This week we’re setting sail on a kinda slutty immigrant adventure, with the beautifully understated Brooklyn. Kim and Alice enjoy all the messy drama whilst also uncovering the history of Irish immigration and why you should always go drinking with your priest.
Sound Engineer: Keith Nagle
Editor: Helen Hamilton / Keith Nagle
Producer: Helen Hamilton
Sources
- Article: National Parks Service 'Post-peak Immigration Years'
- Article: Irish Times, 'Making Brooklyn in Enniscorthy: 'Saoirse Ronan was lovely. She had a cup of tea in my kitchen'.
- Article: Irish America Magazine, 'Shades of Brooklyn'
- Article: Brownstoner, '5 Gone-but-Not-Forgotten Brooklyn Shopping Emporium's
- Article: Baxter St. 'Day in Ellis Island, 1951: Erika Stone Portfolio'
If you enjoy this podcast, come with us on a romp through the Regency era with our sister podcast, Austen After Dark. Listen to all episodes now.
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[00:00:10] Hello and welcome to Fetch the Smelling Salts. I'm Alice.
[00:00:13] And I'm Kim. And this is our podcast all about historical dramas from movies and TV shows to miniseries from every era and all around the world.
[00:00:23] Yeah.
[00:00:24] Yeah, that's Alice moving into her post-plague era.
[00:00:28] Yes. So I don't know for anyone who's been keeping track of our episodes, but this is now the third episode and we record every two weeks.
[00:00:37] And this is the third episode on which I'm saying I'm ill. I have a whole thing with my face lungs area.
[00:00:45] Oh my God.
[00:00:45] And it's been the same thing. It's been the same face lungs thing. But I finally have some antibiotics.
[00:00:52] Woohoo!
[00:00:53] So, you know, cherish this voice because it's not going to be around for much longer, hopefully.
[00:00:57] And I still have the crazy puppy who's even crazier. So apologies.
[00:01:03] He's not getting less crazy as he gets bigger.
[00:01:07] No, he's going to be like crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. And then apparently he'll reach two and then he'll be fine.
[00:01:14] So this basically means I have like another year and a half more at least.
[00:01:21] That's better than a human baby.
[00:01:22] That is true.
[00:01:23] I've got a two-year-old human baby and he's basically like a honey badger demon.
[00:01:32] Except he's a baby vampire now.
[00:01:34] So as Kim knows, my two-year-old son, Alice Jr. Bacon Cheese, had to have dental surgery recently to remove his four front teeth because months ago he fell on his face so hard that he kind of cracked his teeth.
[00:01:49] He's finally, he had to get them removed.
[00:01:50] And he already had on the side, he had some really nice fangs going on.
[00:01:55] But now when he smiles, he's only fangs.
[00:01:58] Oh my God, he's the best.
[00:02:00] So he literally does look like a little demon, a little cartoon demon.
[00:02:05] So all of this to say, all of this going on, poppy, illness, children, demons.
[00:02:11] We were supposed to do a very different movie for today's recording and it was a listener request and we were excited about it.
[00:02:18] But when it came to reading and watching The Last of the Mohicans, which was going to be our entry for today, we both decided maybe now is not the time.
[00:02:32] That there is a time and a place for that.
[00:02:36] Yes, just not.
[00:02:38] Just last few weeks for me, it's been absolute craziness and I'm like, I don't need that.
[00:02:44] I can't be in that headspace.
[00:02:46] Yeah, that scalp space.
[00:02:47] So instead, because we are in a very important time in the history of the United States, namely this is election season.
[00:02:56] I think this episode is being released after the presidential election in the US.
[00:03:02] So yay, everything turned out okay.
[00:03:06] Or oh no.
[00:03:09] Fuck.
[00:03:10] No, but don't worry mom, I voted and I sent in my absentee ballot.
[00:03:15] Good job.
[00:03:16] So we wanted to talk about something set in the Americas that told something of the story of American life and American history.
[00:03:26] So we decided to do another listener request.
[00:03:30] Brooklyn.
[00:03:31] You know what?
[00:03:32] I had never heard of this movie.
[00:03:33] Really?
[00:03:34] Yeah, no, seriously.
[00:03:36] I never heard of the movie.
[00:03:36] So I was very happy actually that you introduced me to it.
[00:03:40] And I very much enjoyed it.
[00:03:42] So you never read the book?
[00:03:43] Never read the book either.
[00:03:46] Never read the book.
[00:03:47] Never even knew it was a book.
[00:03:49] Never knew anything about this.
[00:03:50] So it's a movie that deals with the immigrant experience.
[00:03:57] And listeners, you know, as you know, both Alice and I are not British.
[00:04:04] What?
[00:04:05] What?
[00:04:05] We're immigrants.
[00:04:07] We're immigrants.
[00:04:09] We came over on the third class boat.
[00:04:11] Mm-hmm.
[00:04:12] Yep.
[00:04:12] And yeah, so you know, I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
[00:04:17] There were just parts of it that just really touched me.
[00:04:21] And what I especially liked, so you know, there are tons of movies, right?
[00:04:26] There are tons of movies that deal with various kinds of immigrant experience at various times, you know, especially in America.
[00:04:34] Mm-hmm.
[00:04:34] Something like, you know, Gangs of New York, for example.
[00:04:38] Yeah.
[00:04:38] And more often than not, you know, they deal with very, I guess, hard-hitting immigrant struggles.
[00:04:48] The struggle.
[00:04:50] Yeah.
[00:04:50] The struggle is real and it's front and center and it's right in your face and it's gritty.
[00:04:55] Yeah.
[00:04:56] Yeah.
[00:04:56] Yeah.
[00:04:56] The gritty struggle, like, you know, the toil and the misery, right, of it all.
[00:05:02] And while all of that is true and valid, and I'm glad that there are lots of new narratives on those topics.
[00:05:11] Actually, maybe not even enough, right?
[00:05:13] Because there's just such a myriad of experiences.
[00:05:15] But what I appreciated the most about this movie is that it was dealing with, I guess, the subtleties of immigrant experience.
[00:05:26] You know, what happens when life isn't that bad?
[00:05:30] You know what I mean?
[00:05:32] Like, it wasn't that bad to begin with before the move, right?
[00:05:37] And then when you move to a new country, it actually isn't that bad, right?
[00:05:43] And then people then tend to forget that, yes, okay, you know, you may not be starving.
[00:05:49] You may not be running from a wall-torn area.
[00:05:51] You may not be, I don't know, doing hard labor and stuff.
[00:05:56] But it is still a difficult experience, you know, all the same.
[00:06:01] And this is what I think the movie dealt with, and I was appreciative of it.
[00:06:05] No, like, regular life struggle is still valid.
[00:06:07] Regular life struggle, yeah, you know?
[00:06:09] And by the way, podcast listeners, just so you know, for your sake, I've just sacrificed one of my slippers to the dog.
[00:06:18] Another one bites the dust.
[00:06:20] Slipper, we hardly knew ye.
[00:06:21] Oh, lefty.
[00:06:22] It was a righty, actually.
[00:06:24] Oh.
[00:06:26] Okay.
[00:06:27] So this is a really cool one for me because I used to live in Brooklyn, and I have a husband who is Irish.
[00:06:35] And when I lived in Brooklyn, I actually worked for the Catholic Church.
[00:06:39] And so there's a lot of kind of Brooklyn Catholic-ness that really spoke to me in this movie.
[00:06:45] And I love Saoirse Ronan.
[00:06:48] Mm-hmm.
[00:06:48] And I wasn't that sold on watching this movie until I learned that Donal Gleeson is in it.
[00:06:55] You love him.
[00:06:56] I think I love Donal Gleeson more than any actor currently, except for my lifelong love, Robert Downey Jr.
[00:07:04] Oh.
[00:07:06] But yeah, Donal isn't in a lot of period dramas.
[00:07:10] And the other ones that he's in aren't like super great.
[00:07:13] He's in Goodbye Christopher Robin.
[00:07:15] He's in like a scary one, which I'm not opposed to watching in another Halloween season.
[00:07:21] But there's not a lot to work with.
[00:07:23] But he's so wonderful and so sexy in every single thing he's in.
[00:07:27] It's almost like sometimes he tries to not be the sexiest man that Alice has ever seen, like in Star Wars.
[00:07:35] But it doesn't work, Donal.
[00:07:37] It doesn't work.
[00:07:38] Oh.
[00:07:39] Yeah.
[00:07:40] So I'm super hyped.
[00:07:41] All right.
[00:07:42] So should I go into the summary?
[00:07:44] Yes.
[00:07:45] The other thing that I want to brag about is that I purchased and read most of this book.
[00:07:51] Most of all of, I'm going to say.
[00:07:53] You read a book?
[00:07:54] I'm going to say 89% of this book I read because I skipped through a little bit of the middle.
