Brooklyn: “Just Another Love Story”—that Conquers the Heart

Brooklyn, nominated for an Academy Award, tells an “old fashioned story.” But if I learned anything sitting in the East Hampton theater, half falling in love with Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), thrilling to the wonder of new love, and tearing up as she faces her conflict and makes her choice, it is that the love story may be told forever and never grow old.

Want to hear a great plot? A girl immigrates to Brooklyn from Ireland in the early 1950’s, falls in love with a passionate Italian guy, Tony, but then, returning after her sister’s death to her Irish town, falls in love with a handsome guy, Jim. What a conflict. That’s the story. Begging to be told?

Well, often it is argued that in the history of literature there are a few dozen basic plots, played out in endless variations. Surveying the bare bones of the plots of history’s great novels tends to confirm that. And so a new film, Brooklyn, nominated for an Academy Award, tells what one is tempted to call an “old fashioned story.”

But if I learned anything sitting in the East Hampton theater, half falling in love with Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), thrilling to the wonder of new love, and tearing up as she faces her conflict and makes her choice, it is that the love story may be told forever and never grow old. I guess I knew it.

The great immigration from Ireland began very early in America, accelerating through the great potato famine, and continuing until the 1950’s, when Brooklyn takes place. New York City was once an “Irish town” in its government, building trades, and Catholic churches. Ireland remained rural and poor, with few opportunities for employment. The New World beckoned the young, ambitious Irish like Eilis Lacey and during the decade some 50,000 came to America and about a fourth settled in Brooklyn. The conduit as often as not was a connection through the Irish clergy who dominated the Catholic Church in New York. Indeed, in the year of her supposed arrival, New York City had an Irish mayor, William O’Dwyer, and an Irish-American Cardinal, Francis Spellman.

One of the minor miracles of this film is that 21-year-old Saoirse Roman—born in the Bronx of Irish parents, both actors—metamorphoses from the most innocently plain-faced, blue-eyed ingénue to a beauty who must rank as one of the winsome Irish faces of all time.

There is both extravagant innocence and a toughness in Eilis Lacey; she is not going to sink into the arms of her handsome, boyish, and impassioned Italian suitor (Emory Cohen). Their courtship unfolds with a dignity, respect, and expectation that for many decades, now, has been increasingly rare in Brooklyn. When the one love-making scene in the movie finally takes place, the long courtship has made us almost as yearning as the lovers.

Throughout the Irish immigration to America, the pattern and assumption was that the son or daughter departing for America never would be seen again. Parents and friends at dockside waved goodbye and watched the departing ship like a death. The scene in Brooklyn, as Eilis sails from home, shows the strained, resigned faces left on the dock. At best, parents hoped that those departing for America might send back a few dollars to save the family from starvation. (“Send me a letter, now and then, and send me all you can…”)

By the time that Eilis, after the proper courtship, has fallen in love with her Italian man—already full of ambitious plans for building a house on Long Island—Ireland suddenly calls and the summons is irresistible. Her sister, who arranged Eilis’s emigration and remained alone with their mother, has died suddenly of an illness kept secret. Eilis ends up back in her small Irish town—but not before a New York City Hall marriage because her guy is wise enough to know the irresistible tug of “home.”

The sophisticated, Americanized, and now altogether alluring Eilis soon is being courted by a handsome, charming young man (Domhnall Gleeson) with “good prospects.” She also is summoned, urgently, to a job in bookkeeping for which she has only begun to prepare at Brooklyn College. It is a life that Eilis never dreamed she could have in Ireland. And during the fine dinners, waltzing, patronizing of fashionable bars, and swimming on the long stretches of Ireland’s beaches—a LOT less crowded than Coney Island, she assures her friends—she is falling in love and, more seriously still, winning the heart of a lonely Irishman who shares her sense of desperation at the limitations of their village, but has too much to keep him there.

And so we have the pretty young woman in love with two men who adore her, gazing into the eyes of one and receiving increasingly panicked letters from the other, and wondering: What the HELL am I going to do? To proceed further would be a “spoiler,” and I will not. But as Eilis weeps with her American husband’s letters spread out on her bed, despairing to write to him, I, too, began to cry. It is not easy to explain. Eilis is a woman with great capacity for joy, but never ceases thinking, judging; and so, when her heart is conquered—twice—we believe it. When she weeps, it is for love that is real.

