Director: John Crowley
Runtime: 111 minutes
As far as immigrant stories go, the one found in Brooklyn, as adapted from Colm Toibin's novel, doesn't present the most obvious obstacles. Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) goes to New York with a place to stay and a job already set up. The bulk of her stress comes not from being discriminated against or manipulated, but simply from the weight of being away from home. Without simplifying Eilis' journey, director John Crowley and writer Nick Hornby locate the source material's powerful statement about identity without becoming heavy handed. Brooklyn is, like Eilis, relatively modest in its ambitions, but there is undeniable beauty and grace in its execution.
Those qualities are expertly communicated through Ronan's central performance. With her pale skin, piercing eyes, and otherworldly features, she's an instantly watchable figure, even at her plainest. Though Eilis comes from modest means, she wants to make the most of her excursion across the Atlantic, even if it means leaving behind the only place she's ever known. When Eilis attends a local dance, we immediately get a sense that - at this point in her life - she's something of an outsider. For all of the ties she has to her native Ireland, she still feels out of place.
The question of home is the driving force of Brooklyn, and Hornby's nimble adaptation hits all of its marks effortlessly. The story is constantly moving, even when there's little that's overtly dramatic going on. There was probably room to make a much longer movie out of Brooklyn's story, but Hornby avoids the trap of trying to cram everything from the source onto the screen. Certain developments happen rather abruptly, but Crowley's sure-handed direction holds it all together.
Ronan's aforementioned work is the other part of the equation that keeps Brooklyn from losing control of its story. With great poise and intelligence, she portrays Eilis as a hardworking, noble soul without trying to sanctify her. Though initially quite modest, she develops her own sly sense of humor, especially when she's around Tony (Emory Cohen), her charming Italian suitor. Like Brooklyn, Ronan can be wise, charming, funny, and absolutely heartbreaking. Between this and 2011's Hanna, the 21 year old continues to prove that her Oscar nomination for Atonement roughly a decade ago was no fluke.
And even when the possibility of a love triangle emerges, Crowley and Hornby refrain from taking their focus off of Eilis' identity crisis. If anything, the hints of a love triangle are merely a red herring meant to drive the film towards its conclusion. Only in the final stretch does Brooklyn's tight pacing start to seem like less of a smart decision. Eilis' eventual return to Ireland is plowed through so efficiently that the final frames almost don't have time to fully resonate.
But the heart of the narrative remains utterly sincere, and that's often more than enough to compensate for the sporadic instances of narrative short-cutting. Inside and out, Brooklyn is a lush, lovely story (costumes are especially striking) that beautifully externalizes a largely internal struggle. There are, obviously, more important immigrant stories out there that deserve to be told, but Brooklyn's is more than satisfying on its own terms to merit a look.
Grade: B
Director: Jean-Marc Vallee
Runtime: 120 minutes
By the time Cheryl Strayed reaches the end of her 1100 mile journey in Wild, she has undergone a radical transformation. The experience is full of hardship, exhaustion, and pain, as it forces Strayed to combat not only nature, but her own traumatic past. Wild, based on Strayed's memoir about her journey up the Pacific Crest Trail, is a story of accepting the past and pushing onwards into the uncharted future. Yet by the time Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club) has finished telling Strayed's story, very little of the subject's emotional journey actually registers.
Wild arrives in theaters only three months after Tracks, another story of a woman coping with trauma by setting out onto miles of unforgiving terrain. Yet where John Curran's film found a slow-burning, poetic grace in its story, Wild's conclusions are purely prosaic. The most. Nature is rarely a generous scene partner, but when properly utilized it can accentuate (and even mirror) the internal evolution of a character. Vallee never fully taps into the rugged beauty of his surroundings so that one feels how they wear away at Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) over time, despite the blisters and cuts and bloodied toe nails.
One of the most interesting aspects of Wild, its editing, may also be the thing that's holding it back. Vallee, working with Martin Pensa, moves seamlessly strings together moments of Strayed's hike, her recent past, and her childhood as if to create a cinematic mosaic. Unfortunately, once all of the pieces of glass have been set down and one steps back, the end result isn't terribly convincing or satisfying. Wild's flashbacks and dreams cover quite a bit of ground - most notably time with Strayed's mother Bobbi (Laura Dern) - and nothing really has time to stick. Though this structure neutralizes the threat of goopy sentimentality, it goes too far in the opposite direction. Wild is not a cold film, but it does feel like it lacks passion, despite the efforts of its protagonist.
Performances built around an actor interacting with nature can be hit or miss, but at least Witherspoon is enough to keep one invested as Vallee goes through the motions. In tiny moments where the script actually allows its several layers to fuse together, Witherspoon shows us glimpses of the heart-wrenching performance that almost was. Yet, too often, she's tasked with bland voice over and wading through shots that require nothing more than looking around and squinting. Wild is about Strayed coming to terms with her past, but Witherspoon doesn't have many opportunities to work that struggle into Strayed's actual travels. Instead, Vallee is content to piece together her psyche through visual juxtapositions that make sense on a symbolic level yet never connect emotionally.
Despite running just under two hours, Wild is often too efficient for its own good. Strayed finally has her eureka moment, only for the film to jump into a final bit of rambling voice over. The film's would-be moment of tremendous catharsis is unceremoniously discarded before it even has the chance to sink in. Wild's biggest sin isn't that it butchers Strayed's epic personal odyssey, but that it reduces it to something so ordinary. It's telling that the most insightful thoughts the film offers come from authors like Dickinson and Whitman, instead of Strayed's own head. Strayed's journey must have been quite something to go through, but Vallee has transformed it into something totally tame.
Grade: C+