[00:07:58] Oh my God.
[00:07:59] People, Alice read a book.
[00:08:02] Willingly.
[00:08:02] I bought it.
[00:08:03] I read it.
[00:08:04] I underlined passages in it.
[00:08:06] I know.
[00:08:07] And I can see that she like, she put little sticky notes and everything.
[00:08:10] I've got little sticky notes and now I'm going to give it to Helen.
[00:08:12] Woohoo.
[00:08:13] Awesome.
[00:08:14] So I'll talk at the end a little bit about the differences between the film and the book.
[00:08:18] Oh, wow.
[00:08:19] That's usually my job.
[00:08:21] Look at you.
[00:08:22] Woohoo.
[00:08:23] Oh, oh, oh.
[00:08:24] And because Alice is so, it's so on theme, I can see that she's drinking a Guinness.
[00:08:29] Why yes, I am drinking a Guinness and so is Keith somewhere in the flat.
[00:08:33] Yes, I saw that.
[00:08:34] Great.
[00:08:35] There's a summary.
[00:08:36] Okay.
[00:08:37] The year is 1951 and we are in Aniskorthy, small town in Ireland.
[00:08:43] Eilish Lacey is working at the general store run by the bitchy Miss Kelly, who is just a horrible
[00:08:49] witch.
[00:08:51] Thankfully, Rose, her older sister, arranges with Father Flood, an Irish priest in Brooklyn,
[00:08:57] for Eilish to immigrate to New York for a better life.
[00:09:00] Sad about leaving her family, especially her sister, but excited for a new life, Eilish sails
[00:09:06] off to America.
[00:09:08] The ship journey is rough, but she meets another woman called Georgina, who gives her some good
[00:09:13] advice about traveling and emigrating to the States.
[00:09:16] Over in Brooklyn, Eilish lives in a boarding house run by a strict but essentially good
[00:09:20] woman called Mrs. Kehoe.
[00:09:22] She also works as a sales assistant at this department store called Bartorchis.
[00:09:28] And her job and life in New York isn't bad, you know?
[00:09:31] Mm-hmm.
[00:09:32] Like I said earlier.
[00:09:33] Yeah.
[00:09:34] But she does get terribly sad and homesick, like leading her to almost break down during
[00:09:40] work one day.
[00:09:41] Thankfully, her kind manager gets Father Flood to visit her.
[00:09:46] And I thought it was actually a really nice scene, you know?
[00:09:48] You kind of think that, oh, fuck, she's going to get fired, you know?
[00:09:51] And then so the manager, you know, was like, okay, no, take a moment, go to the staff room,
[00:09:55] and then you see Father Flood coming in.
[00:09:58] So he apologizes for not, you know, having taken better care of her.
[00:10:02] And he tells her that he has enrolled her in night school for bookkeeping classes at
[00:10:08] Brooklyn College because she wants to be an accountant.
[00:10:11] Oh, and he paid for them too, didn't he?
[00:10:13] He paid for them.
[00:10:14] Well, actually, a parishioner paid for them.
[00:10:16] We find out later on to, you know, for his sins or something.
[00:10:21] But basically, it was all paid for.
[00:10:23] He's like, dude, you know, I know you want to do this.
[00:10:25] This is good for you.
[00:10:26] This will set you up.
[00:10:28] That's really nice.
[00:10:30] So Ailish starts on that, and then she also volunteers to help serve Christmas dinner
[00:10:34] to some lonely Irish immigrants that Christmas.
[00:10:38] And then we have this wonderfully poignant scene, right, during the Christmas dinner
[00:10:43] where one of the men sings a beautiful song in Gaelic, which brings tears to everyone's eyes.
[00:10:48] And he was like, it's just that scene, you know, you can really feel the pain of the immigrants there.
[00:10:54] And basically, like, Father Flood talks about, you know, all these men that they built the roads,
[00:10:59] they built the bridges, they built the tunnels that made New York City.
[00:11:03] But they have now, you know, most of them are probably homeless, have nothing to their name.
[00:11:09] And it's just so sad.
[00:11:11] You're like, this is exactly what it is.
[00:11:13] And again, like that, sorry for the sidebar, but that really speaks to me, like in Singapore,
[00:11:20] you know, the people who build our city, the city in Singapore, are the immigrant workers
[00:11:25] from Bangladesh, you know?
[00:11:28] And everyone kind of like treats them like scum.
[00:11:31] Do you have old Bangladeshi men?
[00:11:35] Not really.
[00:11:36] I think they kind of do go back.
[00:11:38] But yeah, so they don't necessarily emigrate over.
[00:11:41] But you kind of just think about how, you know, like the things that you take for granted in your life, right,
[00:11:46] is built on the backs of immigrants, you know?
[00:11:50] And now people are more mobile.
[00:11:52] Whereas then, Father Flood mentions that they don't go home.
[00:11:56] They can't go back.
[00:11:57] They don't go home.
[00:11:58] They have nothing to go home to.
[00:12:00] Yeah.
[00:12:01] On a lighter sidebar, this is my Guinness fact,
[00:12:06] is that you may notice that the men are drinking bottles.
[00:12:10] They're actually drinking bottles of Guinness.
[00:12:12] Ooh.
[00:12:13] Because Guinness came in bottles and didn't come in the draft with the foamy head
[00:12:18] that is now famous for it until the 1970s.
[00:12:22] Oh, there we go.
[00:12:24] So yeah, so Eilish is set to...
[00:12:27] But then, you know, things start looking up for her
[00:12:29] when one day she goes to one of the church dances
[00:12:32] and she meets Tony Fiorello,
[00:12:35] sweet Italian-American plumber
[00:12:37] who just decides, you know, that he wanted to come to this Irish dance.
[00:12:41] The two start to date and Eilish progresses with her studies.
[00:12:45] She does really well.
[00:12:46] She's very happy.
[00:12:47] And she even writes to her sister telling her that she's starting to feel more settled in Brooklyn.
[00:12:53] However, because life is cruel,
[00:12:56] Rose dies unexpectedly,
[00:12:59] leaving poor Eilish in shock
[00:13:01] because she isn't even able to attend the funeral.
[00:13:05] Again, this is something else that spoke to me
[00:13:07] because my father passed away a couple of years ago in Australia
[00:13:14] when it was still in lockdown from COVID.
[00:13:19] And it happened very, very suddenly.
[00:13:22] I couldn't go for the funeral.
[00:13:25] And you're just kind of like, how do you say goodbye?
[00:13:29] You know?
[00:13:30] Yeah.
[00:13:31] So man, that scene really got to me.
[00:13:34] So Tony tries to cheer her up, right?
[00:13:36] By taking her to this plot of land in Long Island,
[00:13:39] which he and his brothers intend to develop.
[00:13:42] So he says that, you know, he and the brothers,
[00:13:44] they're going to build five houses on it.
[00:13:46] They're going to sell three of them,
[00:13:48] keep one for their parents.
[00:13:49] And then he kind of says, you know,
[00:13:52] look, and there's one for me and you,
[00:13:54] if that's what you want.
[00:13:55] And, you know, Eilish is happy, right?
[00:13:57] So she's like, yeah, that's great.
[00:13:58] But she still feels guilty about not being there
[00:14:01] for Rose's funeral and for her mother.
[00:14:03] So she tells him that she needs to go home for a while.
[00:14:06] So Tony understands this, right?
[00:14:08] But he asks her to get married before she leaves.
[00:14:12] How did you feel about this?
[00:14:14] Yeah, that bit, I'm just like, but why?
[00:14:17] You know, like, because like she told,
[00:14:19] she tells him, look, I'm coming back.
[00:14:20] I'm giving you a promise.
[00:14:21] Like, why are you making me do this?
[00:14:24] You know?
[00:14:25] Yeah.
[00:14:25] Yeah, I didn't love it.
[00:14:26] I didn't like it.
[00:14:27] She clearly wasn't comfortable with it.
[00:14:28] She wasn't comfortable.
[00:14:29] She didn't understand why she had to do it.
[00:14:32] But the way he explains it is basically for himself,
[00:14:36] for his own feelings to make sure that he locks that shit down.
[00:14:40] Yeah, exactly.
[00:14:41] So I wasn't too happy about that.
[00:14:43] So, you know, so she agrees.
[00:14:45] They go home to her place and has the worst sex ever.
[00:14:51] Oh, gosh.
[00:14:52] Oh, my God.
[00:14:53] The worst sex we've seen in a period drama
[00:14:56] between two heterosexual people.
[00:14:58] Yes.
[00:14:59] Yes.
[00:14:59] I was considering making that my award, by the way.
[00:15:01] But anyway, it was just too grim.
[00:15:04] Too grim.
[00:15:05] So anyway, at some point, I don't know,
[00:15:08] the next day or whatever, right,
[00:15:09] they go to the courthouse and, you know, they get married.
