If you know me at all, you know of my undying love for booked and movies. Books that have been turned into movies especially.
I’m watching a movie that was derived from a book - Brooklyn by Colm Tolbin. I’ve already read the book at recommendation of a close friend, who hadn’t read the book but instead just seen the movie. We saw a copy of the book in our favorite bookstore, and she raved about it, having never read the book.
I recently read the book, not my most recent read, but recent enough.
Both the novel and the book follow the main character Ellis, in her journey immigrating to the United States from the Irish countryside in the period following World War II. Ellis navigates new relationships with the world around her, and how she views herself, and the choices she’s ultimately forced to make as her new life unfolds.
I’m roughly less than one minute into the movie, and the immediate first impression is so different. All we know is girl in Ireland, working at a busy store, but that is so different than the book. In the book, we are introduced throughly to Ellis and her family structure, how her brother are working jobs, how she’s only landed this job by pure chance, and all lead up to the moment where she tell’s Mrs. Kelly she is leaving for America through Father Flood. How Ellis slowly realizes through this process, that this choice is not hers at all, but rather something her sister has orchestrated at the behest of her own future prospects, making leaving and her future adjustment to a new country, and future relationships all that more complicated. Why include less of that in the introduction, but make a clear point for the audience to see how Ms. Kelly treats different patrons differently? Maybe to compare later on to her future employment?
As the film and character introductions unravel, there starts to be less guessing here. In the novel, Ellis comes to the slow horrifying heartbreaking realization that her beloved older sister is choosing for Ellis to have the new life and endless opportunity in the United States, but in the movie, Ms. Kelly just tells Ellis exactly how it is. That feels like a lazy technique, but it’s effective for a movie where they only have so much time, and you don’t have an inside look into Ellis’ stream of consciousness.
Ellis’ leaving on a boat scene was very different, dare I say abrupt and a lot of what she goes through, the internal turmoil of leaving home, is all conveyed in that one scene with Rose while packing her bag. And Rose isn’t the headstrong, magnificent character Ellis portrays her to be in the book. The exposition and the time leading up to Ellis’ leaving Ireland was the most emotionally impactful for me in the book, and a lot of it here feels very sped up!
Wait a minute - and there’s absolutely no mention of her brothers, specifically Jack, whose presence in the book give Ellis a lot of comfort later on when she is really struggling with things in New York. It’s that feeling that you aren’t alone in your emotions, and to keep pushing, because eventually your new place will feel like home. And that is one of the points of the book that most directly relates to so many lived and human experiences, mine included.
The entire process of the introduction, as the world outside her hometown is slowly and horrifyingly revealed to Ellis is somewhat removed, because all the characters around Ellis, and directly the audience, exactly how things are going to go.
The waiter in the dining room telling Ellis (and the audience) exactly what they want to convey extremely quickly and painlessly, leaving nothing up to guessing for the night of rough weather that’s to come. While this is a helpful trick for film makers, and I do understand that the point is to get to Brooklyn quickly, I think there can be nuance here to make the home seem more appealing, and make it more directly relate to the conflict that Ellis faces at the end of the book. There is a real chance they cut that, which I hadn’t considered.
So now we are about 20 minutes in, and Ellis is already feeling sad. If I’m not wrong, that was a solid, half way through the book situation. Also, we haven’t even meet the Father Flood characters, who was really her connection to everything and everyone back home. This is taking a very different narrative direction than the film so far, and is paced so differently, and so much quicker overall.
Didn’t love that they cut the baseball scene, but I get that Rose’s death is the real pivotal moment they are going for. I feel like that baseball scene was an important step for Ellis is how she views Tony and their relationship. She starts to view him differently, in a more complete version of a person, outside of a man that likes her. Now this interest is watered down to something that is mentioned in passing, and in letter, without adding much to the Tony movie character.
A lot of the added ending feels unnecessary, but this isn’t like a book medium, where you are more closely inside the minds of the characters, and can give more leeway to emotions and future events, based on what you’ve read so far. And I think that’s where the movie medium comes up short here. There’s a lot untold in the original book, and I was looking for some of that in the movie. The best scene of the added end parts, were somewhat in the book already, like where Ellis tell her mom that she’s married, and they have to painfully and painstaking clean out Rose’s closest before either of them are ready. That final hug with her mother is extremely painful, knowing that she has to leave her mother here, to likely die alone surrounded by no one, but also not having anything else to do. Ellis is realizing that this is her life, that she was thrust into this situation, but she’s the only one in control. Her lack of choice is not apparent at all, which could make her be viewed a little selfishly but I think that part still sticks the landing in the movie, and doesn’t cannibalize the main character
“And then you’ll realize, this is where your life is”
What a way to end. I really like the end quote there, because even though I’ve been through a lot this last month, I can’t say if I’ve fully realized that yet. I mean half the time I forget that this is my life, there is no playbook, there are no rules for what I must do or not do. This is my life and its my job to make it mine. How absolutely insane. We are all here, making conscious choice, whether thought out or not, that determine how we live our lives, and the sum of what we do to affect others. I need to act more on that sentiment. Realize the endless possibilities of my own life. I don’t have to, or what to, turn into my parents. I love them, but I think I want something just a little different. I don’t know how different yet, but just not that same.