Brooklyn

Brooklyn is a nicely filmed, delicate Harlequin romance with thin content, or rather with content that is perceived and resolves life events in a stereotypical feminine way – simplistically and through tears. Nevertheless, the Oscar nomination for Best Picture is understandable, as the movie does its best to suck up to Hollywood and its standards. (28/02/2016)

For a moment you have the feeling that it will resemble the best of Minghella in its innocence and precise direction, sometimes the main trio's Atonement winks at us with its atmosphere and fatefulness, and in the end you will recognize only a modern, subtly made, sometimes emotional romance for not completely stupid viewers who want something more, but mainly nothing inventive, beyond their perception. A punishingly mediocre film, with an excellent performance by Saoirse Ronan, who is wasted here for such a normal story with such a lacklustre denouement. (21/05/2016)

Pure romance, a joy to behold. If you're gonna film the red library, please do it like this. Pleasant, with insight (the novel was adapted by Nick Hornby), with a good period atmosphere and above all with actors and actresses whom you believe everything - every smile, every worry. Especially the gradually blossoming Saoirse Ronan would make anyone fall in love, and when that fragile ethereal creature cries, it can move a stone to emotion. I don't see any reason to give it a lower rating just because "it's an ordinary romance", which may be true, but it depends on the impression it made on me. And the impression is 100%. (11/03/2016)

Brooklyn is a story from the time when at least the United States welcomed economic migrants almost with open arms and all one had to do to pass through immigration control was to put on decent make-up and smile sweetly. But the film is a return to a bygone era, not only in its realities but also in its straightforward narrative. Compared to the book, it is more sentimental, more literal and less thematically expansive (it leaves out the manipulation of African-Americans and the hint of lesbian love). At the same time, however, it mostly retains the likably unforced development of events and more thoroughly develops the motif of two homes through its narrative structure. In the second half of the film, Eilis experiences similar situations as in the first half, except she is now much more experienced, having risen from pupil to teacher (the transformation culminates in the second scene on the boat, when she advises an inexperienced girl). Green is a constant reminder of home, to which other colours are gradually added, just as other emotions are added to the sadness in the protagonist’s face (instead of one emotion being completely replaced by another). The inability to cut ties to her homeland adds ambivalence to the protagonist’s journey toward fulfilling her dream – during the first hour, she suppresses her sadness, first through concentrated work, then by building a new home, only to be painfully reminded that her real and only home is in Ireland. Thus, unlike other immigration stories, the move to the US is not the end but the beginning of suffering. The boldest departure from the source material is the significant abridgment of the introductory part of the story. In the book, we get to know the environment and the people Eilis will have to leave behind over the course of several dozen pages. In the film, the girl announces shortly after the beginning that she is leaving for America, which she promptly does. Therefore, we don’t have the possibility to better get to know her older and more experienced sister Rose, whose legacy Eilis develops, and thus no tension arises with respect to which of the sisters deserves success and which will ultimately achieve it. Eilis can easily be accepted as a traditional romantic heroine. The film is thus less subversive than the book in relation to the conventions of idealistic narratives about the fulfilment of the American dream. However, it preserves the book’s narrative straightforwardness and its matter-of-fact, unsentimental tone, as it does not simply communicate to us in words and music what the protagonists is going through, but lets us experience it with her. 80% (27/02/2016)

A neat red-green bookcase with a pastel trim. If it has more layers than Šorš's sensitive hesitation over whether it leans more toward the stunted Italian bidet repairman, or to the snarled Irish Nazi from Star Wars, I've probably overlooked them, but it's because its overdosed by color, soft light, and Irish music. I'm not even mad at the movie, it's just a compilation of everything that kills me in similar dramas. The ending is a really clean slogan from the encyclopedia of clichés for beginning and ending screenwriters. (10/03/2016)