[00:15:14] Oh, sorry.
[00:15:16] But imagine having that sex.
[00:15:18] I know, right?
[00:15:19] And then being like, yeah, yeah, I'll still get married to you.
[00:15:23] I know, right?
[00:15:24] It's fine.
[00:15:25] I know.
[00:15:26] I don't know.
[00:15:27] Does she even know what good sex is supposed to be like, though?
[00:15:30] No, I don't know.
[00:15:31] I guess not.
[00:15:31] Because, you know, her's Catholic.
[00:15:33] Hey.
[00:15:35] Because Catholics didn't have sex before marriage.
[00:15:39] Or they did loads all the time, as this movie is evidence of.
[00:15:43] Exactly.
[00:15:44] Yeah.
[00:15:46] I say this as a Catholic.
[00:15:48] Yeah.
[00:15:48] Yeah.
[00:15:50] I say this as a very promiscuous Catholic.
[00:15:53] Yes.
[00:15:54] I love Jesus.
[00:15:55] Jesus loves me, even though I'm a hoe.
[00:15:57] And we are cool with that.
[00:15:59] Or maybe because.
[00:16:00] Maybe because.
[00:16:01] Okay, look, my faith is solid.
[00:16:04] Anyway.
[00:16:05] For some reason.
[00:16:06] For some reason.
[00:16:07] My notes here actually say,
[00:16:09] clearly the bad sex hasn't put Eilish off.
[00:16:13] No.
[00:16:14] She's totally cool with it.
[00:16:15] She's like, this is fine.
[00:16:16] I'll take that dick and I'll take that
[00:16:18] empty field in Long Island.
[00:16:20] Thank you.
[00:16:21] Yes.
[00:16:22] So they go to Mary in secret at City Hall,
[00:16:25] where they bump into an Irish couple
[00:16:27] who happen to have relatives back in Eilish's hometown.
[00:16:32] Because of course they do.
[00:16:34] Of course.
[00:16:34] This is the most realistic part of the movie.
[00:16:37] I bet so though.
[00:16:38] Yeah, exactly.
[00:16:39] Again, as a Singaporean,
[00:16:42] I mean, okay, my country, albeit,
[00:16:44] is hella lot smaller than Ireland.
[00:16:47] I mean, but what is the population of Singapore?
[00:16:50] Right now, I don't know, 6 million.
[00:16:53] And the population of Ireland is 5 million.
[00:16:57] Oh my God.
[00:16:59] So yeah.
[00:17:00] So it's all apart.
[00:17:01] Yeah.
[00:17:02] So there we go.
[00:17:02] So I know, you know,
[00:17:03] you run into a Singaporean at some point
[00:17:06] and there'll be some sort of a connection.
[00:17:08] Okay.
[00:17:08] So I'll be like, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:10] Yep.
[00:17:10] I feel that bit too.
[00:17:11] Okay.
[00:17:13] So now back in Ireland,
[00:17:14] Eilish runs into her old friend Nancy,
[00:17:16] who is engaged to George.
[00:17:18] So not knowing that Eilish is married,
[00:17:21] Nancy sets her up with a local catch
[00:17:24] called Jim Farrell.
[00:17:28] Say I know.
[00:17:29] And I just make that noise for the rest of the movie.
[00:17:32] So initially skeptical,
[00:17:35] Eilish is worn over by Jim's sincerity
[00:17:36] and then she continues to not tell anyone.
[00:17:41] That she's married.
[00:17:43] Right?
[00:17:43] Oh my God.
[00:17:44] That bit.
[00:17:45] I'm like, come on girl.
[00:17:47] She even avoids reading poor Tony's letters
[00:17:52] as she kind of just, you know,
[00:17:53] enjoys this new life.
[00:17:54] Right?
[00:17:54] Which also involves her taking up
[00:17:56] her sister's old bookkeeping job somewhat
[00:17:59] or this part-time basis kind of thing.
[00:18:01] Yeah.
[00:18:01] The girl is fully living the delusion.
[00:18:05] Exactly.
[00:18:05] So she's like, no, no, don't want to know.
[00:18:07] Exactly.
[00:18:08] I'm basically Rose now.
[00:18:11] Yeah.
[00:18:12] But to be fair,
[00:18:13] Donald Gleason's ginger eyelashes
[00:18:15] will hypnotize you
[00:18:17] into thinking you never left.
[00:18:19] I mean, he's just so sweet, right?
[00:18:20] He's just so sweet and gentlemanly and lovely.
[00:18:22] And yeah.
[00:18:23] So eventually things escalate to the point
[00:18:26] where Jim pretty much, you know,
[00:18:27] asks her to stay
[00:18:28] and indicates that he wants to propose marriage.
[00:18:32] Yes.
[00:18:33] Also with the vague offer of a house.
[00:18:36] It's like, my parents are moving out.
[00:18:38] I know.
[00:18:39] It's a beautiful house.
[00:18:40] Everyone's just assuming.
[00:18:42] I own the pub, by the way.
[00:18:44] Yeah.
[00:18:44] It's like this lovely life.
[00:18:46] You know, she has a bookkeeping job.
[00:18:48] Her mom is there.
[00:18:49] Everyone's happy.
[00:18:50] Everyone's thinking she's going to end up with Jim.
[00:18:52] Happy, happy, happy, happy.
[00:18:55] So now Ailish is kind of like,
[00:18:58] doesn't really commit to anything.
[00:18:59] But until one day,
[00:19:01] Miss Kelly, remember her?
[00:19:04] Mm.
[00:19:04] The witch?
[00:19:05] The witch.
[00:19:06] The general store?
[00:19:07] Mm-hmm.
[00:19:08] She kind of like summons Ailish over.
[00:19:12] And then basically, for no reason at all,
[00:19:16] hints that, oh yeah,
[00:19:18] she knows what the hell's going on.
[00:19:20] So she says that she's heard,
[00:19:23] through the grapevine,
[00:19:24] that Ailish is married.
[00:19:26] Mm.
[00:19:26] And she's going to hold that over her.
[00:19:29] So and then at that point,
[00:19:30] everything just kind of like clicks to her.
[00:19:33] And Ailish is like,
[00:19:34] yeah, I am married.
[00:19:36] This is my name.
[00:19:37] What are you going to do about it?
[00:19:39] Like, what was your plan?
[00:19:41] You know?
[00:19:41] And thank you.
[00:19:42] Thank you for reminding me about
[00:19:45] why I'd left this place in the first place.
[00:19:48] So then she immediately goes,
[00:19:51] calls the mix,
[00:19:52] you know,
[00:19:52] literally books the next ship back home.
[00:19:55] Yeah.
[00:19:56] Then goes and tells her mom.
[00:19:57] She's like, hello, the boat?
[00:19:59] Get me on you.
[00:20:00] Get me out.
[00:20:01] The next boat.
[00:20:02] And then like,
[00:20:03] I mean, I'm like,
[00:20:04] dude, just give it a couple of days,
[00:20:06] you know, like,
[00:20:06] you haven't even told your mom, right?
[00:20:08] It's literally,
[00:20:09] she goes,
[00:20:09] she tells her mom,
[00:20:10] yep,
[00:20:11] by the way,
[00:20:11] I'm married.
[00:20:12] By the way,
[00:20:12] I'm leaving tomorrow.
[00:20:14] Her mom takes it well.
[00:20:16] She's like, great.
[00:20:17] I'm going to say good night
[00:20:18] and never see you again.
[00:20:20] I'll be upstairs.
[00:20:21] Don't speak to me.
[00:20:23] I know.
[00:20:24] It was just so sad.
[00:20:25] Like, because she goes like,
[00:20:26] okay,
[00:20:27] well, you know,
[00:20:27] is he nice?
[00:20:28] You know,
[00:20:29] is he a nice guy?
[00:20:29] And Aelish is like,
[00:20:30] yeah.
[00:20:31] So, okay,
[00:20:32] that's good.
[00:20:32] You know,
[00:20:33] but you could see like,
[00:20:34] but like the mom's hopes crumbling,
[00:20:36] right?
[00:20:36] Because she had this thing like,
[00:20:37] right,
[00:20:38] my other daughter just died.
[00:20:39] Rose just died.
[00:20:40] Aelish is coming back.
[00:20:41] She's going to marry this nice man.
[00:20:43] We're going to have this lovely life together.
[00:20:45] I have hope again.
[00:20:47] And then now you take it away.
[00:20:49] And yeah,
[00:20:50] so that was sad.
[00:20:51] Anyway,
[00:20:52] Aelish,
[00:20:54] she doesn't even say goodbye to Jim.
[00:20:56] She just leaves him a little note.
[00:20:59] It's like,
[00:20:59] that's not cool either.
[00:21:01] And she goes back to New York.
[00:21:04] And on the way,
[00:21:05] things kind of come full circle.
