Let’s find out how much truth there is in the story told in Brooklyn, a film nominated for three Oscars in 2016.
Brooklyn (here’s the trailer) 2015 film directed by John Crowley. and will be broadcast in prime time on Canale 5 on Tuesday 12 September. was one of the most successful Irish films of recent decades.. Written by Nick Hornby based on the novel of the same name by Colm Tóibín and has as its main characters Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters. In 2016, it was nominated for three Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actress for Saoirse Ronan and Best Adapted Screenplay for Nick Horby. This is the story of Eilis Lacey and her journey from Ireland to the United States in search of a better life, while facing the promises and challenges of building a future far from home. But what was said about Eilis in Brooklyn AND a story based on real events?
Scenario
Fifties. Attracted by the promise of a better future young Eilis Lacey leaves Ireland to reach the United States.. Arriving in Brooklyn, she found housing in a women-only boarding house and worked in a department store. It’s not easy to adapt; nostalgia for a distant land and family is constantly present. Eilis seems to find happiness when she meets Tony, an Italian-American plumber, but dramatic news from Ireland leaves her faced with an important choice..
Wildgaze Films, Parallel Film Productions, Irish Film Board, paragraph 7
Is the story told in Brooklyn true?
Despite the novel from which Brooklyn both taken from and inspired by the large number of stories of Irish immigrants who came to the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Eilis Lacey’s story is not true.. The film is inspired by the events Colm Tóibín witnessed when he was a child. What particularly struck him was the story of a neighbor whose daughter moved to Brooklyn from Ireland when she was little. Thus, the character of Eilis fthe result of a collection of stories and testimonies of people who left their country of origin in the 1950s to seek their fortunes abroad..
The historical context that serves as theater for the protagonist’s story is the real context The Great Irish Migration at the end of World War II. More than 50,000 Irish people left their purely agricultural country at the end of World War II to build a better future in America and New York in particular. New York had already been the site of previous Irish migration in the mid-nineteenth century, and the new arrivals found an already fairly populous community in the Big Apple. The one who told Brooklyn therefore, this is not a true story, but as Toibin himself stated these are the places where the film takes place and the characters, although fictitious, reflect real experiences and events..
Wildgaze Films, Parallel Film Productions, Irish Film Board, paragraph 7