irish immigrants lived in, it was so different back then it’s hard for us to even believe.  The audience is able to truly feel for the choices that Eilis has to make, and writhes in the same misery as she…a powerful testament to the great acting and thoughtfully created sets.

At one point along the same slowness jag, motes in the air float down as Jim finds the note under the door, magnified by the camera, it’s an interesting effect that slows things down keeping with the same theme of rich close-ups, strikingly perfect make-up.

The movie had me tearing up at times, it was the poignancy of the love affairs, and the tough choices, and those things that we all have to encounter, family deaths, separation, and new challenges.  Brooklyn brings all of that in its own slow way. A really impressive movie.