[00:21:07] On the boat right there,
[00:21:08] she meets another young girl
[00:21:10] who is going to America for the first time.
[00:21:13] And she in turn gives her some advice
[00:21:16] on what to do.
[00:21:18] And then back in Brooklyn,
[00:21:20] she reunites with Tony
[00:21:21] and they hug.
[00:21:24] The end.
[00:21:25] Hooray.
[00:21:26] Hooray.
[00:21:27] Kinda.
[00:21:28] Hooray.
[00:21:29] Yes.
[00:21:30] Yeah.
[00:21:32] That's really your takeaway from the movie though.
[00:21:34] You're like,
[00:21:34] hooray,
[00:21:34] I guess.
[00:21:35] Hooray,
[00:21:36] I guess.
[00:21:36] Right?
[00:21:37] Like I said,
[00:21:37] there were parts of the movie that I did
[00:21:39] really like were the bits like,
[00:21:41] you know,
[00:21:41] which talked about the,
[00:21:42] you know,
[00:21:43] the immigrant experience,
[00:21:45] the subtleties of sadness,
[00:21:47] the subtleties of hopes and dreams.
[00:21:51] And,
[00:21:51] you know,
[00:21:51] these things,
[00:21:52] what made the movie for me,
[00:21:54] right?
[00:21:55] Wasn't entirely convinced that,
[00:21:58] you know,
[00:21:59] she made her choices well.
[00:22:02] No,
[00:22:02] but I feel like that's part of the immigrant experience as well.
[00:22:05] That's definitely part of the story
[00:22:08] because it involves her being a 20,
[00:22:11] 21 year old girl,
[00:22:13] a 19 year old girl.
[00:22:15] I think it's realistic to portray an immigrant experience in which the biggest hardship you face is your own messiness.
[00:22:23] Yes,
[00:22:24] that is true.
[00:22:24] As a young person.
[00:22:26] Yeah.
[00:22:26] No,
[00:22:27] no,
[00:22:27] no,
[00:22:27] no,
[00:22:27] that is very,
[00:22:28] very true.
[00:22:29] Yeah.
[00:22:30] Yeah.
[00:22:30] she,
[00:22:31] she says that she's,
[00:22:33] she thinks back to her own messiness as a young person.
[00:22:40] So yeah,
[00:22:41] that's my bit.
[00:22:42] Awesome.
[00:22:43] So I'll tell you a little bit about history of Irish immigrants in the 1950s coming to Brooklyn.
[00:22:49] And I'll tell you a little bit about this book.
[00:22:51] So as usual,
[00:22:52] we'll have my sources in our show notes,
[00:22:55] but I just want to call out one particular article that I read that I loved so much.
[00:23:00] And I sent to you guys,
[00:23:02] it was from the Irish times called making Brooklyn and Enniscorthy quote,
[00:23:08] Saoirse Ronan was lovely.
[00:23:10] She had a cup of tea in my kitchen.
[00:23:12] Oh,
[00:23:13] I was eating a blog Poland.
[00:23:15] Oh,
[00:23:16] it was all the most Irish thing I've ever read.
[00:23:19] It was brilliant.
[00:23:21] A little bit about this movie.
[00:23:22] It was directed by John Crowley.
[00:23:24] It was based on a book by Colm Tobin and the screenplay was by Nick Hornby.
[00:23:29] It was nominated for three Oscars.
[00:23:33] Wow.
[00:23:34] In 2016.
[00:23:35] It was nominated for picture of the year,
[00:23:38] best actress for Saoirse Ronan and best writing for adapted screenplay.
[00:23:43] It was also nominated for lots of BAFTAs.
[00:23:47] It didn't win an Oscar.
[00:23:48] It won one BAFTA for best British film.
[00:23:52] All in all,
[00:23:53] it was nominated for 161 awards.
[00:23:59] Holy shit.
[00:24:00] 51 of those were just for Saoirse Ronan and it won 38 awards globally.
[00:24:05] I will say,
[00:24:06] you know,
[00:24:06] now that you say that it came out in 2016,
[00:24:08] I can explain why I never heard of it.
[00:24:10] No,
[00:24:10] it came out in 2015.
[00:24:12] So yeah,
[00:24:13] that period was the last couple of years of my PhD.
[00:24:15] I was just totally out of it.
[00:24:19] Yeah.
[00:24:19] Totally out of it.
[00:24:21] So yeah.
[00:24:21] Is it just culture,
[00:24:23] anything that happened?
[00:24:24] Nothing happened.
[00:24:25] Like the whole world could have just,
[00:24:26] just imploded.
[00:24:27] And I was just like,
[00:24:28] yeah,
[00:24:28] whatever.
[00:24:29] I'm just,
[00:24:29] you know,
[00:24:29] in my own private little hell.
[00:24:33] Enniscorthy is a real place.
[00:24:35] I figured.
[00:24:36] Yeah.
[00:24:36] It's in County Wexford.
[00:24:39] Hmm.
[00:24:39] And this film was filmed in Enniscorthy.
[00:24:42] Oh,
[00:24:43] and it premiered in Enniscorthy.
[00:24:46] Oh,
[00:24:47] lovely.
[00:24:47] Yeah.
[00:24:48] And then it went to Sundance.
[00:24:49] Okay.
[00:24:50] So visually the movie is stunning.
[00:24:53] It is.
[00:24:54] And part of the reason for that is that the director,
[00:24:58] John Crowley divided the movie into three different visual movements.
[00:25:04] Hmm.
[00:25:05] So the first is in Enniscorthy before Eilish leaves Ireland.
[00:25:10] And it's characterized by green tones and really tight framing.
[00:25:17] Hmm.
[00:25:17] And the second is when she goes off to America and she's in Brooklyn and
[00:25:22] everything becomes more open and more colorful,
[00:25:26] more playful.
[00:25:28] And then the third movement is when she comes back to Ireland and it
[00:25:34] looks a bit different from the first time we see her in Ireland.
[00:25:39] So it's a little bit more colorful.
[00:25:41] It's a little bit more glamorous and it has a dreamy quality.
[00:25:46] And it has,
[00:25:47] I kind of,
[00:25:47] it kind of gave me a sense of more of like F of space,
[00:25:52] you know,
[00:25:52] like,
[00:25:53] like the first few bits was,
[00:25:54] it felt like it gave a bit more of like a claustrophobic feeling.
[00:25:58] Hmm.
[00:25:58] Yeah.
[00:25:59] Yeah.
[00:25:59] It's very,
[00:26:00] a lot,
[00:26:00] a lot of indoors.
[00:26:02] Indoors.
[00:26:03] Indoors in very small spaces,
[00:26:05] right?
[00:26:05] Like the shop,
[00:26:06] her sister's room,
[00:26:07] her room and stuff like that.
[00:26:09] And then the other one,
[00:26:10] you know,
[00:26:10] like they're out on the beach and they're out and they,
[00:26:13] they're having tea in the garden.
[00:26:15] Yeah.
[00:26:16] So this was filmed in Enniscorthy and actually very little of it was filmed in
[00:26:21] Brooklyn.
[00:26:21] Um,
[00:26:22] you get some exterior shots in some of the quite famous looking brownstones.
[00:26:28] They're in that neighborhood that she's in kind of near downtown Brooklyn,
[00:26:31] which is now a park slope,
[00:26:33] Brooklyn Heights area and in Coney Island.
[00:26:37] So that was actually shot in the real Coney Island.
[00:26:40] The rest was filmed in Montreal.
[00:26:42] Why?
[00:26:43] Because it's cheaper.
[00:26:44] Oh yeah.
[00:26:45] Fair.
[00:26:45] So Emery Cohen,
[00:26:47] who plays Tony,
[00:26:48] who I did like,
[00:26:49] he's charming.
[00:26:50] And he said that he based his character on a bit of Marlon Brando and a bit of
[00:26:56] the 1948 movie,
[00:26:58] the bicycle thieves.
[00:27:00] Oh,
[00:27:00] never seen that.
[00:27:01] And,
[00:27:01] and he based on some of his uncles and he said,
[00:27:05] he quote,
[00:27:05] thought about Tony as a dog.
[00:27:08] Which I think is really funny looking back because he does have this puppyish
[00:27:12] quality.
[00:27:13] He does.
[00:27:13] He does.
[00:27:13] He does.
[00:27:13] He's kind of like,
[00:27:14] he's flopping sideways a little bit.
[00:27:16] He's almost showing you his belly.
[00:27:18] Yeah.
[00:27:19] And he's like,
[00:27:20] I'm there.
[00:27:20] I'm here no matter what,
[00:27:22] you know?
[00:27:23] Yeah.
[00:27:24] So that's where he got his mannerisms and his physicality,
[00:27:28] where he got his accent.
[00:27:30] I'm not so sure,
[00:27:32] but that's all right.
[00:27:33] I love it by the way.
