Brooklyn (2015)

*** ½ out of ****

In a year where the Best Picture nominees are all about people in extraordinary circumstances, there is one that is just about a regular person and her regular life. Luckily for us, it is done in such a way that you truly like the characters and care about what happens to them. “Brooklyn” is the rarest of films in that it takes a normal life and makes it interesting and lovely to experience.

Ellis (Saoirse Ronan) is a typical post-WW2 Irish lass living in southern Ireland. She is a little in the shadow of her older sister, who has an office job (the holy grail for women at the time), while she works at a bake shop for a petty tyrant of a boss (Brid Brennan). With help from the priest at her local church, Ellis has arranged to leave Ireland for America where she hopes to find a better life for herself.

The trip to America is an adventure in itself, but once arriving there she sets about trying to create an existence in a place where she knows absolutely nobody. She lives in a boarding house in Brooklyn with other Irish girls (some of whom are comically judgmental and giddy), and she aches with homesickness, missing her mother and sister. But as she settles into her department store job, takes night classes in bookkeeping and spends evenings and weekends trying to meet new people, she starts to feel more comfortable in America. And when she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), and Italian American who seems to genuinely adore her, life starts to be something more than bearable.

Without giving anything away though, she ends up having to make a trip back to Ireland, where she also meets a local “golden boy”, Jim Farrell (Domnhall Gleason). She seems so glamourous now, with her New York style, that everyone in her home town is enamoured with her. Jim and everyone else are now trying desperately to get her to stay and she feels torn between the pull of her new life in America and the one she had dreamed of when she still lived in Ireland.

“Brooklyn” is in no way exciting, edge-of-your-seat or full of intrigue, but it is glorious movie-making. The three primary leads are all outstanding in their roles, with Ronan building a character that you really love. Gleason's character is someone we really shouldn't care about at all under the circumstances, but your heart goes out to him and his obvious love for Ellis. And Emory Cohen's character Tony is assembled slowly and perfectly – I was ready for him to be a bastard when he first shows up, but he turns out to be one of the nicest, most caring male movie characters in ages.

The writers of this film have created magic – a movie that has no right to be as interesting and wonderful as it is.  But it is.  Ellis makes mistakes in this movie that leave you holding your head, but in the end all you want is for her to be happy. And if you ever met her for real, just walking down the street, she's be someone you'd want to know. Just a terrific movie for anyone who loves a fine story.