‘Brooklyn’ review: Saoirse Ronan masters emotions of the heart

No special effect is more difficult than mastery of the complex contours of the human heart. No amount of money spent or armies of CGI minions employed can ensure that it is done right: Emotion, intelligence and skill in equal measure are what’s essential. Qualities that the masterfully done “Brooklyn” have in abundance.

Impeccably directed by John Crowley and blessed with heart-stopping work from star Saoirse Ronan, “Brooklyn” is about love and heartache, loneliness and intimacy, what home means and how we achieve it.

It tells the story of young woman named Eilis Lacey who emigrates from Ireland to that celebrated New York borough in 1951 and ends up contending with homesickness, culture shock and romantic involvements as she makes her way to becoming herself. An energetic Brooklyn-based priest named Father Flood (the reliable Jim Broadbent) helps Eilis get a job as a clerk in a high-end department store and a room at a boardinghouse run by tart-tongued Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters). Eilis attracts the attention of Tony Fiorello, an Italian American (played with an appealing sensual warmth and knockout smile by Emory Cohen) who recognizes the qualities in Eilis the audience has always known were there.

Then, in the blink of an eye, circumstances send Eilis back to Ireland, where some of the complications she encounters, including the notice of the attractive and attentive Jim Farrell (the always effective Domhnall Gleeson), are not as easily resolved as she imagines.

What’s most impressive about “Brooklyn” is how it touches on so many emotions, yet resists pigeonholing. It’s possible to make the film sound like the story of a young woman waiting for Mr. Right, but it does not play that way at all.

Rather, “Brooklyn” is about the inevitable but never easy process of deciding who you are and what your life is going to be. Early on, Eilis is told, “You have to think like an American. You have to know where you’re going.” Getting to that place is Eilis’ journey, and being witness to it is a privilege and a pleasure.