[00:27:34] I mean,
[00:27:35] you know what?
[00:27:35] I can't tell,
[00:27:36] I can't tell whether,
[00:27:37] you know,
[00:27:38] at these accents are like,
[00:27:40] they should be there or not,
[00:27:41] but I love me a Brooklyn accent.
[00:27:44] I think it was all right.
[00:27:45] I think the only one that stood out to me was Tony's little brother.
[00:27:48] Yeah.
[00:27:49] It was just a like,
[00:27:51] absolute little dumpling caricature.
[00:27:54] He's like,
[00:27:54] a pasta for Jule,
[00:27:55] my little brother over here.
[00:27:57] I know.
[00:27:58] He's so funny.
[00:27:59] The Dodgers.
[00:28:00] What?
[00:28:00] I don't like the Irish.
[00:28:01] You beat up my brother.
[00:28:02] What?
[00:28:06] The part of Eilish was originally supposed to be played by Rooney Mara.
[00:28:11] Rooney Mara,
[00:28:12] who is in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,
[00:28:14] the American version.
[00:28:15] okay,
[00:28:16] okay,
[00:28:16] okay.
[00:28:16] But filming was delayed.
[00:28:19] And then Rooney had other things to do.
[00:28:23] She's like,
[00:28:24] at some point.
[00:28:25] And then places to be.
[00:28:27] And then Saoirse Ronan actually aged into the part.
[00:28:30] And so she was cast.
[00:28:32] And Saoirse Ronan is Irish.
[00:28:34] But although she grew up in Dublin,
[00:28:37] she was born in the Bronx when her Irish parents were living there.
[00:28:41] And she said in an interview that she was really concerned about taking on this role
[00:28:46] because all of Ireland would be watching.
[00:28:48] And she was right.
[00:28:50] Because this movie had an exceptional debut at the box office in Ireland.
[00:28:55] And the widest theatrical release for an Irish movie in like years and years.
[00:29:01] Like hashtag no pressure.
[00:29:02] Right?
[00:29:03] And the author of the book,
[00:29:06] Colm Tobin,
[00:29:07] actually makes a cameo in the film.
[00:29:10] He's just in front of Saoirse Ronan in the line at Ellis Island,
[00:29:16] when she comes in for the first time.
[00:29:17] Oh my God.
[00:29:18] How cute.
[00:29:18] He's wearing a fat cap.
[00:29:20] Yeah.
[00:29:20] How cute.
[00:29:21] You can find him at precisely 15 minutes and 3 seconds.
[00:29:27] Blink and you'll miss him.
[00:29:27] I love cameos.
[00:29:28] I love cameos.
[00:29:30] So those are my interesting tidbits about the film.
[00:29:32] In terms of the history around the movie,
[00:29:35] I think the best way to go into it would be to kind of follow Ailish's story
[00:29:39] and see how realistic it is.
[00:29:42] Because it is actually quite a realistic story for a young woman in Ireland in the 50s
[00:29:47] to come to Brooklyn in the way that she did.
[00:29:51] So just a little bit of background.
[00:29:53] This is going to be very cursory because,
[00:29:55] surprise,
[00:29:56] we can't go into the history of Irish immigration to the United States.
[00:30:00] But of course,
[00:30:02] the Irish had been going to America long before the 1950s.
[00:30:06] The first huge wave of immigration was in the 1840s during the Irish potato famine.
[00:30:14] So the Irish had been coming to America and specifically to New York City since the 1840s.
[00:30:18] And in that time between the 1840s and the 1950s,
[00:30:23] they became essential and powerful part of the fabric of society, of politics and the economy.
[00:30:32] And although we see that a lot of them were men who came and did this manual labor in the city,
[00:30:40] this was the first wave of immigrants that included mostly women.
[00:30:46] So they became integrated in politics.
[00:30:49] They became business owners.
[00:30:51] They became priests, a lot of them.
[00:30:54] And a lot of priests came over.
[00:30:56] So by the 1890s,
[00:30:59] it's estimated that about a third of the population of Brooklyn was Irish.
[00:31:04] Wow.
[00:31:05] Which is probably why it was known as the Borough of Churches.
[00:31:10] Oh, okay.
[00:31:12] Which it still kind of is.
[00:31:14] Really?
[00:31:14] So when I was living and working in Brooklyn in 2009, 2010,
[00:31:20] it still was very much a Catholic place.
[00:31:24] And if you go into certain parts of Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island and the Bronx,
[00:31:29] churches and church life kind of divided these neighborhoods into the Caribbean church,
[00:31:37] the Irish church, the Italian church, the Korean church.
[00:31:40] How cool is that?
[00:31:41] It has grown and changed a lot.
[00:31:44] But those roots are still present in a way that I found really interesting that I was able to recognize in the film.
[00:31:51] Yeah.
[00:31:52] The Irish influence at this time was huge.
[00:31:55] They don't go into the film a lot into the other waves of immigration that were happening,
[00:32:00] apart from you see a bit, of course, with Tony and Italian Americans.
[00:32:05] But at this time, you have huge waves of Caribbean immigrants.
[00:32:09] You only see kind of a few black people in the film, which I think was a bit of a misstep.
[00:32:15] Because, of course, you've always had black people living in New York, black, Latin American, Caribbean.
[00:32:22] At this time, these communities would have been growing and changing as well.
[00:32:26] But for ages and ages, you've also had black Africans who came over as part of the slave trade.
[00:32:32] So they were a bit missing.
[00:32:34] Yeah, I know.
[00:32:35] It was very white.
[00:32:37] But this movie does focus on the Irish.
[00:32:40] And yet by 1950, actually, the mayor of New York City was William O'Dwyer, who was born in County Mayo.
[00:32:49] And the cardinal in New York was Irishman Francis Spellman.
[00:32:54] Oh, there you go.
[00:32:55] So although the Great Depression and World War II reduced immigration, there was still a pretty big wave of Irish immigration in the 1950s.
[00:33:06] Because in Ireland in the 50s, the economy was stalled and it was really hard to find work, as we see in the film.
[00:33:12] So Eilish ends up working at Miss Kelly's because even though she's taken some correspondence courses and she can do bookkeeping and she is really good at math, she can't get a job anywhere else.
[00:33:24] The people who are doing well in Enniscorthy are people like Jim's family who own the pub or who are already business owners or who are involved in politics who own land.
[00:33:37] And if you're not one of those people, there's really no work for you.
[00:33:41] Yeah.
[00:33:42] So part of the reason for this is that Ireland was not part of the post-war Marshall Plan, which was aid from the U.S. to Western Europe after the war.
[00:33:52] So while neighboring countries in Europe are developing, Ireland is not.
[00:33:59] So between 1946 and 1961, 531,255 people left Ireland.
[00:34:10] Wow.
[00:34:11] That was approximately 17% of the population at the time.
[00:34:16] Bloody hell.
[00:34:17] And around 50,000 people in Ireland moved to America in the 1950s.
[00:34:23] And about a quarter of those settled in New York.
[00:34:27] Jeez.
[00:34:29] Okay.
[00:34:30] So just in the 1950s, you have loads and loads of Irish people coming to America.
[00:34:36] And so the way that Eilish gets her job, she gets this job, she gets this visa, she gets accommodation all through her priest, Father Flood, which seems pretty out there.
[00:34:48] It's absolutely not.
[00:34:50] Yeah.
[00:34:50] Like, I want to know how, how, how did he get all this done?
[00:34:53] He had that kind of influence because priests are really, really powerful at that time.
[00:35:00] So historian Peter Quinn puts it this way.
[00:35:02] He says the Catholic church, quote, was an employment agency and the great transatlantic organization.
[00:35:09] Ooh.
[00:35:10] And in some ways it still kind of is.
[00:35:13] So in 2009, when I needed a job, I got my job.
[00:35:19] The last job that I had in America, I got through my priest, my parish priest, because he was working for the diocese.
[00:35:27] Of course he was working for the diocese.
[00:35:28] He was a priest, but he also had a job.
[00:35:30] Yeah.
[00:35:32] Working for the diocese.
[00:35:34] And he was how I was able to kind of get my foot in the door.
[00:35:39] And so the Catholic church still is this kind of network.
[00:35:43] I could go places when I traveled and get work through Catholic organizations that I had worked for before.
[00:35:50] It's a little more niche.
[00:35:52] But at this time, it was really easy.
[00:35:55] I mean, her priest walks into her place of work because her line manager called him because she was having a wobbly.
[00:36:03] Yeah.
[00:36:04] So the priest and parish life is so up in your business that it makes sense that they can pull all these strings.
[00:36:13] I mean, it was great.
[00:36:14] I mean, that's great that, you know, he got all that sorted for her.
[00:36:17] Yeah.
[00:36:18] You can see it's two sides of a coin.
[00:36:20] Yeah.
