Ten years after it was first released, Mick Jordan looks back at the award-winning film adaptation of Enniscorthy-born author Colm Tóibín’s novel, which continues to captivate audiences in its faithful portrayal of the life of an Irish girl who emigrates to America in the 1950s.
John Crowley’s film Brooklyn has become one of the most beloved of Irish cinema. It is a staple of television schedules, appealing to all ages and tastes. When first released in 2015 it was a major success at the box office grossing over 62 million dollars on a budget of just 11. It received three Oscar nominations, one for Nick Hornby for script adaptation, one for Saoirse Ronan as best actress and of course one for best film.
But before it was a very successful film, it was a very successful book. Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn is a novel written in a language of great subtlety and politeness. Everything on the surface is correct, is just so. There are no histrionics or emotional demonstrations, observations are calm and reserved and yet every line reveals the real feelings underneath.
This reserve is exemplified in the central character of Eilis Lacey. Eilis never betrays any great emotion in word or deed or even in thought. Throughout she is polite and formal and behaves exactly as she is meant to behave.
When the idea of her leaving her hometown of Enniscorthy and emigrating to Brooklyn is brought up, it is as something that is the most natural idea in the world. Father Flood, a priest on holiday from New York, visits the Laceys and over tea and cake mentions that there’s plenty of work there for someone like Eilis and with very good pay.
By the time he leaves it is practically all arranged that she will go – and Eilis has not contributed to the discussion at all. She just accepts it as her fate and works to make the best of it. By the time it occurs to her that she might not want to go, it is too late – sure everyone expects it now, she couldn’t be changing all the plans.
Many people of a certain generation will have recognised themselves in Eilis, while those of us of another will have recognised our mothers. We are so familiar with the lived memories of their time – of the dictatorial shopkeepers bullying their own customers, of the importance of the parish dances, even of the drinking of minerals in a glass bottle with a straw. Brooklyn is not just a great story it is practically an historical record.
In a way very little happens in the novel, at least very little that would normally make for great drama. This is the tale of an ordinary woman living an ordinary life, not very different from the thousands like her. But that is the beauty of it. Without the distraction of some grand adventure or quest, we are left with the day to day thoughts and experiences of a young Irish woman of the 1950s.
It is so recognisable and the tiny details so perfectly presented that it is utterly real and we are getting an exact portrait of the lives of another era. We are absorbed into this world and settle into it without a thought. It’s as if Tóibín has written a biography for us of the times our parents lived in, whether they did so in the big city lights of Brooklyn or of Dublin.
Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own
