Brooklyn Is All of Our Lives
I saw over one hundred movies in theaters last year.
*Dramatic pause to allow those words to sink in.*
The thing that becomes abundantly clear when you see that many movies in a relatively short span of time is that some of them stick with you, but most of them slip through The Veil within your mind, disappearing, ghost-like into a mysterious void. I’m certain I saw The Longest Ride and Entourage, but I have no memory of them at all (which is probably for the best, really.) Movies like The Hunting Ground, Ex Machina, and Spotlight, on the other hand, are forever seared into my mind after slipping a jab through my detached-movie-watcher garb. And no movie from 2015 got to me quite like the coming-of-age story Brooklyn. While it may not have walked away with any statues at the Oscars, I’m whole-heartedly recommending it to anyone who finds her/himself stranded in the strange in-between land of the twenty-something.
Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis (pronounced Ay-lish), played by the ethereal Saoirse Ronan, a young Irish girl who moves to New York in the 1950s in search of opportunity, back when that phrase wasn’t a corny political catchphrase. It’s another immigrant story, sure, but rare for giving a shy, young, solitary woman and her life choices the kind of gravitas we normally foist onto the Tobey Maguires of the world. (As Chris Rock said, “Leo gets a great role every year.”)
The feelings of fear and excitement and nausea you experience during the awkward, confusing transition from being someone’s daughter/son/sister/brother to being your own separate human being are painfully fresh in my memory, being in my twenties. From the time Eilis hurls into a bucket on the ship across the Atlantic to her attempt to keep her face from crumpling as she reads the first letter from home to the sickly days back in Ireland when she pushes letters from her American boyfriend into a drawer so she doesn’t have to see them, Brooklyn nails that internal upheaval.
Leaving home is different for everyone. Some of us are eager to gtfo and others of us are hesitant to abandon the world we’ve grown up in. No matter which you are, when you get plunked out the far end of high school and move onto the next thing—be it college, a job, or a relationship—you change irrevocably, and the growing pains are real. Eilis is totally overwhelmed with homesickness after arriving in the U.S. Everything looks strange, tastes funny; summers are hotter and winters are colder than back at home. New York City can be foreign even to the American country bumpkin; it attracts brave, cool girls with social cache who refuse to wallow in nostalgia.
Eilis misses her mother and sister, with their soft accents and stoic ability to keep their emotions tucked away, and she feels the distance between them growing wider the more comfortable she gets in her new life, especially after she meets Italian hottie Tony (Emory Cohen). In the tug of war between Enniscorthy and New York, she finds herself questioning whether she’s done the right thing—whether leaving home and starting over by herself is what she should be doing.
Have you ever phoned home from college, hysterically confessing to your parents that you think you’ve gone to the wrong college/chosen the wrong major/don’t fit in/aren’t sure about your career path? The fear of making a misstep or winding up directionless is one of the biggest terrors looming over our heads. How do you ever know if you’re choosing the right path? How do you decide which sacrifices are worth it and which struggles are better left behind in search of a better road? Should you go to graduate school? Should you stay in your relationship? Should you follow your passion? Should you take the agonizing entry-level job? Should you change your major? The beginning of adulthood is full of questions that have no correct answers. And while having friends to talk to about your general dread of the unknown is helpful, you’re ultimately left standing alone before the forks in road that demand a decision. In life, as in Eilis’s Brooklyn, the only thing to do is to soldier on and dress for whomever you might become.
When you feel yourself reaching this sometimes paralyzing place, you try to make the decisions that seem to have the greatest potential for happiness, or at least the greatest potential to lessen your unhappiness. What gets Eilis out of her funk is filling up her time with other things. She starts night classes, she socializes with the girls in her boarding house, she goes to the Irish dance and, yes, she meets a nice young man with a welcoming family who has no doubt about what he wants for the future (Eilis!). While snagging yourself a significant other can definitely be a very diverting activity, the idea is more to stop thinking so much about how you have no clue where your life is headed, and to start just living it. The rest will follow, whether you plan it or not.
Happily, in addition to the daunting Significance of this phase, building a new life can be fulfilling in ways nothing else has ever been. Suddenly, you have the control to make things how you want them to be. You get to choose how people see you and how you see yourself. Eilis really comes into her own as she falls in love with Tony, and she can begin to imagine what the years ahead could look like. A thrilling life is taking shape until a tragedy brings Eilis back to Ireland. Back in the old land, she is presented with an entirely different path (and man) that never seemed open to her when she lived in Ireland before.
Which brings us to the real crux of the film—where do you call home? It it where your family is? Is it where you are able to feel most yourself? Is it somewhere comfortable? Or somewhere that pushes you to be great? Having recently spent an extended period in my hometown, I felt these questions echoing in my head through the movie. That doesn’t mean I know the answers. And it’s unlikely that the answers will be the same for everyone.
I don’t want to give away the ending, but promise you that the film will shoot right through your heart and into the soft Lion King-loving part of you that is searching for your destiny. Be it leaving your family, starting a new adventure, or discovering where home lies, nothing will seem simple once you strike out on your own. Up will be down and all the straight-forward rules you followed in high school will cease to exist, leaving you with infinite and chaotic freedom.
It will be terrifying, but if Brooklyn taught me anything, it’s to trust that I am stronger than I know and able to handle the outcome of anything life throws at me. As an old scalliwag once said, “You’ve got the makings of greatness in you,” and there’s no doubt you’re headed straight for it.
Are you floundering about in search of a neon DO THIS sign as you enter grown-up land? Are you dying to see more movies that talk about how screwy everything is when you’re 20?
