The Holy Connection An Alternative Exploration of Existence
Nominations:
Academy Award for Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role
Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Ah, rhythmic, transient, intense, enthralling: these are not words that I would use to denote the way I felt during my experience of the movie “Brooklyn”. Why, or why not, you may ask (you should). This is because my experience of the movie was something that haunted me, in a subtle and complacent way, long after the movie was over. It was as if the movie had transformed my surroundings, but in a very iridescent, almost sentient manner, helping me come to terms with whatever seemed out of place around me. This is exactly the feelings that a movie along the lines of “Brooklyn” would incite in an individual who relates his own life with those of Eilis Lacey, the main protagonist.
The movie charts the journey as well as the transitions which Eilis Lacey, played by the stunning and beautiful Saoirse Ronan, goes through as he travels between two completely different cultures and countries, namely her hometown Ireland and the unchartered and unknown territory of United States, aptly landing in Brooklyn. Here she slowly gets accustomed to the new life and eventually finds love, in the form of a charismatic Italian, Tony (Emory Cohen) after which home becomes a part of her reality again. Now, here she finds a change of events, as her life is connected with another series of circumstances that leads her towards Jim (Domhnall Gleeson) who gives her a stronger reason to stay at home, along with the recent death of her sister and the fact that her mother would be alone at her home, recoiling from the death of her daughter. The story thus follows this tussle that she goes through in order to come to terms with her confused yet strong willed intuition, as she searches for love and a purpose for herself.
The cinematography and the overall screenplay has been crafted in such a way that the characters and the overall tinge of emotion in the movie appear subtle and softly apparent, as it glides you slowly into a world of filmmaking that brings you back to an atmosphere of nostalgia as well as apparent familiar warmth. Along with the classic tinge that has been applied to the set, the director John Crowley, works beautifully with the script as well as the narrative of the movie in such a way that it reminds you of that time when you entered school for the first time and after a while was attached to the people there that you found it difficult to leave the place when it was time.
The writing and sheer brilliance of words that Colm Toibin, the author the novel, also flows seep through the musical interludes and the silences between dialogues, events and scenarios in the movie. Saoirse Ronan will make you travel back in time to some of your most embarrassing moments as well as some of your best ones as she intimately attaches herself to her character, with an almost effortless longing and charisma that will leave you in awe of this prodigy. She is one of the predictions whom I think would be the perfect fit for the Best Actress Category while we need to analyze how many other awards the film could win; a good guess regarding which would be “a lot!”
