Love and Belonging in John Crowley’s Brooklyn
By Jaylan Salah

Home is where the heart lies.
Does this saying have any truth to it?

“You’re homesick, that’s all. Everybody gets it. But it passes. In some, it passes more quickly than in others. There’s nothing harder than it. And the rule is to have someone to talk to and to keep busy.”
-	Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín (novel)

“Homesickness is like most sicknesses; it’ll make you feel wretched and then move on to somebody else”.
-	Brooklyn, Nick Hornby (script)

Isn’t cinema just powerful? I watched “Brooklyn” directed by John Crowley before reading the novel written by Colm Tóibín. The novel fleshed out what it feels like to be Eilis, an immigrant Irish girl in 1950s America, but the film masterfully captured how it feels to be Eilis without giving it all away.

Proof? Compare the two quotations above. They belong to the same character, Father Flood, as he speaks to Eilis when homesickness is gnawing at her fragile frame, haunting her days and leaving her a tearful mess. 

In the film, the power of his single sentence stems from the lack of resolution or relief. Unlike in the novel, he doesn’t give sound advice. He just tells her she is in bad shape, yet it will pass. He doesn’t give her any clue as to how or when.

Contrary to common belief, “Brooklyn” is no sweet, sappy romance. It is not an ode to the power of love and how it conquers in the end. “Brooklyn” is one scary film, a meditation on the idea of home, love, death, and moving on.

It would be relatively easy to throw Eilis’ final choice on the beautiful reminiscence that love wins. But it’s not. “Brooklyn” is a film that paves to the power of individuality. Like most viewers, I got into it waiting for something bittersweet to fondle my nerves and leave me a puddle of goo by the end credits. I never thought that I would cry for reasons very foreign to what I previously had in mind.

Dare I say “Brooklyn” is an existential movie? In my book, it is. Before anybody attacks, let me explain why.

According to American director and actor Cameron McHarg, this existential movie deals with man’s search for meaning in an absurd world. It highlights a personal struggle in a meaningless world that doesn’t provide answers or even steps to follow. The viewer is on their own, literally and metaphorically, but expected to reach some sort of explanation by the end. 

All of the films that I’ve come across labeled as “existential” starred existentialist male leads. Not a single one had a woman in the center. Enter Brooklyn, where it’s all about the female protagonist Eilis and her sense of identity, struggles, and attempts to find the self in two seemingly different worlds. Eilis leaves her hometown in search of a better opportunity. She gets it, not in the form of a job as an accountant but in the form of a young, handsome Italian chap who sweeps her off her feet and presents a sense of the very elusive thing she has been searching for: home. 

In a film that plays on themes of home and love, Brooklyn deconstructs them as it builds up to them. One moment Eilis falls in love with Tony and believes she has found her home. Viewers think that Brooklyn is where her heart lies. A family tragedy forces her to go back to Enniscorthy, Ireland, and puts viewers in the shoes of the doubtful Eilis as she is lured back into her old life but with a different scheme. This time she is treated like a conqueror back from America, not the modest, simple girl constantly abandoned on the dance floor. Whereas Tony’s love for Eilis seems solid, her love for him is uncertain, driven by her insecurity and loneliness.

In the end, viewers ponder that had things taken a different direction, would Eilis have gone back to Brooklyn? Which does she consider home? Is there such a thing as home in the first place? What about love? The position of women in a time when they didn’t have a lot; either happily married, depressed, or unmarried didn’t leave much for the imagination. How would that woman find love in her own free will when singlehood would mean sharing a toilet with another miserable divorcée who dreamed of a husband to have a toilet of her own?

The film asks questions yet never gives us answers. What is home? Is it an actual place where a person belongs? Would we consider a place a “home” because of the people who live there, or is it just that it carries certain sacredness beyond our earthly perception? 

The power of Brooklyn is in its ability to deconstruct every principle that it slowly builds for in the first half of the film. It reflects on free will and how far we as humans would go to seek shelter in the most ordinary of places, among ordinary people. Eilis’ transition was palpable and honest, yet it was also confusing and shaky. That’s what made her a great character. The strength in “Brooklyn” comes from the uncertainty and the absurdity by which Nick Hornby’s script, John Crowley’s directing, Yves Bélanger’s cinematography, and Saoirse Ronan’s acting handled the material.

This young woman’s existential crisis resolves but doesn’t leave viewers with a sweet ending. It gets them to think, “Really? Did she do that because she loved him?” and also, “Is this really what she considers home?” “Is that where her heart lies?”