In Brooklyn, Saoirse Ronan’s Eilis leaves her family in Ireland in favor of the charming 1950s-era New York. But when something draws her back home, she has to choose between the two very separate worlds.

The best and worst thing about Brooklyn is the underlying sense of inevitability about how life — all life — is eventually going to play out.

Best case scenario, you’ll find someone nice to spend your years on Earth with. You’ll have a good job, a roof over your head. You’ll have a couple of kids, teach them to love what you love.

And those kids, like yourself, will learn how to walk and run and jump, only to grow up and realize that it’s all about settling down.

How ironic, that a story about rootlessness ultimately teaches us that choice is an illusion.

Brooklyn stars Saoirse Ronan in what must be the standout role of her already impressive career: Ronan plays Eilis, a young Irish girl who journeys to New York City in the 1950s to find work. She leaves behind a mother and a big sister, only to find herself right back at another dinner table, with another mother and other sisters.

The conversation is no less inane, but instead of talking about stale bread, they talk about stockings. The shop work is the same, except in New York, they put on a big smile for the customers. The dances are the same, except in New York, someone asks Eilis for a dance.

And from there on, she’s on the fast-track to a comfortable life: Tony (Emory Cohen) is sweet, genuine and big-hearted (if a little too eager), and he is ready to offer Eilis everything a young girl like her would want. She goes along with him, because why wouldn’t she? There’s nothing not to like, and if there is, Tony is able to convince her to change her mind.

Eilis’ malleable attitude and underlying apathy is lifted straight out of the novel by Colm Toíbín, which similarly depicts an Eilis who is more of a spectator of than a participant in her own life.

Related: Saoirse Ronan: Brooklyn is “the hardest, most rewarding thing I’ve ever done”

Remarkably, Eilis never once makes a real choice. When she goes to New York, it’s because her sister makes her. When she is drawn back to Ireland, it is because of a family tragedy. When she eventually has to decide whether to stay in Ireland or go back to New York, that choice is made for her, too.

And towards the end of the movie, we get the sense that whether she’d stayed or gone, it wouldn’t really have mattered: She’ll still end up in a house, with a man, married and settled like everyone else. The setting is different, but the story is the same.

Brooklyn director John Crowley did a spectacular job of capturing the quietly reflective, dream-like quality of Colm Toíbín’s book. Everything from the pleasantness of (almost) all the characters, to the pastel-colored costumes and idyllic settings, bathe Eilis’ world in a beautiful, tranquil light, which throws the underlying greyness of her reality into sharp relief.

While one does get more of a sense that Eilis is writing her own destiny in the novel, the linear, always just-too-easy progression of the narrative fits the movie really well, and adds to the bittersweet feeling of it all.

At every point in the narrative, someone leads Eilis by the hand: First it’s her sister, then her bunkmate on the ship, then Father Flood (Jim Broadbent), and finally Tony. Nothing is ever really difficult, because there’s never really an option or a need to choose a different path than the one she happens to be on — and that’s what makes Eilis’ story such a tragedy, and so damn real.

By the nature of the medium, the movie made the banality of her life much more apparent, and thus leaves the viewer with a sense of desperation, rather than the somewhat more hopeful end-note Toíbín wrote Eilis off with in the novel.

Screenwriter Nick Hornby turned what was already an incredible book into a brilliant, nuanced, humorous script. What is most remarkable about Brooklyn is how every single character feels real and complex, from Tony’s adorable little brother to Eilis’ fellow lodgers. Julie Walters’ Mrs Kehoe was wonderfully underplayed, Tony perfectly hovered on the edge of too-smarmy (which added to the unease building about his and Eilis’ relationship), and Domhnall Gleeson’s Jim did the almost-impossible, and managed to make us care for Eilis’ alternate happy-ever-after in the last 20 minutes of the film.

Brooklyn felt like walking through a dream, and will legitimately make you think about the world, and the formulaic nature of the life society has told you you should strive for. (Because even if the story is set in the ’50s, nothing’s really changed, has it?)

On one hand, it’s the universal story about leaving home from the first time and finding yourself. But on the other, it (at least in the case of this reviewer) also makes you realize that there is no such thing as home. There are only landscapes, buildings, and humans, and all you can control is how you choose to interact with them. What matters is you, and your agency. Don’t lose it. Don’t let others drag you down paths you don’t really want to take, just because breaking away seems scary.

Saoirse Ronan’s subtle, understated portrayal of a young woman who discovers herself slowly and suddenly all at once is breathtaking, and should by all rights win her a second Oscar nomination. But it is really in the details — of the world around her, and the characters she surrounds herself with — that the world of Brooklyn comes to life.

It’s clear that every single person involved with this movie, from the director and screenwriter to the supporting actors and costume designers, felt personally connected to the narrative. And I doubt you’ll find many people who can’t identify with Eilis’ journey.

Rating: A-

‘Brooklyn’ is in theaters now!

Check out the trailer for the movie below: