Review of Brooklyn, directed by John Crowley

If you’re new here and stumbled on this blog through the mythical and magical powers of the Internet, or because of whatever the search engines decided was going to show up today when you Google something, welcome! My name is Ashley, and I made this blog in addition to my author/writer portfolio because I wanted to remember all of the books, shows, and movies I was coming across throughout the years.

I read and watch a lot, and I used to work as a professional film critic on the side when I was in graduate school. While I loved going to film festivals and ploughing through 500 pages of readings a week, on top of my regular fiction and nonfiction TBR list, I wasn’t remembering everything at the end of the day.

So I started writing little reviews and posts to keep an archive. It’s also pretty fun to return to a book or movie after a few years, then come to this website to see what I thought about it originally. One could call this a mind map, especially as you can literally track changes in the way we think throughout a set period of time through this kind of work.

As I suddenly became unemployed in January 2025, while waiting for my visa to come through, I decided to spend some time off and see what I could do with this blog. It was extremely unexpected and I am so grateful to have had the money to be able to do this, as most people cannot afford to take off of work for this long.

A new series I’ve been working on is revisiting television shows and movies that I saw in the somewhat distant past, then seeing how my thoughts have changed. I remember when I first watched Brooklyn back in college I loved it. I thought it was such a good movie, and I wanted to revisit it and see if the heart made my love fonder.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction, as I know these can get quite long in the end.

A young Irish woman moves to Brooklyn, New York City, in search of a new life.

This movie is set in the 1950s, when moving to an entirely different country consisted of having to get on a boat and then arrive in that country you’ve never actually seen before, except maybe on a borrowed television screen or old photograph that made it your way. We begin in Ireland, in Enniscorthy, where Eilis Lacey lives with her family.

She has a part-time job working at the grocery store in town, but Eilis has bigger dreams of what her life could be. She’s not interested in the local town life, and when she goes out dancing with her friends, she’s not interested in the boys around town either. Her older sister works with a priest in Brooklyn, New York City, to get Eilis over to the States so she can find a job and better quality of life.

Eilis is nervous about this and what she might do in this foreign country, but while on the boat there, her roommate, who has done this so many times, tells her all of the secrets she knows. Eilis arrives in New York and moves into a boarding house for Irish women like her, and gets a job at a department store.

Everything is so different in New York, and Eilis struggles to adapt. She wants to go home, but the priest helps her get into a bookkeeping class at Brooklyn College, which will give her the chance to become an accountant if she passes all of her classes.

One night she goes to an Irish dance, but an Italian-American boy named Tony is there. She starts chatting with him, learns he’s a plumber, and sparks fly between the two. They begin dating, and Eilis slowly but surely finds her footing in Brooklyn—but then her sister dies.

She goes to Tony to tell her about this, but he tells her his brothers and he have a plot of land out on the island and they want to build houses for each of them—with some extras to sell. Eilis wants to do this, but because of her mother, she has to go home for a bit.

Tony asks her to marry him before she heads back, and they get married at City Hall. Eilis then heads home to see her mother, but turns out she’s move don from her old life. She takes over her sister’s job, but gets a permanent offer to stay. Her friend also tries to set her up, and Eilis stays longer to attend her wedding. The guy proposes to her, but Eilis does not commit.

But turns out the grocery stop owner knew the couple Eilis bumped into at City Hall, and she knows Eilis is married. Eilis then decides to go back home and tells everyone her married name. She then goes to her mother, tells her what happened, and then goes home to Brooklyn. On the boat home, she meets a nervous young woman heading to the US for the first time, and she gives the girl advice.

When she arrives back to Tony, they embrace, and the movie ends with them like that.

Overall Thoughts

As I mentioned before, when I watched this movie for the first time, I was impressed with the storyline. Now that I’ve seen it a second time, I find it so tender hearted and it takes on new meaning. I haven’t full on immigrated, but I have spent time in a completely new country with different languages. It’s incredibly difficult to survive and get around, so I couldn’t imagine staying permanently.

Saoirse is so good in every movie I’ve seen her in. Some of the movies aren’t the best to me in terms of plot and coherence, but she’s an incredibly talented actress who makes each role her own (from what I’ve seen—I haven’t seen her entire filmography). This movie is the full package, and most people I know actually haven’t seen it.

Go see it if you haven’t. A big part of the movie experience is seeing it unfold in front of you on a screen, not just reading its plot and seeing what happens.

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