[00:36:20] They can get shit done for you.
[00:36:22] They know about all your shit.
[00:36:25] I know, right?
[00:36:26] So when I left my job to go to graduate school in England, my priest slash co-worker told me he was going to take me out for a dinner, like a farewell dinner.
[00:36:37] Really, really sweet.
[00:36:38] He didn't tell me it was this fancy place in Brooklyn that had a tasting menu.
[00:36:46] Oh, wow.
[00:36:46] So if you've done these tasting menus, they're small portions that come with like a full size glass of wine or whatever.
[00:36:55] So we each had a cocktail beforehand.
[00:36:58] We're doing this tasting menu.
[00:37:00] He's blasting through it.
[00:37:02] We were both so drunk by the end of it.
[00:37:07] And he was, you know, making sure that I got back to my place okay.
[00:37:10] But we passed a Rite Aid.
[00:37:12] And he was like, Alice, you have to go in the Rite Aid and get me a pack of cigarettes.
[00:37:17] And I was like...
[00:37:17] I love this priest.
[00:37:19] I was like, Father, why don't you get your own cigarettes?
[00:37:21] She's like, I can't.
[00:37:23] I'm wearing my collar.
[00:37:24] You can't go in.
[00:37:25] Just take the bloody collar off, man.
[00:37:28] What, you can't take it off?
[00:37:30] Whatever.
[00:37:31] I went into the Rite Aid for Father Keith.
[00:37:33] I got him a cigarette.
[00:37:34] And then he put me in a taxi home.
[00:37:36] Oh, good job, Father Keith.
[00:37:39] Yeah.
[00:37:39] What I'm saying is, if you're Catholic and you live in Brooklyn, you should be friends with priests.
[00:37:47] Cool.
[00:37:48] Yeah.
[00:37:48] I'm going to...
[00:37:49] I am Catholic.
[00:37:50] I don't live in Brooklyn.
[00:37:52] But maybe I should still make friends with a priest.
[00:37:55] Yeah.
[00:37:56] Yeah.
[00:37:56] Just go around being like, hey, you want to go try a tasting menu?
[00:38:00] Yeah.
[00:38:01] I assume the Catholic Church will pay for it.
[00:38:04] Sorry.
[00:38:05] I'll buy you cigarettes.
[00:38:06] Come on.
[00:38:06] Yeah.
[00:38:06] Let's go.
[00:38:08] Yeah.
[00:38:09] I'll go into that Rite Aid for you, Father.
[00:38:12] And the worst part was, this is like a Wednesday.
[00:38:17] We went into work the next day.
[00:38:20] I was deceased.
[00:38:21] Father Keith was fresh as a daisy.
[00:38:23] He was chipper.
[00:38:24] I think at one point he skipped through the hallway just to spite me.
[00:38:29] It's all that Rite Aid cigarettes, man.
[00:38:31] Yeah.
[00:38:32] While my spirit dragged my corpse into my own cubicle.
[00:38:39] Yeah.
[00:38:40] Well, the power of Christ is strong in that one.
[00:38:41] I know.
[00:38:43] If I had a better relationship with Jesus, I would not have had that hangover.
[00:38:48] Okay.
[00:38:48] Okay.
[00:38:48] So back to Eilish, though, and her life.
[00:38:52] So it does make sense.
[00:38:54] It did make sense to me that her life was so small that she didn't really go over to Manhattan.
[00:38:59] She's saving money.
[00:39:00] She doesn't have a lot.
[00:39:01] She's maybe tentative about branching out as a single young woman, putting herself in danger.
[00:39:07] So she's staying where she knows shit.
[00:39:10] Yeah.
[00:39:10] Yeah.
[00:39:11] You know, she moves into a women's boarding house in Brooklyn Heights.
[00:39:15] She lives on Clinton Street.
[00:39:17] And her college is in downtown Brooklyn, which is very close to that.
[00:39:20] And the department store is on Fulton Street, which is also – these things are all very close, is what I'm saying.
[00:39:28] Yeah.
[00:39:29] So Bartoczzi's, the store where she works, the department store where she works, it's not a real store.
[00:39:35] It was never a real store.
[00:39:36] But I think, based on my research, I think it's based on a store called Frederick Loeser & Company, which was on Fulton Street and Bond Street.
[00:39:45] So right smack dab where Bartoczzi's would be.
[00:39:49] And I think there's a Trader Joe's there now.
[00:39:52] And it's also totally not odd that she would have met Tony at a dance.
[00:39:57] Yeah.
[00:39:58] Okay.
[00:39:58] So this is an Irish parish dance.
[00:40:01] But this is what they have in common, that they're both Catholic.
[00:40:06] They're both immigrants.
[00:40:07] They're both young people.
[00:40:09] They both want to go to a dance.
[00:40:10] And so this is how a lot of people met.
[00:40:12] And it's kind of this idea of mixed marriages back then often included one partner who is Irish and another one who is some other type of immigrant, like Italian.
[00:40:23] Yeah.
[00:40:24] Fair enough.
[00:40:24] So in conclusion, it's a pretty historically accurate story.
[00:40:28] It's a sweet, small story.
[00:40:30] It doesn't deal with a lot of history, you know, big history.
[00:40:36] It doesn't deal with a lot of the politics of immigration.
[00:40:39] It just tells this woman's story.
[00:40:42] This messy fucking turns out to be kind of slutty woman.
[00:40:47] And I love her.
[00:40:48] Which I appreciate.
[00:40:49] Exactly.
[00:40:49] It's another messy, you know, fucking kind of slutty immigrant woman.
[00:40:57] Speaking of this messy bitch, can I tell you a little bit about her in the book?
[00:41:02] Yes.
[00:41:02] And the book in general.
[00:41:03] So the film is based very closely on the book.
[00:41:06] So first I want to say that this is not Colm Tobin's first book set at Enniscorthy.
[00:41:12] He has three others.
[00:41:16] Sort of four now.
[00:41:18] Yes, four now.
[00:41:20] So the first is Heather Blazing.
[00:41:23] He's got The Blackwater Lightship.
[00:41:26] And one from 2014 called Nora Webster.
[00:41:29] There is also a sequel now to Brooklyn called Long Island in which no spoilers, but Eilish
[00:41:37] does go back to Enniscorthy for a bit.
[00:41:39] Yeah, I figured.
[00:41:40] In the book Brooklyn, Eilish isn't the youngest of two.
[00:41:45] She actually has three older brothers in addition to Rose.
[00:41:49] They're called Pat, Martin, and Jack.
[00:41:52] And before the book starts, they've all moved to Birmingham for work.
[00:41:55] Mm-hmm.
[00:41:57] And Jack is the one who left most recently.
[00:42:00] Mm-hmm.
[00:42:00] And they're important to the story because they pay for Eilish's boat to New York from
[00:42:06] Liverpool.
[00:42:07] So she gets to go and see them.
[00:42:10] She specifically spends a day with Jack.
[00:42:12] Mm-hmm.
[00:42:12] And that gives us a look at another side of Irish immigration and these men moving to
[00:42:19] England for these more blue collar jobs, which is another huge part of the immigration that
[00:42:25] was happening from Ireland.
[00:42:27] Also in the book, her home life is just a little bit lighter in that her mother and her sister
[00:42:32] really pretend to be happy that she's going.
[00:42:35] Her sister's orchestrated all of this.
[00:42:37] Her mother understands that she needs to go and so she's trying to be supportive of her.
[00:42:42] So it's a bit happier.
[00:42:43] I think the most important difference in the book though is that Eilish meets Jim Farrell,
[00:42:49] a.k.a.
[00:42:50] Donal Gleeson, before she even knows she's going to America.
[00:42:55] Oh, okay.
[00:42:57] So she goes to, you know, in the movie, she goes to the dance.
[00:43:01] Yeah.
[00:43:01] Where Nancy is looking for George.
[00:43:04] Yeah.
[00:43:04] And then she leaves.
[00:43:05] Yeah.
[00:43:05] And before she leaves in the book, there's this group of rugby guys.
[00:43:10] Yes.
[00:43:11] Who are there with George.
[00:43:13] And she meets Jim there.
[00:43:15] And he's really rude to her.
[00:43:18] Oh.
[00:43:19] In that he doesn't speak to her.
[00:43:21] And it's quite obvious that he should ask her to dance.
[00:43:24] But he does not ask her to dance.
[00:43:26] Instead, he kind of looks her up and down and she thinks that he disapproves of her and
[00:43:32] he's being very judgmental of her and doesn't like her.
[00:43:35] And who does that remind you of?
[00:43:37] Oh, how very, how very jossy.
[00:43:40] How very Fitzwilliam Darcy of him.
[00:43:42] And that's not an accident.
[00:43:44] He really is set up as a Darcy figure.
