Brooklyn (The Movie)

Sometimes a movie is so poignant, meaningful and beautifully rendered that one feels compelled to share the experience. Brooklyn shines as a glorious example of the best in the art.

Starring the extraordinarily talented Irish actress, twenty-one-year-old Saoirse Ronan (who won plaudits for her subtle brilliance in Wes Anderson’s comedy, The Grand Budapest Hotel, in 2014), the movie tells the story of an ingénue, who emigrates from Ireland to Brooklyn, New York, in 1952.

It would be cruel to spill the story in this missive; rather I encourage you to find a way to see the film before the Academy Awards on February 28. Saoirse Ronan has been nominated for a Best Actress Award, and even though at twenty-one she undoubtedly has decades of opportunity ahead of her, I so hope she gets it. The movie has also been nominated in the Best Picture category.

Suffice it to say that this PG-13 movie, based on a novel by Colm Tóibín, will make you smile, laugh and cry; so bring someone you love with whom to share the experience.

Brooklyn seems particularly prescient in this political silly season, which has featured new levels of pseudo drama and mean spirited opportunism on the issue of immigration.

Part of the beauty of the story in Brooklyn is its fresh revelations about an old story, the emotion-wracking experience of an immigrant — the fortitude to leave one’s family, the anguish of missing those left behind, the resourcefulness required to find a place in one’s new world, and bit by bit, the investment of one’s future in a new life in a new society. And it lays bare the raw hostility that so many immigrants have experienced as newcomers and would-be Americans.

I trust it isn’t a spoiler to add that after vicariously experiencing through this well scripted “fictional report” the grinding angst of an immigrant’s early encounters in the heart of New York City, I left the cinema with a spring in my step, admiring and proud of what immigrants have brought to the robust and ever evolving culture we call American.

Perhaps, after seeing the film, you will even buy the book, as I did.  It’s a beautiful read.