Saoirse Ronan: Home in Brooklyn

Saoirse Ronan joined director John Crowley and producer Finola Dwyer for a discussion of the film Brooklyn, based on Colm Toibin's beloved novel. Ronan stars as Eilis Lacey, a young woman who comes to America from Ireland.
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At lunch in the book-lined dining room of the Lotos Club this week, Saoirse Ronan joined director John Crowley and producer Finola Dwyer for a discussion of the film Brooklyn, based on Colm Toibin's beloved novel. Ronan stars as Eilis Lacey, a young woman who comes to America from Ireland. Moderated by Doubt playwright John Patrick Shanley, the panel discussed the film's themes while Shanley spiced the proceedings with groan-worthy quips about having had enough to drink--oh those Irish!--Ronan's radiant Eilis is the performance to watch as awards near.

A classic story of immigration, Brooklyn limns a familiar history at the same time that it becomes a nail-biting tug of war for Eilis' future. Eilis struggles between two worlds: the new in Brooklyn and the old, in Ireland, with opportunity and love in both lands, but she has to choose. You won't find a more resonant evocation of the coming-to-America experience on screen this season than Brooklyn.

America is after all a country of immigrants, no matter what the politics of the moment promote. Peggy Siegal nailed Brooklyn's allure, noting that this beautiful film reminds everyone of the way America used to be, when we, or our forebears, came to this place filled with infinite possibility. Still, it might be noted, Saoirse Ronan soon starts rehearsals for a Broadway production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, an American witch hunt, and not our history's finest hour, written during the time of the McCarthy hearings.

A version of this post also appears on Gossip Central.

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