[00:43:48] Tobin has even said that in writing Brooklyn, he was inspired by Jane Austen's style of, quote,
[00:43:56] examining a single psychology using an introspective, sensitive heroine, some comic characters and
[00:44:03] some romance.
[00:44:04] I will come back to this because I have a little headcanon of what could have happened in the
[00:44:09] book.
[00:44:10] Okay.
[00:44:10] What could have happened in the movie.
[00:44:11] But we don't get the payout, obviously, because she does go back to Brooklyn.
[00:44:16] So he's set up as a Darcy character.
[00:44:18] He does get redeemed in the book and in the movie because we see him as actually a really
[00:44:27] lovely person and a gentleman.
[00:44:29] So he's going to be able to do it.
[00:44:30] But in the book, the fact that she meets him in this way and the way that he later explains
[00:44:35] that he didn't mean to be rude, but he was going through this thing.
[00:44:39] And so there was a whole reason that he didn't ask her to dance.
[00:44:42] He had just been dumped.
[00:44:43] And he always had liked her and he wanted to ask her to dance, but he felt too awkward and
[00:44:51] insecure and kind of heartbroken.
[00:44:52] And it shows that there are these sliding doors moments throughout the story.
[00:44:57] What would have happened if that had gone differently?
[00:45:01] Yeah.
[00:45:02] What would have happened if she hadn't agreed to marry Tony before she left?
[00:45:07] All of these things.
[00:45:09] Another funny thing is that the terrible sex that she and Tony have in the movie is even
[00:45:17] worse in the book.
[00:45:19] How?
[00:45:20] Oh, no.
[00:45:20] I can imagine it.
[00:45:21] I wouldn't want to read it because watching it was bad enough.
[00:45:24] And at least it was over quickly.
[00:45:27] Yeah.
[00:45:27] So I won't get graphic, but it's worse in that you can, because you're in her head in
[00:45:33] the book, you know what a shit time she's having.
[00:45:36] Oh.
[00:45:36] And they do it twice.
[00:45:38] Oh.
[00:45:40] And she...
[00:45:40] Really?
[00:45:41] You mean, at least even the second...
[00:45:42] You think like, okay, maybe the first time, you know, he's super excited, blah, blah,
[00:45:46] blah.
[00:45:47] No.
[00:45:47] You think he would get it better the second time.
[00:45:49] No, they're both super quick, super awful.
[00:45:52] And it's actually more horrible the second time.
[00:45:55] Oh, no.
[00:45:56] Oh, girl.
[00:45:59] And yeah, it still doesn't faze her as much as it should.
[00:46:03] But she doesn't like, she doesn't think she had a nice time.
[00:46:06] Yeah.
[00:46:06] And the sex they have has more consequences and more immediate consequences.
[00:46:13] So the movie omits this whole thing that they do in the book where they go to confession.
[00:46:20] She makes him go to confession and she confesses.
[00:46:23] And she's worried about being pregnant.
[00:46:26] Mm-hmm.
[00:46:27] And the priest that she confesses to is really nice to her, but he encourages her to marry
[00:46:33] Tony.
[00:46:34] Oh, okay.
[00:46:34] He actually tells her like, come back when you know whether or not you're pregnant and
[00:46:39] we'll talk again.
[00:46:40] So we can see if I can help you or, you know, just like talk through some more stuff.
[00:46:45] Mm-hmm.
[00:46:45] Because confession really was kind of therapy.
[00:46:48] Yeah.
[00:46:49] It's the closest anybody's getting anyway.
[00:46:51] Also, Mrs. Kehoe, her landlady, hears them having sex.
[00:46:57] Mm-hmm.
[00:46:57] And then she's very passive aggressive about it.
[00:47:00] There's the indication, there's the hint that she tells Father Flood as well.
[00:47:05] And it turns out Mrs. Kehoe is Miss Kelly's cousin.
[00:47:09] Oh, God.
[00:47:11] And it's implied that they've been gossiping back and forth.
[00:47:14] They call each other on the telephone.
[00:47:16] Oh, no.
[00:47:17] And so it's unclear how Miss Kehoe knows that she got married.
[00:47:24] Mm-hmm.
[00:47:25] But she also definitely knows that she fucked.
[00:47:29] Okay.
[00:47:30] While she's going around like having this very public romance with Jim.
[00:47:35] Mm-hmm.
[00:47:35] And speaking of the romance with Jim, it's a bit more hot and heavy in the book.
[00:47:40] Oh.
[00:47:41] They fully make out.
[00:47:43] Oh, wow.
[00:47:44] And Jim touches one of her boobs.
[00:47:46] Oh, a boob touch.
[00:47:48] Yeah.
[00:47:48] And they get their photos taken like on the beach with Jim with his arms around her.
[00:47:54] Mm-hmm.
[00:47:55] So there's photographic evidence as well.
[00:47:57] Oh, no.
[00:47:57] It is messy.
[00:47:59] Oh, my God.
[00:48:00] This girl is a fucking mess.
[00:48:02] She's delusional.
[00:48:04] She's a mess.
[00:48:05] I can't really blame her.
[00:48:07] She even at one point admits to herself that she has stopped loving Tony and she considers divorce.
[00:48:15] And she's trying to calculate like what are the actual real world consequences of this?
[00:48:20] If I tell Jim about all of this, could I be a divorced person?
[00:48:25] Can I get a divorce?
[00:48:26] Would he wait for me to get a divorce?
[00:48:29] Well, I will say technically they didn't get married in church.
[00:48:32] So, you know.
[00:48:33] This is the thing.
[00:48:34] So I thought about annulment.
[00:48:35] Mm-hmm.
[00:48:36] The problem is, so from the perspective of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church has tribunals that you go to to pitch your case for an annulment if you want to get one.
[00:48:48] And they usually coincide kind of divorce proceedings, legal proceedings.
[00:48:53] But I knew someone who, I knew a priest who worked on an annulment tribunal.
[00:49:00] And he said that they're actually very easy to get.
[00:49:04] A Catholic annulment for her would have been an open and shut case.
[00:49:08] They didn't get married in the church.
[00:49:10] They're not married in the church.
[00:49:11] Yeah, exactly.
[00:49:12] I was going to say they wouldn't even need an annulment, right?
[00:49:14] Because in the Catholic Church, she was never married.
[00:49:16] Therefore, there's nothing to annul.
[00:49:17] Well, it would be kind of part of the legal process.
[00:49:20] Yeah.
[00:49:21] The problem is that they did get legally married.
[00:49:24] And getting a legal annulment is very different.
[00:49:27] And we can assume, but we don't see that they consummated their marriage.
[00:49:33] But I do think she would maybe have grounds based on like being coerced.
[00:49:39] But still, it would be a process.
[00:49:42] Yeah.
[00:49:42] There's no not messy way out of this situation.
[00:49:45] And finally, in the book, we don't actually see her reunite with Tony.
[00:49:51] We don't know that it's a wonderful, happy reunion.
[00:49:54] We see that she knows she has to go back to him.
[00:49:58] And that it's where she should be because she is married to him.
[00:50:02] And there's no way out of that.
[00:50:04] But we just see her taking the train down to Cork where she's going to take a boat.
[00:50:10] Because she called the boat.
[00:50:11] So I think that this is a beautiful story.
[00:50:14] Yeah.
[00:50:14] I love this film.
[00:50:16] This is a pretty universally loved film.
[00:50:18] I found one New York Times review.
[00:50:21] And I don't know who pissed in this guy's cornflakes.
[00:50:25] But the one poor review I read from the New York Times, the criticism that that reviewer had was for the way that it was a whitewashed story.
[00:50:38] Yeah.
[00:50:40] Also that it was sanitized.
[00:50:41] And that he felt it should have been a grittier Ireland, a grittier Brooklyn.
[00:50:46] That Ailish should have had more of a nightlife.
[00:50:49] That she was too good.
[00:50:50] She was too sheltered.
[00:50:51] And I think that maybe that reviewer doesn't understand the subtle beauty of a messy bitch's story.
[00:50:59] Mm-hmm.
[00:51:00] Because that's all I saw.
[00:51:02] Yeah.
[00:51:02] I thought she's got enough to be getting on with.
[00:51:04] Yeah.
[00:51:05] You know?
[00:51:06] She's creating a double life here.
[00:51:08] And she's got exams to take.
[00:51:11] Yes.
[00:51:11] Which is doing very well.
[00:51:12] Very part of her.
[00:51:13] So in my headcanon, I'm not saying that, you know, I'm not proposing any kind of like remake.
[00:51:20] If I were in charge of this story, I think ideally I would have her not marry Tony before she left, but promise to marry Tony.
[00:51:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:51:29] So there's still the drama there.
[00:51:31] Mm-hmm.
[00:51:31] She's giving him her word.
[00:51:32] But then through all of the gossip that she's getting through these gossiping connections between Brooklyn and Ennis Corthy, she finds out that Tony has actually taken up with another girl.
