dvd of the week
An assured and stunning Saoirse Ronan is Eilis, who leaves stifling small town Ireland for expansive and exciting Brooklyn in the early 1950s. She falls in love with an Italian-American plumber (Emery Cohen, in a star-making performance) but then returns home after a death in the family, suddenly unsure where she belongs. An intimate but universal immigrant’s story, Brooklyn expresses the conflicts, joys and promise of leaving home. Nick Hornby’s adaptation of Colm Toibin’s novel is seamless, and he was nominated for an Oscar, as was Ronan and the film as a whole.
