On this week’s episode of Cineamerican Dreams, Carla Guedikan and Kansi Udochukwu discuss the push and pull factors of Eilis’s (the main character’s) ultimate choice between Ireland and America.
Brooklyn is primarily a romance movie produced in 2015 with a strong theme of the American immigrant experience. It is directed by John Crowley and is based off the book Brooklyn which is written by Colm Tóibín. Both the author and the director were born in Ireland. In fact, a significant amount of actors and actresses in this movie are Irish or Irish American.
Eilis is a young woman who lives in Ireland with her family, but is unable to find a proper job in her home country. She decides to look elsewhere and finds a job in Brooklyn, New York through her family’s priest and moves to America. Once she gets to Brooklyn, New York, she lives in a boarding house and starts work at a department store called Bartocci’s. One night she goes to an Irish dance and meets an Italian-American named Tony. They fall in love, and Eilis begins to thrive in New York. However, her happiness ceases once her sister dies in Ireland. Before going back to Ireland to comfort her mom, Eilis gets married to Tony. Eilis doesn’t tell anyone in Ireland that she is married, so her family and friends set her up with a wealthy man named Jim. She likes spending time with Jim and considers a future with him until the manager of the local bakery that Eilish used to work at found out she was married and confronted her. After that confrontation, she decides to go back to Brooklyn where Tony accepts her with open arms.
In this episode, some of the Brooklyn themes we touch on are national identity, gender relations, the impact of relationships (platonic or non-platonic) and the stereotypic American ideal.