[00:51:46] Oh.
[00:51:46] And maybe gotten another girl pregnant with his terrible, terrible sex.
[00:51:51] Ooh.
[00:51:52] Mm.
[00:51:53] Okay, okay, okay, okay.
[00:51:55] And then she is free to stay in Ireland, but we don't want that for her.
[00:52:01] Or she's left.
[00:52:02] She enjoyed her life away.
[00:52:04] She came into who she was as a woman.
[00:52:06] Mm-hmm.
[00:52:06] She came back a different person.
[00:52:08] She can't go back to who she was.
[00:52:10] No.
[00:52:11] And Jim talks about wanting to travel and see the world.
[00:52:13] That's true.
[00:52:14] And he comes with her.
[00:52:15] Yeah.
[00:52:16] She could take him back to Brooklyn.
[00:52:19] They can set up an Irish pub there.
[00:52:21] He'll set up an Irish pub.
[00:52:22] She'll continue with her studies and get a job as an accountant.
[00:52:27] Yep.
[00:52:27] And she can do all the bookkeeping for the pub.
[00:52:29] Yeah, and then they can invest in one of those brownstones in Brooklyn.
[00:52:33] Ooh, nice.
[00:52:33] And then their grandchildren will be so rich.
[00:52:37] So rich.
[00:52:39] Yeah.
[00:52:39] Oh, and I would hate them.
[00:52:41] Oh, God.
[00:52:41] Because they have generational wealth.
[00:52:43] If you – so in America, the property app, if you want to snoop on these things, is Zillow.
[00:52:49] Mm-hmm.
[00:52:49] If you go on to Zillow and look at this area and the brownstones there.
[00:52:54] I don't want to do it.
[00:52:55] It'll make me sad.
[00:52:56] You can't – you can buy a full brownstone still as a single family home.
[00:53:01] I mean, you can't.
[00:53:03] You're poor as well.
[00:53:03] Yeah, yeah.
[00:53:04] I can't.
[00:53:05] But people can.
[00:53:06] People can.
[00:53:07] Ugh.
[00:53:08] Screw you people.
[00:53:09] Eat the rich.
[00:53:10] Listen, listen, I don't know.
[00:53:13] I don't know if any of what I said today, this evening has made any kind of sense.
[00:53:20] I feel like – I feel like Eilish, but part of my brain is MIA.
[00:53:27] It might be in County Wexford.
[00:53:29] I'm not sure.
[00:53:30] It might be washed up on that beach.
[00:53:33] Oh, six weeks I've been ill.
[00:53:35] Oh, you poor, poor thing.
[00:53:37] You've been ill.
[00:53:38] You had a little one.
[00:53:40] Had four teeth pulled out.
[00:53:42] You've been through it, man.
[00:53:43] But look, takeaway here is you shouldn't settle for terrible sex.
[00:53:49] Yes.
[00:53:50] So my award goes to – my award is for best spaghetti eating scene.
[00:53:58] So I love that bit, though.
[00:53:59] That was funny.
[00:54:00] That made me laugh.
[00:54:02] Is this – wait, point of clarification.
[00:54:04] Is this when Eilish is actually eating spaghetti?
[00:54:07] No, when she's training to eat the spaghetti, which is like – basically she's eating like
[00:54:11] dry spaghetti, right?
[00:54:13] It's not dry.
[00:54:14] It's just, you know, it doesn't have a sauce on it.
[00:54:17] It's cooked spaghetti.
[00:54:18] It's cooked spaghetti, but like there's nothing in it, on it.
[00:54:22] Like it's just spaghetti with nothing.
[00:54:24] It's just bleh.
[00:54:25] Yeah.
[00:54:26] So she's trying to eat spaghetti because she's never eaten it before.
[00:54:28] And then her little – her two friends from her boarding house are trying to like teach
[00:54:34] you how to eat spaghetti.
[00:54:35] And then they say that, right, you know, we're going to teach you now without the sauce.
[00:54:38] And then each time it looks like an accident is going to happen.
[00:54:42] We're going to say splash.
[00:54:45] It's just so funny.
[00:54:46] So yeah.
[00:54:47] Imagine if they had made that into a montage.
[00:54:49] Like splash.
[00:54:51] Like she's eating spaghetti, but she's also running.
[00:54:53] And they're just like next to her going splash, splash, splash.
[00:54:56] Ah, pas de fa jour.
[00:54:57] Come on.
[00:54:58] Okay.
[00:54:58] Yeah.
[00:54:58] So that's my award.
[00:55:00] Come on.
[00:55:01] Give your award.
[00:55:01] So we haven't talked about the costumes in this movie, but they're gorgeous.
[00:55:05] They are.
[00:55:06] And I loved the bathing suits, especially.
[00:55:10] Oh, so nice.
[00:55:11] They were such a – they were such a metaphor for sophistication and style and modernity.
[00:55:19] When you've got Eilish in her beautiful, perfectly fitting suit and her friend in that
[00:55:26] really frumpy kind of floppy blue thing.
[00:55:29] Yeah.
[00:55:29] She's like, I'm at the beach too.
[00:55:31] Flop, flop, flop.
[00:55:32] And so – and I fell in love with this swimsuit instantly.
[00:55:36] That like Kelly green with the white piping.
[00:55:39] That's lovely.
[00:55:40] So I have to go for best bathing suit.
[00:55:43] Okay.
[00:55:43] That was lovely.
[00:55:45] That was still – yeah, it was really nice.
[00:55:46] I would wear that now.
[00:55:47] Best bathing costume in a period drama.
[00:55:49] Mm-hmm.
[00:55:50] I would challenge anything to top it.
[00:55:52] Yeah.
[00:55:53] Yeah.
[00:55:53] That was a good one.
[00:55:54] And I just – so it just reminds me of the scene where she's getting dressed, right?
[00:55:59] And then I think was it her boss, right, was trying to help her find a bathing suit.
[00:56:03] Yes.
[00:56:04] And then she like squeezes her butt.
[00:56:06] She's like, yeah, all right.
[00:56:07] Italian men prefer meatier women, but you know, you'll do.
[00:56:12] And then I was watching that as I sat on my big fat ass.
[00:56:15] I was like, yeah, baby.
[00:56:18] This butt can go places.
[00:56:24] We all need that boss to be in the dressing room with us.
[00:56:27] I know.
[00:56:27] Squeezing our butts.
[00:56:28] Squeezing our butts.
[00:56:29] Giving us affirmations.
[00:56:30] Mm-hmm.
[00:56:31] I need that.
[00:56:32] Yeah.
[00:56:33] Go take that to the beach.
[00:56:34] Yes.
[00:56:36] Awesome.
[00:56:36] Well, you know where you need to take yourself to is bed.
[00:56:40] I need to go to bed.
[00:56:40] I'm just going to quickly spread all my antibiotics on the kitchen floor and just like roll around and smash my face into them.
[00:56:50] Okay.
[00:56:50] And while Alice is doing that, I'm just going to say that if you have any suggestions for any other period dramas you'd like to cover, maybe about, you know, the immigrant experience, swimsuits.
[00:57:02] Yeah.
[00:57:02] Things set in Ireland.
[00:57:04] Things set in America.
[00:57:05] Things set in swimming pools.
[00:57:08] Things involving eating spaghetti.
[00:57:11] Yeah.
[00:57:12] Yeah.
[00:57:12] Sauce.
[00:57:13] No sauce.
[00:57:14] Mm-hmm.
[00:57:14] Splash.
[00:57:15] No splash.
[00:57:16] You can find this in...
[00:57:17] Spaghetti in swimming pools.
[00:57:19] Oh, God.
[00:57:22] Swimming in like a pool.
[00:57:23] Swimming in this like giant pool of like spaghetti sauce.
[00:57:26] And antibiotics.
[00:57:27] Oh, yeah.
[00:57:28] You can hit us up on Instagram at fetchsmellingsalts or you can email us at fetchsmellingsalts at gmail.com.
[00:57:38] We're also on TikTok.
[00:57:41] We're on Threads.
[00:57:43] Threads is fun.
[00:57:44] And we're on Buy Me A Coffee, which you can find us at buymeacoffee.com slash fetchsmellingsalts.
[00:57:51] Awesome.
[00:57:52] Great.
[00:57:52] But we're not going to drink coffees right now because we're both going to go to sleep.
[00:57:55] Yes.
[00:57:56] I'm going to finish my weakness.
[00:57:58] Okay.
[00:57:58] You do that.
[00:57:59] And I'm going to go sort out this doggy.
[00:58:02] Yeah.
[00:58:03] We should do this again sometime.
[00:58:04] Yeah.
[00:58:05] Okay.
[00:58:06] Goodbye.
[00:58:07] Goodbye.
[00:58:08] Good night.
[00:58:15] It's all finished.
[00:58:17] What?