Brooklyn

Last week on the day Oscar nominations were announced I crossed another Best Pic nominee off my list: Brooklyn. After seeing it I simultaneously wished I had already seen and that I could see it again (which I did on MLK Day).

That's how much I love this movie. I love literally everything about this movie. I love the sweet, beautiful, charming, real story it tells. I love the actors who so fully portray these characters that are living life.

This film so wonderfully captures what it's like to feel homesick. Like Eilis, I, too, left my family and moved to a city where I didn't know anyone. Granted, I didn't have to travel by boat and I definitely did not meet a charming Italian, but I felt those feelings. I love when Eilis is talking to Father Food and he tells her that "homesickness is like any other sickness - it makes you feel wretched and then it moves on to someone else."

I have been writing this review for a week now. I'm just going to make bullets points of everything I loved:

• when Eilis is on the boat waving goodbye to her sister I got super emotional. My sister came to visit me one time when I lived in NYC. When she left and I was alone at the airport, I found the nearest bathroom and cried in a stall. Yeah, I feel that scene
• the love story just plays out so naturally. There's no added drama.
• I adore Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters in their small but wonderful roles. 
• I love that Eilis and Tony both wear watches. 
• I love that there was no villain. That's pretty rare for a movie. Usually there is some person in the story who makes life difficult for our heroine, someone who is mean and nasty. And I think that is rarely the case in real life. 
• I kept expecting something bad to happen, like Tony being a creep or abusive or something. That's what I expect from movies now! But he wasn't. He was perfect. 
• I love the scene when Eilis is talking with one of her roommates in the bathroom. It's funny (I for real laughed out loud when her roommate said, "No, I want to be single and share a bathroom forever." Ha! 
• I love the scene when Eilis is helping to feed the old men on Christmas Day and that one gentleman sang. So beautiful. I loved how Saorise Ronan displayed all the emotions of missing home on her face. 
• I love the scene of her leaving the church on Christmas Day, with the lightly falling snow and Eilis wearing a red coat. 
• I love the image of Eilis in the mirror as she ate at the diner. It was beautifully framed. 
• I love that Eilis took time to assess her feelings and be smart. I love that she knew what she wanted. 
• I love the beautiful costumes.
• I love her boss and that she was kind and helpful. It could have been an opportunity to create a villain but instead they went with making her a normal person. I feel like life is full of people willing to help, not villains.  
• I love that Coney Island scene, when they show up wearing sunglasses and looking so cool. 
• I love the ending scene and Eilis' voiceover about discovering where your life is. 
• I love that there is so much love in this movie.

I'm just going to share some quotes from people who reviewed the movie, because for some reason I am utterly failing in writing my own:
"Brooklyn is a very nice movie. It’s an arthouse picture for people who don’t frequent arthouses—a tale of cultural displacement so sanitized and swooningly romantic that film buffs could recommend it to their parents and grandparents without hesitation. All of that may sound like a slam, but it’s not meant to be. It’s not easy to make a movie as beautiful as Brooklyn, where the stakes are low but the outcome really matters. This is an old-fashioned entertainment, but one so masterfully crafted and heartfelt that it’s hard not to love." From The A.V. Club

"People have spoken about how understated and old-fashioned “Brooklyn” is, to the extent that it might come across as a pleasant innocuous entertainment. Don’t be fooled. “Brooklyn” is not toothless. But it is big-hearted, romantic and beautiful. " From RogerEbert.com

And my favorite (although I dislike his line in the review that refers to Eilis being "shy and virginal"; I think both are an incorrect characterization of Eilis)
"There will be bigger, wilder, weightier movies this year, but none lovelier than Brooklyn. I relished every moonstruck minute of it." From Rolling Stone.