Brooklyn, a sensitive and aware film shows themes of separation and identity in the struggles of a young woman who leaves Ireland in 1950 for Brooklyn.
Ellis Lacey lives with her widowed mother, and loving competent older sister,Rose in a small town in Ireland.
The mother is very dependent on her daughters, especially on Rose who is the caretaker of both of them. The mother says of the death of her husband, that it wasn’t so bad because she has her daughters.They have become providers and protectors. Rose has bookkeeping skills and works in an office.
Ellis works part time in a shop that is owned by a shrew of a woman who verbally abuses all those she can, meek customers and her vulnerable young girl employees. Ellis takes her insults and observes her insults to others with an accepting passivity which is how she lives her life.
Rose, convinced a visiting priest from America to sponsor Ellis,so she is going to leave Ireland for Brooklyn, where the priest has found a job for her and a place to live.
Rose may have had an instinct that this child woman needed to get away from the family dynamic for her to develop into a resourceful adult.
Ellis boards the boat and crys as she looks down on the dock at the tearful Irish families who sadly watch their loved ones start a journey that takes them into a different world, far from home.
Her cabin mate a young worldly woman who has made the trip before befriends her and takes on the role of mother/sister and insists she not eat any more during the trip to avoid the vomiting and seasickness she is suffering , and shows her how to forcefully keep the toilet accessible as others keep it locked. This is an early lesson in survival aggression that seems to be absent in meek Ellis.
She moves into a boarding house of young Irish women, and starts her job as a salesgirl at a department store. Eventually she goes to church sponsored socials of these young immigrants. Her entire world in Brooklyn is Irish….but not like home.
She is plain and unsophisticated, unpolished and lacking in abilities of small talk, conversation and the small niceties that sales girls need to insure their jobs and customers.
One of the young women from her boarding house is her supervisor and like her sister, works as a guide to smooth the country girl, Ellis.She is introduced to makeup and her wardrobe starts to change although it remains the dress of a proper young woman but one that is not so strange to new York.
Her crying at night in her homesickness and depression of separation is so real, one cannot help identifying with it, and acknowledging we have had at times such as this…the feeling of aloneness that is almost unbearable and in this movie these awakened feelings transends the film and and it becomes ours. That’s how good the understated acting is. It is superb.
One night at a church Christmas social her clumsiness in dancing with a partner who is trying to teach her, is observed by a young man,Tony,who clearly is enjoying the scene . When her dance partner decides she is too bad and leaves her abruptly on the dance floor , Tony steps up and asks her to dance…
Later, outside , walking her home, he tells her that he is not Irish, as everyone else seems to be, but Italian. He doesn’t like Italian girls; he likes Irish girls.
In time, a romance develops and she writes home that she is over her homesickness, she is happy now and she has a boyfriend. All of course are interrelated.
The caring priest has paid for a semester in night classes in book keeping for her and that adds to her growing self respect. She is preparing herself for life.
She meets Tony’s family, the romance deepens and life is good. She is going to be a book keeper and make a good salary in an office.Her appearance becomes one of confidence, comfort in her world and she is very attractive.
The priest arrives at her work one day with tragic news. Her loved sister, Rose unexpectedly dies. She was ill but chose to tell no one.
She must go home to comfort her mother.
Tony has told her he loves her, and considering it carefully, she more hesitantly tells him she loves him, brings him into her room and they make love.
Tony tells her he wants to marry before she goes home even though she plans a short trip and will return. He explains no one has to know about it; it is just between them, they should be bonded before she leaves.They can go to City Hall and a judge will marry them in a short civil ceremony. She agrees. At City Hall,they are part of a crowd of young people who are getting married. Tony, plays ball with a young kid who is there for his brothers wedding. The brother is from the same township as Ellis. She doesn’t remember him but they have a pleasant exchange.
She leaves on this trip to Ireland that she doesn’t want to take.
She returns to Ireland, a different girl from what she was when she left. Lovely, confident, happy, she enjoys her past home because she now has command of her life.
She doesn’t tell anyone of her marriage or indeed, anything of her life in Brooklyn. She is here just for a visit and she doesn’t want her separate lives to intermix.
Her best friend, is getting married and she agrees to stay a little longer so she can take her mother to the wedding.
When she goes out one evening with the bride, and her fiancée, there is another man in the car, intended evidently as her date. His name is Jim Farrell and he becomes charmed with her.Many other dates follow in which she is very happy . The townspeople kid her about marrying him.
He is everything her mother would want her to have. He has very respected wealthy parents who are moving and leaving him their beautiful home to have … He is charming and as her mother tells her, a good catch.
Keeping a distance when with him, she soon dispenses with that and has wonderful times with him that she obviously enjoys and he is falling in love with her. She does nothing about it but she knows it and responds to it. She becomes troubled but makes no effort to break It off.
The family dynamics have changed. Rose, beautiful , competent and loving was actually the head of the family , taking care of mother and Ellis. She made decisions for them and provided for them.
The mother leaned on Rose for guidance, friendship and support. As loving as the sisters were, there had to be envy on Ellis’s part for the position Rose had with her mother and for Rose’s abilities. Now that Rose was gone, the mother had called Ellis to come home so she could move her dependence to her younger daughter who was now as competent as Rose had been… she even took over Rose’s bookkeeping job for the short time she intended to stay in Ireland.
Marrying Jim Farrell was what her mother wanted and life in Ireland would make her able to take care of her mother and be closer to her dead father. She would continue the patterns of life that had been set for her,In fact, she would be not only continuing her life in the way it was planned to be, but in spirit would continue her dead sisters life.The pull of being loved by mother all for herself…for being the good girl that mother would adore was very difficult to deny.. to replace Rose and to help soothe guilt feelings to her mother. It was an enormous load off her conscience and required her, just to be there. It was very seductive and tempting and fulfilled some unspecified longing in her heart.
Letters from her husband kept arriving that were actually re written by his 10 yr old brother who was in school and wrote better than uneducated Tony who was an apprentice plumber.
She tossed them in a drawer unopened.
But she was forced to face the truth.Life can be like that.
Her former employer at the shop, wanted to see her so she went to have tea..
The woman said she had heard from someone about the chance meeting in City Hall in Brooklyn with an Irish townsman and that she was married.
What do you say to that , Ellis Lacy? The woman demanded.
Ellis said she had forgotton how mean this town had been. Her name, she said, is Ellis Fiorello and she walked out, very upset.
Despair,anger was her mood, but revelation happens and has to be acknowledged.
She makes her decision and there is, in this actress,and the writers, a sparse use of language and explanation, use of facial and body expressions that convey to us so successsfully a universal conflict… the desire to live a fantasy remembrance of dependent childhood and repeat it, or allow ourselves the risks of separation for a future or life that holds no promises but can strengthen who we are…, separated enough from the past that it doesn’t destroy, but also to know our history while we move on and make our own history.
The movie, seemed to me ,is a story of this conflict which may have preempted the return to Ireland, and probably its outcome was planned to be what it was before she even left but certain events have to happen so our decisions become known to us.
It is a quiet movie, but its complications run deep
It is an uncanny movie in its ability to identify and remember and reflect on these life struggles.
It is easier to make movies with great drama and activity and use those events as symbolical. Portraying life with less events, and showing the conflicts that develop a portentous inner drama is much more difficult. Brooklyn makes a valiant attempt at that and has considerable success. See it if you can.