“I wish that I could stop feeling that I want to be an Irish girl in Ireland,” Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) said in the movie “Brooklyn”, which was released Nov. 6th and directed by John Crowley.

“Brooklyn” was about Eilis Lacey, a young Irish girl who immigrated to Brooklyn in the 1950s. Eilis left her mother and sister, Rose, in Ireland when she realized her home had nothing left to offer her. Eilis had no prospects of finding a husband, worked in a small store with a crotchety old lady and wasn’t furthering her education.

When Eilis left Ireland to go to Brooklyn, she left all her friends, family and the only life she had ever known behind, so when she got to New York, she was very homesick. Eilis worked through her homesickness, but for the first months of living there, Eilis felt as if her life was still in Ireland, even though she was physically in America. This changed, though, when Eilis met an Italian plumber, Tony (Emory Cohen), and began to adjust to life in New York.

The conflicts of the movie were Eilis’ internal conflicts, which changed over the course of the movie with the changes in Eilis’ character. At the beginning of “Brooklyn,” Eilis debated whether to leave Ireland or not; then, once she got to Brooklyn, homesickness struck and she debated returning home.

This internal conflict further evolved when Eilis returned to Ireland for a month. When she got there, it seemed to her as if she should have never left Ireland; there was a job open for her, a boy interested in her and she had friends and family there. Eilis had to decide between staying in Ireland, the home that she left, or returning to Brooklyn, where her new home was.

I thought “Brooklyn” was a great movie and I would recommend it to anyone interested in historical romances and current events. I thought Brooklyn presented a human face to the struggles and problems associated with immigration. These are important difficulties to understand in today’s world with so many refugees immigrating and leaving their culture, home, friends and family behind. “Brooklyn” was enjoyable to watch, but it made me reflect on how lucky I am to not be forced to move to another country, either out of a lack of opportunities or to flee violence. Although the movie was set in the 1950s, I think the movie still showed what many refugees and immigrants must go through when they immigrate to a new country today.