'Brooklyn' works because Eilis flirts with Jim back in Ireland

Spoilers obviously.



People are forgetting that this movie is supposed to be about the life of an immigrant, not a Hollywood romance where the protagonists are madly in love & pine for each other all the time.

And as a drama about life, you are supposed to see: growing up away from home, your soul forever split between your new country and old, and the choices you make along the way. You will regret some parts of your choices, and you will stumble along the way.

Eilis, Tony, and all other characters - they aren't supposed to be perfect, or even remarkably heroic.

Eilis is supposed to like Tony/America and miss Ireland at the same time, which she expresses by flirting with the idea of staying with Jim. She is also not a saint; she got hitched perhaps a little too early in her life and is understandably swayed when other men start paying attention to her. Can you really blame her?

Tony is supposed to be pragmatic, you see that abundantly in his character - and that's why he presses her to marry him before she leaves Brooklyn. A good thing too, because that proves to be the enduring link that brings her back to him! It ain't romantic, but that's how life works.

Eilis' mother, Jim, and all the Irish people practically conspiring to keep her in the old country - can you really blame them as well? Even with the Internet & cheap commercial flights, living across an ocean is a big barrier of separation between family and friends. Imagine doing that in the 50s. I am an immigrant, and my father cried before he left the old country because he was afraid he would miss his mother's death. He nearly did.

This movie is just about life. If it doesn't feel like an uplifting story of true, heroic love produced from Hollywood, it's because it's not supposed to be.