Did anyone else think that ?????SPOILERS

Agreed. It really wasn't much of a story. Kinda' dopey, honestly. The way it was told was certainly not that well done.

I agree, but not really for the reasons you listed. Honestly, this girl does NOTHING! I mean nothing! She doesn't make a single choice, she just does what people tell her to do or plan for her from beginning to end. She lives her life by following the path of least resistance. Her sister plans for her to go to NY, the priest sends her to school, the landlady sends her to the dance, the boy pursues her, she doesn't tell her mother because it's easier not to, the sister dies so she has to go back to Ireland, the boy basically forces her to get married, her friend sets her up with the new boyfriend etc etc etc. The only thing we know about her is she's very polite, that she does what she's told, she misses Ireland and that she doesn't like gossip.

IMO at the end when she goes back to Brooklyn she does it not because of either boy, but because she doesn't like the gossip and small town mentality, plus she'd already committed herself and basically there was no other choice to make because the choice had already been made. So yes, she went back because she married Tony, but it's more than because of that. She realized how awful some aspects of her hometown was. Before that she'd just romanticized it and being in NYC had changed her enough she didn't fit in anymore. So I like to think that her going back to NYC, admitting what she did to her mother, was her making her first choice in the whole movie, and it comes 3 minutes from the end . . . I feel bad for this girl, but I don't like her. She's a very pathetic person and it's impossible for me to like her.

I read the book after seeing the movie and the book is even worse. Eilis is a jellyfish with no conscience. She wants to stay in Ireland, but she knows Jim Farrell is "conservative", would never understand her marriage and why she kept it quiet, and would probably not want a divorced woman. She knows she can't stay, but she drags her feet.

In the movie I get the impression Eilis would just have kept her mouth shut. The truth is, her marriage in New York wasn't consummated (she and Tony slept together before, but not afterwards), and could probably have easily been annulled in the Catholic church, under the circumstances of no consummation, and that she married him while in emotional distress over her sister. And even if the marriage WASN'T annulled, if not for Mrs. Kelly, who would know. She could have bigamously married Jim and nobody would be the wiser, and Tony probably would have gotten an annulment once he knew she was staying in Ireland.

Yes, it's true that those are the mechanics of the story. But the tale has wider implications about the nature of leaving home and creating your own life. I found that to be a great metaphor. She was lured by the old comforts of home like any of us would be, and she has very good reason to feel that way. But it wasn't a life she created. It was the safe path. We should be asking ourselves how much she grew as a person from her experiences in America.

I had quite an opposite point of view - if you're interested, see my other posts on this board.

The movie is a gentle treatment of the subject of choice. For most humans in most historical eras, the supposition was that life choices were severely restricted. You could choose which player on the rugby team to marry, but you had to marry someone on the rugby team. Rose could not really have chosen to leave her mother's side. Eilis can choose to go to America, but only under the careful watch of church, hand-picked landlady, and gossiping fellow boarders. This watch differs only in degree from the watch of the nasty storekeeper, nosey neighbors, and again the church in her Irish town. This is life as people have typically lived it, with the ties that "bind and gag." To Eilis, the decision to go to America, taken within these accepted limitations, is a big deal. It is one of those limited choices she gets to make Another choice she is allowed to make is to marry the plumber. Again this choice is within the acceptable range of men who come to church dances, a marginally broader spectrum of humanity than the men on the village rugby team. Remaining single is not considered a good choice; you are shown the horde of single men at the church Christmas dinner, unhappy Rose who sacrifices her future to support the mother and the unhappy deserted wife co-boarder; loneliness or lack of fulfillment is shown as the expected fate of people who don't marry. Once Eilis chooses to marry she is forced to realize that she does not get to choose again in this society. The fact that it is the villain of the plot who forces her to this realization does not make the realization less accurate. One Eilis is "brought to her senses" she is reconciled to her fate because she buys into a system in which choices are NOT unlimited; like most people she buys into this world of limited choices in which the reward is social support and community respect.

Rose's death struck me as a suicide that the community chose to treat as a "secret illness."

NB I wondered why the writers allowed the priest to pay Eilis' tuition at Brooklyn College when Brooklyn College was free in 1952.

I agree with you totally. She would have stayed in Ireland if her old boss didn't find out she was married. She only confessed to her mom because word would get out she got married in America.

Eilise is a coward who got caught lying (well not lying per se, but omission of the truth that she is married) and is running away so she won't feel any shame or judgment in Ireland.

I totally agree, OP.

What was disappointing to me was not Eilis' ambivalence about her feelings toward each of these two men, but her failure to justify to herself even in the end the reason for her final choice of which life to lead and who to lead it with. Instead of examining her feelings about this life-altering decision, it appeared that she left Ireland and chose Brooklyn out of guilt regarding Miss Kelly's remarks and not out of genuine appreciation or nostalgia for Tony (who, until the end, it seemed did not weigh on her mind in Ireland).

All of this seemed to hint at a sense of regret on Eilis' part for hastily getting married to Tony. Instead, I wished she had been stronger in rebuffing Tony's insistence that they marry IMMEDIATELY before she went to Ireland. If so, the trip to Ireland, and the subsequent interactions with Jim, would have eventually forced her to make a more thoughtful decision based on choice, not obligation. That element of willful choice, which was absent, would have been more satisfying to see for me personally.