Did you watch Brooklyn? (Spoiler)

[Bejazzled]

What a beautiful film

Although I did feel sorry for the spurned chap at the end.

I think she did love Tony. He was very charismatic and whilst he wasn't educated, she admired his work ethic and his ambition.

Loads of people I know preferred the film to the book!

The book was darker than the film, and more thoughtful.

I could never understand the fuss about the book. The film was a better. Agree about the singing (those no-longer-needed-men who built NYC's tunnels and bridges) and Julie Walters is made for those roles. But I still felt it was a bit insipid. Happy to watch it on a Sunday night though.

Tony was cute but had a really annoying smirk and was a little manipulative, I felt. Did think 'What would mn say if she posted that he waits outside my college and is rushing to get married'.

I loved the book. I thought it really captured how clueless lots of us are as young women and how we can just drift into a life. Have recorded the film and am looking forward to watching it.

I liked it but didn't realise it was a film until it went on longer than 10.00... I though it was a bbc drama and a bit Catherine Cookson and predictable.

Perfect for the mood I was in with chocolate on the sofa.

I enjoyed it. I haven't read the book but I had the vague impression it was quite dark, so I was waiting for a baddie to turn up, but those bitchy girls in the boarding house were the only wrong uns!

I love Brooklyn. I think I'd have been tempted by the good catch with the lovely house though!

Oh sircoconut, even with the hair oil and terrible blazers? Probably a wise choice, it was a lovely house. I'd have let my knickers lead me to Tony and crossed my fingers it would work out.

He ditched the hair oil and wore a sports jacket instead of a blazer because he knew she didn't like them. He was lovely but Tony represented a more exciting life.

That's true, he did. But Tony had one alluring thing that Jim would never have. Melanin.

I'm with you squoosh TeamTony all the way with me.

I just watched this on catch up after seeing this thread. Really lovely film. Just what I needed. Glad she went back to Tony, but felt very sad for her Mum.

I think the good catch would have made a good partner to Eilish. I liked Tony too but I couldn't shake the feeling the actor had taken lessons from the Joye Tribbiani school of acting.

I did marvel at the posh boarding house. Considering how poor the Irish were at the time and most lived in very poor and overcrowded conditions. Eilish's family didn't seem particularly well off so how can they afford such a lovely and clean boarding house?

As I missed the start, how did her move to NY come about? Why her sister didn't go too?

Eilish couldn't find work. Her sister Rose had a good job in an office. Eilish's friend Nancy got a boyfriend, one of the rugby club boys. Eilish felt she had no future in Ireland. Rose wrote to a priest in Brooklyn who arranged for Eilish to get a job and lodgings.

Well I wouldn’t worry about “the lovely Jim”, he turned to the dark side and reincarnated as General Hux. I reckon she dodged a bullet (or Death Star) there!

I thought Saoirse caught the homesickness very well, and also the increasing confidence as they started planning their life on Long Island.

Thank you Lar

She was very lucky to have all those helpful people in her life. To help out a morose girl, sort her lodging, evening course etc.

I know it's not real [hello], obvs made an impression as I still keep thinking about it!

'the Irish' at this time were certainly not all poor. Eilis's family represent a section of society that didn't live in a peat-smoky hut living hand-to-mouth but instead were relatively affluent. Their social lives revolved around the rugby club; they were hardly desperate.

One of the reasons I like the book and film is because it's not the (important but) fairly well-worn story of desperate, dirt-poor immigrants to America, but about people who could have had a perfectly respectable and fairly comfortable life in Ireland but chose wider horizons instead.

It dares to be about what I suppose we could call the lower middle or respectable working class in Ireland at that time, a group not traditionally as romanticised as struggling peasants.

The network of Church connections that gets Eilis the visa, Brooklyn boarding house place, job and night class is typical of the way immigrant networks worked in the US, rather than some set of unusually lucky individual circumstances. It’s the flip side of the network of gossip that means that news of Eilis’s supposedly secret marriage filtered back to Enniscorthy.

And yes, Eilis is lower-middle-class small town Irish, educated, genteel and aspirational. She doesn’t emigrate because she’s poor or desperate, but because there are no economic opportunities in her home town — working behind the counter in a grocery is way below her capacities, compared to glossy, dressy, upwardly mobile Rose with her golf. The priest visiting from the US is shocked at the waste of her talents — that’s what starts the idea.

And she’s not supposed to be an interesting or original character — she’s an ordinary representative figure.

And the man singing at the Christmas dinner scene is the incomparable Iarla O’Lionaird.

The fact that she's middle class makes it more interesting. She is really taking a chance by marrying Tony.

Yup, she’s marrying ‘down’, and she recognises that herself when she’s thinking about mentioning him to Rose in letters — she would never have dreamed of marrying the Enniscorthy equivalent of Tony (is he a mechanic? A plumber? Something blue-collar, anyway), for instance. But she makes different choices in Brooklyn, and the potential for his success is of course much greater, as is social mobility.

'Oh sircoconut, even with the hair oil and terrible blazers?' Yep!

She'd have ended up running around after six kids in a cramped flat while Tony worked all hours to make things meet I reckon. Would she have been able to use her education and work once she'd had children? Jim seemed like he'd be more of an equal partner I reckon.

Tony had aspiration - setting up a building company with his brothers. Seeing potential.

The guy at home had no aspirations he was taking over from his parents, both their work and their home.

Tony had far more potential than Jim, who ran his father's bar. Tony had already bought land and was setting up a building company in Long Island. Given the scale of house building on Long Island in the following years he probably made a lot of money. Chances are that Eilish joined the company, using her accountancy skills. I really believe they will have made a big success of their lives.

I agree that Tony had more potential, starting the company with his brothers, buying the land on Long Island. And I think living in America Eilis wouldn't necessarily have been expected to keep popping the kids out as would have been the case in Wexford. She would have had family planning options whereas at home praying would have been her only option.