The Big Picture
Love triangles in literature and cinema often feel contrived, but Brooklyn shows how choosing between two partners can create real dramatic tension. Eilis, the protagonist in Brooklyn, struggles to navigate the differences between Irish and American dating customs and finds it challenging to connect with others her age. Eilis’s two suitors, Tony and Jim, represent different aspects of her identity: American or Irish. Choosing between them forces her to decide where she wants to spend the rest of her life.
Love triangles are a common trope within both literary fiction and cinema. More often than not, a love triangle is just an excuse for lazy dramatic tension, as it’s generally fairly obvious which partner a character may end up staying with. While love triangles are often a fun way to hook in an audience, the dramatic stakes of a love triangle rarely feel like a realistic take on an actual relationship. However, the notion of choosing between two different romantic partners can be an effective source of dramatic tension if done correctly. The excellent 2015 period piece Brooklyn shows how two romantic partners can represent different sides of a character’s personality; choosing one potential suitor over another forces the protagonist to choose between two very different cultures.
‘Brooklyn’ Shows the Challenges of the Immigrant Experience
20th Century Studios
Based on the acclaimed novel of the same name by Nick Hornby, Brooklyn centers on the young Irish girl Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), who is caught between two potential suitors; the Italian boy Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen) and the Irish bachelor Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson). Eilis is raised in Ireland but immigrates to the United States while she is still in the prime of her youth. This immediately makes it a challenge for her to understand what an authentic relationship is supposed to look like. The traditional “family values” that she was taught when she was younger are quite different from how “courting” works stateside. The United States seems to value dating as a common pastime; in Ireland, she was raised to expect to live the rest of her life with anyone she was seeing romantically.
Due to her untraditional upbringing, Eilis finds it challenging to connect with other young people. Although she finds a small Irish community in Brooklyn upon her arrival, Eilis finds it challenging to find people her own age who can relate to her experiences. The Irish community in Brooklyn primarily consists of older religious leaders; even when working at her job, she’s constantly surrounded by older shoppers. While this makes Eilis initially feel like she is all alone, everything changes after an Irish cultural festival introduces her to Tony. Tony claims that while he’s not Irish himself, he “really likes Irish girls.” Given how well he treats Eilis upon their first few dates, his remark can be taken as a genuine statement, and not just a pick-up line.
Even though they come from different communities, Tony and Eilis have a lot in common; given the discrimination that both Irish and Italian immigrants faced during the 1950s, both characters know what it is like to be considered “second class citizens.” More importantly, spending time with Tony and his Italian family gives Eilis a chance to feel like she is at home once more. While Tony’s family has traditions that are different from how she was raised, they still value their ancestral past, and treat the elder members of their community with respect. Even if Eilis is learning new things as a result of her relationship with Tony (including the minutiae of eating spaghetti), the value that family plays in his life reminds her of her own upbringing.
Learning and adapting to Tony’s worldview forces Eilis to stay on her toes and learn more about the new country she is now part of. Just when Eilis feels that she has fully forged a new identity for herself, she receives the devastating news that her mother, Mary (Jane Brennan), has passed away unexpectedly of a devastating illness. Returning home to mourn this loss isn’t easy; the boat trip is long and disorienting, and forces Eilis to rethink the value of her life stateside. A trip home to Ireland means introducing herself to feelings, locations, and traditions that she had long left behind. Unfortunately, returning to her homeland also reminds Eilis how much she missed Ireland, which could mean leaving Tony behind.
Eilis’ Two Suitors in ‘Brooklyn’ Represent Her Dual Identity
Director John Crowley does a great job of making Brooklyn feel like both a coming-of-age story and a classical romance. While the early flirtations between Eilis and Tony (and later, between Eilis and Jim) feel similar to many young adult romantic dramas, the tension isn’t inserted purely for the purpose of adding melodrama to the story. Her two suitors represent two very different lives she could live. Is she American, or Irish? While Eilis is bound to both countries through culture, she can only spend the rest of her life in one of them.
Upon her arrival in Ireland, Eilis begins to reconnect with her community, learning things about her mother that had been kept from her when she was younger. Although the trip is largely a miserable one, Eilis does find herself feeling nostalgic about her home country. New York City was exciting, but it was also an overwhelming experience where she was forced to try new things all the time. Home means comfort; even if she’s been able to adapt her lifestyle while in Brooklyn, she’s still an Irish girl at heart. Coincidentally, as Eilis considers what a future in Ireland might look like, she’s introduced to a man who might be able to give it to her.
On the surface, Jim feels like the opposite of Tony; Jim was raised in Eilis’ community and knows their traditions very well. The film does a great job of showing how radically different the two men are through how they are initially introduced to Eilis. While Tony manages to slip into a traditional Irish dance in order to hit on Eilis, Jim is introduced to Eilis through a formal dance ceremony. Tony is the type of guy that the elder members of Eilis’ community may have warned her about, but Jim is considered to be “a catch” who could give Eilis a traditional marriage.
The brilliant aspect of Brooklyn’s love triangle is that the two men never come into contact with each other; there’s never a ridiculous scene where they fight over Eilis because they are on opposite sides of the ocean. Neither character is trying to upstage the other, and Brooklyn forces the audience to make the same difficult choice that Eilis makes. She ends up with Tony, choosing to live the rest of her life in America. That doesn’t mean that thoughts of what a life with Jim would look like don’t linger in both Eilis’s and the audience’s minds long after she makes her decision.
Brooklyn is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S.