Saoirse Ronan as Eilis Lacey in “Brooklyn.”
By Lisa Redmond
The film “Brooklyn” tells the story of a young Irish girl, Eilis Lacey, who leaves behind the limited opportunities of small town Enniscorthy for a better life in New York City.
When tragedy strikes at home, she is forced to return and finds herself torn between two lives.
Saoirse Ronan, who plays Eilis, describes “Brooklyn” as the story of her people and I, among many others, feel a sense of belonging in that categorization.
But the film has hit especially home with me for standout reasons.
I too am an Irish girl who moved to New York City.
Like Eilis, I met an Italian American.
The film was set in my hometown……Enniscorthy, and my sister was an extra in the film.
I have lived in Brooklyn.
These factors meant that I was instantly connected to the film.
However, the real emotional pull of the period drama comes from Ronan’s depiction of the stages of emigration, stages that every one of us who has flown the nest has undoubtedly experienced in various degrees as we navigate our new surroundings.
Moving to New York City was the toughest thing I have ever done.
As an Enniscorthy girl myself, I could feel Eilis’ fear and uncertainty as she struggles to adapt to her new life.
When you come to New York you have to prove yourself to everyone around you, landlords, employers, potential friends.
Unlike Eilis, I did not have a job or an apartment set up for me when I came here.
It took me an entire three months to find an apartment of my own and six months to find a job in my field.
But what stands out for me during that period of adaptation is not the external struggles of constant moving or the financial instability, but the loneliness, fear and uncertainty of being thousands of miles away from everything I knew, in a city where I had no real connections.
Ronan captures the unsettled feelings of migration perfectly and the scene where Eilis tears up in work could have just as easily been me, crying on the subway five decades later.
As things slowly begin to fall into place for Eilis, she becomes more connected to her new life in America, which instigates a bittersweet experience of divided identity.
The more she adapts and builds up a life in America, the more her life in Ireland begins to slip away.
She echoes the entire migrant community in her letter to her sister: “My body was here but my life was back in Ireland with you. Now it’s halfway across the sea.”
Since moving, I have slowly built up a life for myself in America.
But it’s a life that my mother, father, brothers, sister and best friends know nothing of.
Despite the advancements of technology, it’s a feeling that is still as strong today as it was fifty years ago - that the most important people in your life are not really in your life. And there will always be that degree of separation as long as you live abroad.
When Eilis returns to Ireland she sees her country and town through fresh eyes.
This resonates strongly with my belief that in order to really know your country, you need to first live in another.
Each time I return to Ireland I notice things that I was previously oblivious to. The mountains and amazing landscapes of the Southeast seem a far cry from the concrete madness that now surrounds me in Manhattan.
I have some amazing friends in Wexford but much as I love my hometown, there is a general gap in perspective that occurs whenever I return home, one which leaves me feeling like a permanent foreigner - resisting full integration to my new country, but adapting enough so that I can never fully fit into where I came from.
“Brooklyn” perfectly displays how ambiguous the concept of home becomes when you no longer feel like the person that you used to be.
There is one key lesson that I have learned through leaving Ireland, which is for me the standout message of this film: When you make the decision to emigrate, it is no longer possible to have everything that you want in life.
Your new home may provide things that would never be available to you in your home country, for me it’s career opportunities and unlimited professional growth, for Eilis it was Tony.
But it will always come at a price.
You may never be able to build up a good life in the place you call home, and you may never feel truly at home in the place where your life is. There will always be a trade-off and a sacrifice to following your dreams.
And that for most emigrants is living a life apart from the people who mean the most to them.
“Brooklyn,” then, is a film that will stay with me forever. It captures the pleasure and pain of knowing and loving people in more than one place.
