Welcome to New York: BROOKLYN

“Heartbreak,” as Taylor Swift tells us, “is the national anthem.” This sentiment is the backdrop of Brooklyn, an achingly sensitive little movie, small in scope, but deep in emotional risk. It stars Saoirse Ronan as Eilis, a young Irish woman in the 1950s who finds opportunities dead-ending in a part-time job at a small-town shop. She tearfully and nervously bids her mother and sister farewell, setting sail for New York City, where a kind priest has arranged for her to have a safe place to stay and a nice entry-level job in Brooklyn. What a big step for anyone to make, let alone a young person with no connections or comforts, with only a small suitcase and the clothes on her back. The movie, movingly bookended by boat journeys, finds great power and exquisitely observed emotions in this brave and difficult move. Restrained and heartfelt, the story proceeds simply and delicately.

We see Eilis make tentative connections, to the opinionated landlady (Julie Walters) and chatty lodgers at the all-female boarding house for Irish immigrants at which she lives, to the intimidating but decent boss (Jessica Paré) at a department store at which she finds work, to the avuncular priest (Jim Broadbent) who checks in on her and helps find new opportunities for education and advancement. There’s a lovely sense of community slowly developing around our main character, as she navigates a foreign world she’s slowly ever more determined to make her home. In the early passages, she is shy and withdrawn, ill with homesickness, tearing up over letters from home, or when hearing a Celtic singer at a Thanksgiving supper for Irish-American homeless men. The tug of her safe and comfortable past is strong, but will she let it interfere with gaining a foothold in a new, scary future?

Her most significant new relationship is with a charming young Italian-American man (Emory Cohen) who draws her in with his flirtatious teasing, sweet empathy, and loveable lopsided grin, all tangled up in his chewy accent, broad and bold. They start going out, chastely dating, attending church dances, family dinners, and the movies, like Singin’ in the Rain, which excites him enough to perch on a lamppost in the park while he walks her home. The boss notices a change in her demeanor and, upon learning it’s because of a fella, asks, “Does he talk about baseball or his mother?” “No.” “Then keep him.” The blushing excitement of young love merges with the excitement of making a life for herself that’s entirely her own, and tempered by the fading but still present pull of Ireland, where her family is increasingly only distant but powerful memories. She’s still deciding who she wants to be, and how best to define herself.

Soft, but deeply felt, the movie keeps a tight focus on Eilis, considering Ronan’s face, possessed with a placid maturity revealing flickers of feelings turbulent underneath a surface of great propriety. Eilis is a quiet character, who feels intensely, but still takes her time making up her mind. Ronan allows this to be her source of strength, a studied and reserved exterior projecting kindness and thoughtfulness. It’s a film that prizes such quiet contemplation, studying Ronan’s eyes for subtle sparkles, and allowing the ensemble to exude universal warmth. Tenderly developing relationships are watched growing, shifting, and evolving, in a plot animated by humorous charm and realistic sentimentality, arriving at big moments of grief and elation with a softly insistent tugging on heartstrings. It’s a grade-A weepie, not only because of any particular moment of sorrow or grace, though it has those well-done, but from the spectrum of small moments, colored in with emotional specificity.

John Crowley directs with great easy rhythms in poised pacing and bright, warm colors. Tasteful period detail is neither fussed over nor show-offy; it’s simply a fact of life, a time and place the oldest in the audience can still remember, conjured up with the edges sanded down. It’s not exactly a reflection of 50’s politics or unease. It’s far too personal and intimate for that, attuned directly and pleasingly with its lead’s innermost feelings. Crowley is a filmmaker with a penchant for sensitive character studies, especially his 2007 feature Boy A, which followed a young ex-con adjusting into his new freedom. There’s a different sort of dramatic change at play in Brooklyn, but it’s no less carefully considered. Nick Hornby, adapting a novel by Colm Tóibín, has a great ear for internal conflict teased out through conversation and calm, capably and movingly brought to life by an exceptional cast. It’s a film about a big transatlantic move, rich with heartbreak and isolation slowly thawed through warm friendships, then complicated by the temptation to give up and move home.

Hornby first became known for novels about men in relationships vividly externalized (High Fidelity, About a Boy), but has become a fine writer of screenplays about women finding themselves through internalized decisions (An Education, Wild). He and Crowley may have authored the film, their respective bests, but it belongs to Ronan, who dominates every frame with a gentle inescapable magnetism. She’s able to communicate the subtlest of feelings through subtle changes of expression, and yet somehow the effect is anything but obscure. She’s found happiness, and yet feels divided loyalties. No matter her American successes, there’s the strong call of Ireland, where her mother would love to see her, and the locals would be happy to set her up with a nice boy from the village. She has the understandable confidence it takes to move across the world, and the fear of failure. Brooklyn gets big effects out of small gestures, a comforting classical melodrama shorn of nostalgia, except, perhaps, for how much easier it was then to live in New York on a clerk’s salary. The result is a terrifically involving empathetic and emotional excursion. 

