Hands down, the best romance of 2015 is John Crowley’s (Intermission, Boy A) terrific Brooklyn. Note that I did not say that this is the most romantic movie of the year, but rather the best romance. This movie features no wining and dining. There are not the passionate, hot and heavy, sometimes stir a little in your seat scenes that you might be used to in movies like Titanic, The Notebook, Pretty Woman, Before Sunrise, (500) Days of Summer, Dirty Dancing, or Ghost. This isn’t R-rated. It isn’t PG-rated. It is very appropriately rated as a PG-13 movie. It’s the closest thing that well resembles the process of two people meeting each other by chance, getting to know each other first casually and then on a much deeper level before falling into an intense and meaningful love that is both believable and beautiful. I did not know this was a love story going into the film. My mantra this year is to know as little about a movie as possible going into it. That doesn’t mean I’ll see just anything. I do have to see first that the film is getting positive reviews. But if it does have decent reviews and it does have Oscar buzz, I’ll make every effort to see it. Brooklyn was a movie that was the most straightforward film in the world to understand, but at the same time, almost impossible to truly comprehend. And in a word, that is love.

There are still a lot of great movies that have yet to be released in 2015. It’s been a great year, so I’m tentative to declare that a film will be in my end-of-year top 10 list. But as much hope as I have for movies like Joy, Carol, The Revenant, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Danish Girl, In the Heart of the Sea, and others, I think at least a couple of these will fizzle. I’m not ready to guarantee it, but I believe that Brooklyn will find a way to stick on my top 10 list when everything is set and done. The things it did well, it did great. I had very few problems with this film, and those that I did, I am willing to overlook because of how excellent the overall product mainly was. It was a very, very engrossing movie, for as simple the plot was, it had you on pins and needles wondering how it would end. With 10-15 minutes left to go, the film could have ended in a variety of different ways. But, by that point, it could leave you happy, angry, sad, or hopeful. I won’t say which way it went, but it wasn’t as flawless of an ending as I would have liked to have seen.

There were many different ways that you were tugged at and potentially upset in this movie, so I didn’t feel like there was an antagonist. There were times where you wanted to get mad at certain characters because of how they acted, but you couldn’t because they weren’t aware of all of the circumstances. There was only one character that I felt that you even had the right to get mad at, but you knew too much about this character and were willing to give them as much time to right a situation or make their situation worse. I found myself liking the lack of an antagonist in a mild drama to be interesting. It was one of those movies where you liked just about everyone, but if an event or two was known about and these characters behaved in the same way, you would not feel the same way. You’ll know exactly what I mean when you see this movie.

I haven’t mentioned this yet in a post, but this is something that I will revisit with some of my upcoming reviews of 2015. This is the year for actresses in a leading role. The men have controlled most of the memorable performances in recent years, but it is the complete opposite this year. In fact, the only knock-out performance that I envision delivered by a lead actor (the wildcard here being Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant) might be Eddie Redmayne. He, ironically, plays the role of one of the first trans women to undergo sex reassignment surgery in The Other Danish Girl. So far, we’ve had Brie Larson (Room) and Carey Mulligan (Suffragette) as legitimate contenders for Oscar’s top acting prize. Jennifer Lawrence (Joy) and Cate Blanchett (Carol), starring in films yet to be released, seem to be guarantees. But welcome to the permanent conversation Saoirse Ronan (The Grand Budapest Hotel, Atonement). Your spot looks pretty safe in what will likely be the best development of a lead female character in a movie this year. Larson is still the absolute favorite here. Lawrence and Blanchett seem to deliver in everything they touch. But Ronan (nominated for Best Supporting Actress way back in 2007 for Atonement) could spoil because of how full this performance was. A complete unknown to me before this movie, she won me over more with each scene.

There is a lot of foreshadowing in this movie, and you won’t even notice until it’s smack dab in your face. The early parts of it are eerily reminiscent of Titanic. You’ve got the lead character traveling from Europe to America via ship, hoping for a better life. You’ve got adverse conditions on the ship. They spent 10-15 minutes spent on this ship. It seemed a little long at first, but it does make sense. The comparisons to Titanic, more or less, end there. There is no iceberg. And the name of the movie probably wouldn’t be called Brooklyn if Eilis (Ronan) didn’t make it to Brooklyn.

