An appealingly old-fashioned movie that is unrushed, well-observed, and a little bit boring.
What Works: It’s about an Irish girl in the 1950s (Saorise Ronan) who emigrates to Brooklyn, and really the immigrant experience in general as she experiences home-sickness, the joys of first love, and what it’s like to visit home again. [She believes she’ll be there only a short while but everyone around her seems to be conspiring to get her to stay longer.]
Saoirse Ronan manages an expressive performance from a character that is largely passive. And the oldschool pacing will work perfectly for people watching it on HBO during a night at home.
What Doesn’t: Ronan’s character’s passivity is sometimes maddening and even though it’s probably accurate for the time period, you might wish you were spending more time with a more forceful character. [And by “more forceful” I mean someone who doesn’t just let things happen to her, and might actually say something to her friend about being married instead of being set up on a date.]
What I Would Have Done Differently: There are real insights into the immigrant experience–not just homesickness but the elastic ideas of what “home” is in the first place–and especially the romanticization of it eventually disappearing when you actually go back, so I wouldn’t want to discredit all that just because of a main character that I couldn’t relate to fully.