Carol goes to Brooklyn

How nice to have another look at BROOKLYN last night - four months or so since I saw it in the cinema - and CAROL is lined up for a second view tonight. Now that Award Season is behind us for another year, one can appreciate them more fully. Both movies will endure and become more popular, now that they are not swamped by the big hitters anymore. Both have quite a bit in common: both from respected novels, and set in the early Fifties - and both featuring those department store girls: Eilis from Enniscorthy in Ireland, and Therese working in the toy department over Christmas, when Carol Aird walks in and they look at each other .... perfect moments and perfect endings too. And Emory Cohen is my discovery of last year, as Eilis's Italian-American boyfriend. Saoirse, Cate and Rooney are all spell-binding of course. 

Eilis goes to Brooklyn

BROOKLYN would seem to have stolen a march on CAROL, that other literary adaptation about shopgirls in Fifties New York, by getting into cinemas first. We still have to wait two weeks more for Todd Haynes' long-awaited CAROL (it was only filmed last year). John Crowley's film, as scripted by Nick Hornby from Colm Toibin's marvellous and successful novel will leave you in a happy daze, with smiles and a few tears as one leaves the cinema. It is going to be very popular too. The early screening today was practically full. Perhaps Toibin's recent novel "Nora Webster" would also be a good movie?

BROOKLYN is an old fashioned period piece that offers fine acting, beautiful cinematography, charming writing grounded in reality, and thought provoking direction. As I said about the book here in 2010: It is set in the Ireland of the '50s when smart local girl Eilis works in a shop but gets an opportunity to move to Brooklyn and study and improve herself. Small town life of the time is nicely captured and Eilis finds life in Brooklyn much the same among the Irish community there, but before too long she finds her feet - and an Italian boyfriend, also seeking to improve his lot. Then a death calls her back to Ireland where she has to make some hard choices about what to do next.

The Fifties background looks quite right for once, and not trowelled on, the colour schemes are soothing and the production design perfect. As this is 1952 passing mention is made of THE QUIET MAN and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, a nice touch.The casting is marvellous too, even to the smallest parts - the people we see in the streets or at the store where Eilis works, or the faces of the men at the homeless shelter, and the girls at the Brooklyn boarding house. Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters are as sterling as ever, Brid Brennan is marvellously nasty, and Fiona Glascott is touching as Eilish's sister Rose. 

At the centre though are two stunning performances that hold the attention and enthrall us. Saoirse Ronan, mesmerising as Eilis, she matures before our eyes, and Emory Cohen as Tony, the Italian plumber she falls for in New York. 
He is a marvellous presence and they have great chemistry together, and some very touching scenes. I simply loved every minute of it. Saoirse will be an Oscar contender along with Cate, Rooney, Kate Winslet and Maggie Smith .... going to be an interesting award season. BROOKLYN will be a Best Picture contender too - CAROL will have a lot to live up to. Now for THE LADY IN THE VAN and Winslet's THE DRESSMAKER looks a lot of fun too.

Ireland looks good here too, though Enniscorthy looks rather drab. Emigration from Ireland to America was common in the fifties. I remember a schoolfriend's family moving to San Diego which seemed impossibly exotic to us (his father was a bank manager) and a girl who worked for my mother also going to America - we saw her off from Shannon Airport and the photos she sent looked exactly like Coney Island here.

Edna O'Brien

A new documentary on writer Edna O'Brien on Irish television should be worth tracking down - I can't find it though on the RTE iPlayer ... but the blurb sums it up:

Edna O’Brien: Life Stories follows the extraordinary tale of one of Ireland’s most celebrated literary greats. Directed by Charlie McCarthy and produced by Cliona Ní Bhuchalla of Icebox Films, Edna O’Brien-Life Stories reveals a fascinating and encompassing insight into the life of the Irish novelist.

Now in her eighty second year and about to publish a memoir in October, Edna O’Brien opened her home and her heart to filmmakers Charlie and Cliona with the result of a compelling portrait of one of the great survivors in Irish literature.

Edna O’Brien’s journey from Tuamgraney, County Clare to the centre of literary life in London has involved defiance of family, censorship, elopement, motherhood, unhappiness in marriage, custody battles, divorce and the rearing of two sons as a single mother. But throughout most of these upheavals she wrote consistently to produce an impressive and unique body of work which makes her the doyenne of Irish letters.

O’Brien’s  was, and still is, a life lived in technicolour. She was a key figure in the social and literary whirl of sixties and seventies London. She  had close encounters with many of that period’s icons: Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Mitchum among them. She is probably the only Irish novelist who credits the taking of LSD with influencing her prose style in the early 1970‘s.

Based on a series of frank, moving and entertaining interviews with O’Brien and with her sons Carlo and Sasha, the film is a fascinating portrait of a woman whose infinite variety and ageless spirit  make her an icon at home and abroad.

Edna O’Brien-Life stories will air on Tuesday 8th May at 10.15pm on RTE 1.

As the review in "The Irish Times" puts it:  "Its strength was that it got behind the well-known image she presents of a fey, flame-haired Irish woman - the Maureen O'Hara of the literary world - to delve into her memories to explore the themes that absorb her: from family bonds to exile, from the creative impulse to love and loss. And she has been around for so long that you forget how much of a literary celebrity she was. At the height of her fame she did the rounds of the chat-shows - there is an amusing clip from a Michael Parkinson show, as well as clips from the films from her works".

Her early '60s novels are still marvellously re-readable: THE COUNTRY GIRLS, THE LONELY GIRL (which became THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES film in 1964, and the 1966 film I WAS HAPPY HERE from another of her stories "Passage of Love", her other books like A PAGAN PLACE, MOTHER IRELAND, THE LOVE OBJECT, RETURNING, books of short stories and her most recent one SAINTS AND SINNERS with some very satisfying stories. Great to see her still writing in her 80s. There was also of course that amusing (for all the wrong reasons) 1972 film ZEE & CO (now a camp trash classic). She sat in front of me once at the theatre, at the Royal Court for Jill Bennett's HEDDA GABLER which I think she translated or adapted, in the '70s. As per previous posts I WAS HAPPY HERE with Sarah Miles was a lovely re-discovery last year. 

Brooklyn

Good to see a new paperback issue of Colm Toibin's marvellous novel BROOKLYN, which I feel like reading all over again - I gave my hardback to a girl pal who is from Enniscorthy, the town it is set in, and she loved it. Perhaps Colm's most accessible (and highly praised) work, it is set in the Ireland of the '50s when smart local girl Eilis works in a shop but gets an opportunity to move to Brooklyn and study and improve herself. Small town life of the time is nicely captured and Eilis finds life in Brooklyn much the same among the Irish community there, but before too long she finds her feet - and an Italian boyfriend, also seeking to improve his lot. Then a death calls her back to Ireland where she has to make some hard choices about what to do next. Its engrossingly plotted and a very satisfying read, like Toibin's THE STORY OF THE NIGHT or his collection of short stories MOTHERS AND SONS, and like them is infused with gay sensibility and Colm's precise detail. Highly recommended.