I’ve written four paragraphs, and I haven’t even mentioned the plot or any of the characters. Brooklyn begins in a small village in 1950 Ireland. Eilis lives a very drab life. It is by no means glamorous, and she is by no means charming. Her prospects for the future, both personally and vocational, are limited, leaving her depressed. In an attempt to give her a better life, her older sister Rose buys a ticket to go to America where she’ll connect with a Father Flood (Jim Broadbent – Iris, The Iron Lady), a helpful priest. He gets her a job as a sales associate at a posh department store in Brooklyn while also helping her a place to live in a boarding house with the kindhearted landlord and other girls just like her. But no matter how set up she is in her new life, she is entirely homesick. She barely musters a smile at work, and after work, all she does is sit in her room, writing letters to her family and waiting to receive ones in return. To help with her homesickness, Father Flood enrolls her in some night classes, where she begins learning bookkeeping skills. She knows that this is where her future is. This challenges her much more than retail, and she seems determined that her vocation is in an office and not a store.

I am not sure you’ll see a better movie of a young person becoming an adult at the movie theater this year. When we meet Eilis, she is soft-spoken, lacks confidence, and is rather bland. A debilitating amount of homesickness certainly doesn’t help the situation. But enough people notice her sadness, and she is encouraged by these people to step outside of her comfort zone. This includes the class she takes where she finds fulfillment in and going out with her roommates to social engagements because deep down inside, she knows wallowing in her self-pity at home will not help her outlook on life. Something you won’t find better at the movies this year is a young person transforming into an adult. At the start of this film, the Eilis we meet is not the Eilis we know in the middle and not the one we know at the end. And it is rewarding as an audience member to see the physical, mental, and emotional transformation of its lead character that seems so natural and believable.

As fantastic as Ronan is (and she truly is excellent), this movie would not have come close to succeeding as well as it did with the most underrated performance I’ve seen this year. Emory Cohen (The Gambler, television’s Smash) delivers the most spirited, loving, supporting actor performance of the year. He would be an absolute lock for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination if it were up to me. I am bummed with one of my go-to sites (indiewire.com) not including him even in its top 25. Tony (Cohen) brought the life out in Eilis. Tony brought it to a whole new level if she was on the path to defeating her depression and homesickness with her night classes and roommates. He’s Italian. She’s Irish. That doesn’t matter at all to him. What I liked most about Tony was the absolute respect and adoration he had for Eilis. And his old-fashioned attitude was appreciated as much by Eilis as it was by its audience members. This is a good man with good intentions. He has dreams. And, as mentioned, Eilis has never been happier than she was with him. The courting process was sweet. The way that these two fell in love was beautiful. Brooklyn is the most romantic movie of the year.

And I won’t mention what happens after this other than to say there are ups and downs and tough decisions that need to be made. As audience members, we’ll be tugged in several different directions. We know things are going to happen at this point. We don’t know what they will be, nor do we know the consequences of these actions. We can hope that true love will prevail, but will it? What decision will we make when we have two forces pulling us in entirely different directions? How will this affect what we will do when we have to decide on our own? How can we balance what is expected of us with what our heart tells us to do? Have we seen movies like this before? Of course, we have. But this one was different. It was different because of a secret one of the lead characters carried. It was different because of the amazing physical, mental, and emotional growth experienced by Eilis (which was driven by Ronan’s Oscar-worthy performance). It was different because of the unhappiness she experienced when first living in Ireland and then the outright depression she fought through when she first got to the United States. Finally, it was different because of the casting of Tony. Cohen was absolutely perfectly cast as the upbeat, loving, traditional man who wanted nothing more than to show Eilis just how important she was to him.

I didn’t even mention the understated performance delivered by Domhnall Gleeson (Ex-Machina, Unbroken). This was the seventh movie I’ve seen Gleeson in since 2010, and he carried it out to perfection. The film probably didn’t need an actor of his caliber for the role when they did the casting, but Brooklyn was better for having him in it than it would have been with a lesser talented actor.

Do you enjoy the romance genre? Do you enjoy conflicted characters? Then, I’d recommend seeing Brooklyn. I had no idea what to expect, and I’ve been burned twice. But, I’ve also been highly rewarded on more than a few occasions. Brooklyn was one of those few occasions.

Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 10/10
Character Chemistry 9.5/10 (Ronan and Cohen did in 2015’s Brooklyn what Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams 2004’s The Notebook…an unknown actor and an unknown actress steaming up the screen and quickly making themselves household names)
Acting 10/10 (how indiewire.com doesn’t have Cohen in its top 25 for Best Supporting Actor is behind me. He was fabulous)
Screenplay 9.5/10
Directing 9/10 (a slight issue with the ending…not how it ended…just the smoothness of it)
Cinematography 10/10 (stunning sets in both New York and Ireland)
Sound 10/10 (one of the 2-3 best scores of the year)
Hook and Reel 9/10 (a touch slow at the start, so be prepared…there was also a good part of this movie when I asked myself, “What is the point of this movie?” It all comes together, but at the same time, this was not necessarily a movie that needed to be made)
Universal Relevance 9/10 (loved the fact that with 10 minutes left, there were still dozens of ways that this movie could have ended. Such is life)
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