Brooklyn

This is our next film. I'm really looking forward to it as we started watching it at home but it was late and managed to miss the second part. Fortunately we have now scheduled it for later this week.

Here are my notes:

Brooklyn

UK 2015                      112 minutes

Director:                      John Crowley

Starring:                        Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for three Oscars (Best Picture, Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nick Hornby))
• Won BAFTA for Best British Film and five further BAFTA nominations including Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress (Julie Walters), Best Adapted Screenplay
• A further 29 wins and 136 nominations

“What a moving, emotionally intelligent and refreshingly old-fashioned movie this is. The narrative may be perfectly situated in the early 50s, but the style of film-making harks back further still, to a time when “women’s pictures” were the backbone of popular cinema. Contemporary audiences raised on overblown spectacle and overwrought romance may have to recalibrate their reactions to appreciate the rich rewards of director John Crowley’s best film since 2003’s unexpectedly punchy Intermission. But for those enamoured of the 30s and 40s heyday of Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck, Brooklyn feels like a breath of fresh air.”

Mark Kermode

 

A young Irish woman Ellis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) emigrates to New York City in search of a better life. Initially homesick, she begins to adjust to her new surroundings with the help of Italian-American Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen) with whom she becomes romantically involved. A family crisis then compels Ellis to return to Ireland where she meets Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson), and as a result she has to choose between two countries and the different lives they offer her.

Producer Finola Dyer read Brooklyn, the award-winning novel by Colm Toibin, after completing her work on An Education (2009). She felt that its story spoke to her on a personal level as her mother had emigrated from Ireland in the 1950s, and having met Toibin through a mutual friend he immediately granted her the film rights. Nick Hornby had produced the Oscar nominated screenplay for An Education and Dyer commissioned him to adapt Brooklyn for the screen.

Director John Crowley had read the book on its publication and agreed to take on the project after reading just 40 pages of Nick Hornby’s script. Crowley had himself emigrated from Ireland to London in his 20s and this was one of his main reasons for deciding to make the film. In an interview on its release he said he:

“…had emotional understanding from experience that could maybe help make this film not a period piece frozen in aspic, but could give it a directness that would resonate with a younger audience anywhere.”

At its premier at the Sundance Film Festival the film received a standing ovation and great critical acclaim, subsequently confirmed by the success of the film in the awards season. Following a bidding war for its distribution rights the film was released globally and to date has taken USD 62.1 million against its budget of USD 11.0 million.

After beginning his career directing stage plays in Dublin John Crowley made his name in the UK as an associate director at the Donmar Warehouse in London where he directed a filmed version of a short stage play by Samuel Beckett. He has subsequently worked extensively in theatre both in the UK and on Broadway. He made his feature film debut with Intermission (2003), a comedy drama set in Dublin and in 2007 won a BAFTA for Best Director for his film Boy A (made for TV in the UK but given cinematic release in the US).

It has recently been announced that Crowley will direct the film version of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Goldfinch.

Here's the trailer:

 

 

An Education

These are my notes for this week's screening:

An Education


UK 2009 (95 minutes)

Director: Lone Scherfig

Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike and Emma Thompson

Awards and Nominations

• Nominated for three Oscars: Best Film, Best Actress (Carey Mulligan) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Nick Hornby)

• A further 18 wins and 45 nominations including a BAFTA Award for Best Actress for Carey Mulligan and seven further nominations including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Outstanding British Film

In 1961 London Jenny Millar (Carey Mulligan), a 16 year old schoolgirl in the process applying to Oxford, meets a charming older man David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard) who starts taking her out and then charms her parents into accepting the relationship. Jenny eventually realises that Goldman is a con man, but nonetheless accepts his proposal of marriage and drops out of school – and then she discovers that he is already married. Jenny returns to school to renew her studies and next year is accepted at Oxford.

The film is based on an autobiographical memoir by the journalist Lynn Barber who as a schoolgirl had an affair with conman Simon Prewalski, an associate of Peter Rachman before reading English at St Anne’s College Oxford. The script is by Nick Hornby, better known as the author of novels such as Fever Pitch, About A Boy, and High Fidelity, who explained in an interview what drew him to the story:

“She’s a suburban girl who’s frightened that she’s going to get cut out of everything good that happens in the city. That, to me, is a big story in popular culture. It’s the story of pretty much every rock ‘n’ roll band.”

The story also has echoes of the kitchen-sink dramas of the 1960s like Billy Liar and A Taste of Honey although the trouble that Jenny gets to is the – potential – loss of her Oxford career. The film concludes with Jenny at Oxford remarking in a voiceover: “I probably looked as wide-eyed, fresh and artless as any student. But I wasn’t.” This is, if anything, an understatement: as Lynn Barber revealed during a recent appearance on Desert Island Discs, she managed to sleep with more than 50 men during two terms at Oxford.

Carey Mulligan received unanimous praise for her performance as Jenny in what was only her second film appearance. She played Kitty Bennet in Joe Wright’s version of Price and Prejudice (2005) and then spent three years playing leading roles in a number of TV programmes including Ada Clare in Bleak House and Sally Sparrow in Blink (one of the best Doctor Who stories ever). Following the international success of An Education she was cast in a co-starring role in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street (1987) and will appear shortly in a starring role with Keira Knightley in Never Let Me Go (2010), from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, which will receive its first screening at the 2010 London Film Festival.