Brooklyn is derived from a novel of Irish writer Colm Tóibín, an academic and novelist like the all-time popular Erich Segal, author of “Love Story,” a Yale professor. I have not read the book and cannot say if Tóibín, or Nick Hornby, the screenwriter, set out to create a love story without cynicism, or the gritty “reality” of contemporary cinema, or sex as the first and foremost driver.

Brooklyn is a love story told with an uncorrupted vision of the beauty of falling in love. What Brooklyn accomplishes is a portrayal of the essential power and beauty of that love, without a droll, cynical wink at the audience that says: But look, she is neurotic and blinks too rapidly, and he looks at other women and has crooked teeth.

Brooklyn is a love story told with a certain reality—an Irish-Italian courtship was the “intermarriage” of that era in New York—but with an uncorrupted vision of the beauty of falling in love. What Brooklyn accomplishes is a portrayal of the essential power and beauty of that love, without a droll, cynical wink at the audience that says: But look, she is neurotic and blinks too rapidly, and he looks at other women and has crooked teeth.

To realize that in the art of the story such things are irrelevant, and that art focuses on values, on what is essential to the human condition—and so to the story—is Romanticism. And from the perspective of Romanticism arises the irresistible appeal and power of the love story in Brooklyn. It is not the portrayal of an easy and untroubled paradise, far from it. But it does focus upon the values that move the characters—and yes, drive their conflicts—and in the end that makes it all seem clean. What more could we want in a story of true love?

In the Romantic novel, setting is never the theme, but it can function, in effect, as an important character. Brooklyn calls to mind classic films like Gone with The Wind, as an Irish country village and the scion of a local manor family—manly, emotionally restrained, bred to “inherit” a life—competes nostalgically, nobly, but hopelessly with brash, entrepreneurial Brooklyn and a life-loving Italian workman who obviously is going places. The American viewer may find the traditional Irish life and the well-bred man appealing, at least from a distance, as I did, and so experience a bit of the conflict in Eilis’s torn heart.

Yet, what makes this story a masterpiece—apart from its insistence on the reality of romantic love—are evocations of the power of “Brooklyn”—the place—in the Irish mind of this era. From Ellis Island, to the brownstone blocks of Clinton Street, to the Irish boarding house for young ladies, to a church Christmas dinner for old Irishman worn out from a lifetime of building the bridges and tunnels of New York, the “Irish city” that was Brooklyn comes to life. There is rare power in these scenes because we experience them through the sensibility of a woman who has given—and given up—so much to be there.

When she returns to her village, she is poised, fashionable, her natural beauty now glamorous; the village that seemed to offer her nothing, not even a full-time job, now almost conspires to lure her back. And we experience that allure as we would a vacation so perfect that we want to stay forever. It is Ashley Wilkes and the old South trying to compete with Rhett Butler and a brash new world. But unlike Scarlett O’Hara, Eilis Lacey is unspoiled and cherishes every opportunity.

Because the waves of Irish immigration were among the earliest in America—and, by the way, initially brought over displaced Scotsmen moving for the second time—and thus the “Scotch-Irish”—today, Irish culture as distinct and preserved is far less evident in America than for example Eastern European Jewish culture, Swedish culture, Chinese and other Asian cultures, and even aspects of southern Italian culture. Brooklyn is a reminder of what the Irish gave up to come, what they brought with them, and what has faded into history.

In the end, though, no one would care much about that story without the stunning performance of Saoirse Ronan as a pure heart discovering (and reminding us) that, as we always knew, love makes the world go round.

About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway has written and edited for Savvy Street since its inception in 2014. His essays and interpretative commentaries on breakthrough books have dealt with philosophy, politics, literature, science, history, psychology, and personalities. His new novel, "Retaking College Hill,” became Amazon’s #1 bestseller in political fiction. This year, the Atlas Society published his Pocket Guide to The Fountainhead and Romanticism Reborn--essays on the Romantic movement in literature and its 20th Century revival in Ayn Rand's novels. His collections of essays and short stories and his "Collected Poems" are available on Amazon. He lives in East Hampton with his wife, Robin.