Walkabout: WILD

Wild is a movie about a troubled woman who sets off by herself and walks over 1,000 miles in three months. It’s a literal journey of self-discovery. The most admirable aspect of the film made out of this trip is its willingness to downplay the discovery in favor of the experience of the isolation. We see her trudge across the wilderness of the Pacific Crest Trail reflecting on her life, cataloging her mistakes, confronting her regrets, and emerging on the other end with a greater understanding of herself. She’s not an immediately better person, but we see the seeds of awareness that will hopefully be flowering in her future. Because the movie’s based on author Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir of the same name, we know she’s about to see better days. The movie doesn’t linger overmuch on her change, giving center stage to the steps along the way.

We meet Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) as she begins her long hike, struggling to stand up after overloading her backpack, a rookie mistake. In other words, she’s dealing with some heavy baggage. Get it? We don’t know why she feels the need to attempt this walk, but there’s a real unease in Witherspoon’s demeanor, a hollowed out rawness that’s about to be bruised and blistered by her chosen ordeal. She’s always been a smart performer, even in movies so breezy or junky (like Legally Blonde or Fear) that it was easy to take her for granted. There’s intelligence behind her bubbliness, her charm, her bright eyes and petite stature. Here, she’s tapping into a shrewd wounded intelligence that’s flatter and glummer than we’ve seen her in quite some time. Her character is in a mental space that slowly reveals itself as coming from a place of addiction and grief.

It’s a terrific performance that anchors what is essentially a character study with a mystery at the center. Who is she? What brought her to this place? That was enough to keep me at least mildly interested. As we follow Cheryl’s walkabout, her backstory is filled in with non-chronological flashes of past. It becomes clear she’s a person whose life hasn’t gone the way she’d hoped, hitting a rough patch of unwanted pregnancy, divorce, substance abuse, and infidelity. We see her relationship with her ex-husband (Thomas Sadoski), and her free spirit mother (Laura Dern). Other figures from her past (like Gaby Hoffmann) come to her mind. Meanwhile, in the present, she encounters all sorts of characters on the trail, fellow hikers, farmers, hippies, college kids, and a guy who says he’s a reporter for The Hobo Times. It’s uneven by its very nature. When it works, fine, but when it doesn’t, I was wishing it would hurry up and move on to the next stop.

Whatever small restraint screenwriter Nick Hornby (About a Boy, An Education) and director Jean-Marc Vallée (Dallas Buyers Club) show in refusing to find easy lessons in a real life’s complications is partly undone by their stumbling approach caught halfway between sentimental uplift and artful impressionism. It’s a wobbly mix of earnest self-help sparkle and collage of memory and pain. It neither solves the problem of the episodic repetition of depicting the long, mostly lonely, walk, nor uses the grinding monotony of her journey as experiential aesthetic. It gives her moments of insight, danger, despair, and connection, but seems to be trudging along, hitting its emotional mile markers more than it is evoking her mental and physical state.

She’s broken down spiritually, and has to break down bodily to begin to build back up again. That’s moving. Witherspoon’s performance sells it. But the movie itself is at a loss as to how best maximize that asset. Hornby’s script makes fine connections and moving juxtapositions, but Vallée’s direction is so self-consciously loose and scruffy, slipping from past to present with a flat-footed sense of obviousness. He’s simply pointing his camera at ideas of womanhood, literature, illness, and wilderness without actually engaging with the content. It’s representation, not interpretation. Perhaps that’s why he’s so good at capturing great performances and then diluting their potential impact by entombing them in glossy but flavorless movies, like McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club or Emily Blunt in The Young Victoria. Wild is the best of the three, especially worth seeing for Witherspoon successfully stretching her acting muscles. But I wished it could’ve been a wilder, more adventurous movie to better match the material and be worthy of its lead’s good work.

Quick Look: An Education (2009)

Carey Mulligan is almost unbelievably cute in the lead role of An Education, but that’s hardly the only good reason that so many critics and Oscar prognosticators have fallen in love with the film. On the one hand, it’s just a fairly routine coming-of-age story about a 16-year-old girl learning about life and love. On the other hand, it’s a very well done version of it. Mulligan, who I was surprised to learn is actually 24, plays the part with grace and charm and, in Jenny, she’s given a great character to play. She’s carefully poised with superficial depth and sophistication masking surprising emotional depth yet childishness. Mulligan’s also blessed with amazing support from an excellent cast that includes Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper, Olivia Williams, and Emma Thompson, who all perform admirably. Sally Hawkins, so good in last year’s Happy-Go-Lucky, turns up for one scene that’s so emotionally involving, and well done, I wished she could have been given more to do. Director Lone Scherfig keeps the film moving at a brisk pace, hitting all the right notes with the help of frequently beautiful cinematography by John de Borman and a charming screenplay by Nick Hornby, capably adapted from Lynn Barber’s memoir. The early-60s time period is evoked with just-so production design which matches the matter-of fact charm that runs through the film. Likewise, the music is a mix of period songs and original songs that blend seamlessly with each other and with the nimble score. With all of this going for it, the movie should be really great, right? I wish. It’s almost there. In the end, the movie is a very enjoyable experience, light and fun with a handful of spiky dramatic moments, but it doesn’t stick. The movie’s impact seemed to be evaporating as I crossed the theater’s lobby, but, in the days since I have seen it, I’ve felt a growing desire to see it again. The movie’s impact might not be long-lasting, but it is still well worth feeling.