I’ll say this first. Brooklyn is a marvelous picture which was nominated for a lot of awards including the Academy awards for the best actress in a leading role, best adapted screenplay and for the best motion picture. This is a romance drama. But this is not a typical love story you see every day.
This movie is based on 1950s. Everything about this cinema is magnificent. From directing to acting, editing to the story line and Music to costume design. I personally couldn’t find anything bad about this movie and my expectations are always too high.
The story revolves around an Irish girl named Eilis who got a chance to move to America. But she will have to leave her mother and her only sister in order to do that. Both of them didn’t wanted it but they act like they are fine so Eilis would get to leave her home without bearing any sadness more than she has to. After she moves to Brooklyn, She meets an Italian plumber named Tony who treats her really nice and they fell in love right away.
She always wrote letters to her elder sister from Brooklyn and told her everything. So after some time she felt like everything will be alright, that she has everything she ever wanted. At one time Eilis was going to meet Tony’s family and she wanted to learn how to eat spaghetti so her friends taught her that. I personally learned how to eat spaghetti properly from that scene from the movie. But then everything turned upside down. Eilis’s sister dies suddenly. And this news breaks her heart.
Then she had nothing to do but to move back to her hometown in Ireland for a while. But Tony made her marry him before she leaves. They did it at town hall and there they meet a man from her hometown. Both of them promised each other that they wouldn’t tell anyone about their marriage.
After she got to her hometown she had to extend her stay due to her best friend Nancy’s wedding. Then at that time she got her sister’s old job as a book keeper which happens to be her dream job because she always wanted to be like her sister. At this time she meets a boy who is a friend of Nancy’s fiancé named Jim. Then she falls in love with him and her mother really supported that because she didn’t wanted Eilis to leave again. Then Eilis gets stuck in a paradox. She wouldn’t know what to do. Leave or stay, both decisions would be wrong.
If she stays then she would be cheating on her husband Tony. If she leaves then her mother would be alone. At this time she says “I wish it had been like this before I went”. This one sentence will tell the audience that this is the life she always wanted. She has that life right in front of her but she can’t accept it because she is married. But she always thought about it. That’s why she didn’t reply to Tony’s letters.
Then her former employer who happens to be an old woman that everyone hates tells her that she knows about her marriage and the Irish guy that they met at the town hall was a niece of a woman she knew. This was the breaking point for Eilis. She had an epiphany about why she left in the first place.
She wanted to leave the toxic people around her who never wanted her to be succeeded. Who never wanted her to be happy. Then she goes right back to the post office and book the next sailing to America. Then she tells her mom everything at dinner. She gets shocked but after she heard everything she says “I’d like to say goodbye now. And only once”. This sentence says that she knew that this was going to be the last time she’s ever going to see her only living daughter ever again. She leaves a letter explaining everything to Jim because she couldn’t look him in the eyes. Then she goes back to America as a changed woman and meets Tony.
I think this story says to us that we should never take things for granted. We don’t know what’s going to happen. One minute everything will be fine. Then your whole life could be chaos. So we must live in the moment and do what makes us happy. A normal romance story would almost always have a happy ending. Brooklyn (2015) also has a happy ending for Eilis but it’s not all happy. She had to sacrifice everything for that happiness. Including only family she had and her home. It’s like a quote from Great Gatsby, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisps in the fall”.
