Sing Street

SING STREET                B               

Ireland  Great Britain  USA  (106 mi)  2016  ‘Scope  d:  John Carney

                                   

I remember the 1980’s with somewhat of a blush.  No man’s hair should be bigger than his girlfriend’s.  But that was the time.  Dublin in Technicolor.  In reality it was monochrome and in the grip of a recession, but on video tape, you could be transported.  You could wear what you liked, and the more outrageous the better.  Anything to wind up the jackbooted skinheads on Dublin’s north side.  Make-up on a boy drove rockers wild, and the teachers wilder.  Thank God for Bowie, who made all the black eyes okay.  And allowed people to find out who they were. My brother gave me the gift of music through my first guitar.  We formed a band.  In truth, at the same stage, U2 were not as good as the kids in Sing Street.  In truth most films you’ll see this year won’t touch Sing Street…

—Bono, U2 Frontman Bono Gives 'Sing Street' A Ringing Endorsement ...

Another musical fantasia from John Carney, former bass player of the Irish rock band The Frames, while also shooting their music videos, and creator of such optimistically appealing films as Once (2006) and Begin Again (2013), films that express how music inspires and changes people’s lives, resorting to a more formulaic boy meets girl narrative this time, yet it still retains the youthful exuberance of impressionable, coming-of-age kids that dream of a better life.  While it has a kind of fairy tale feel throughout, often mixing in wish fulfillment dream imagery, the dire social realist setting at its core grounds the film in Dublin in the 1980’s during an economic recession, where the kids and their parents actually feel stuck in time with no way out.  With the feeling that life has passed them by and left them by the wayside, 14-year old Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) and his rebellious older brother Brendan, Jack Reynor, easily the best thing in the film, a Jack Black style character from SCHOOL OF ROCK (2003) where an entire film could be made around his character, have to endure the snide comments and constant bickering of their hapless and loveless parents who only stay together for financial reasons.  While Brendan is something of an outcast who stays stoned, holed up in his room with his record collection, his brotherly advice, and exquisite taste in rock music, provides the humor and synergistic push to keep Conor wanting more out of life than anything he ever got.  Like an alter-ego, or a Jiminy Cricket voice of conscious, it’s really Brendan’s dream that Conor follows, beautifully expressed here in a moment of brotherly pride and tough love as he carves out a path for someone else to follow, Sing Street Movie CLIP - Older Brother (2016) - Jack Reynor, Ferdia Walsh-Peelo Movie HD  (1:05).  While Conor is pulled from private school and sent to a nearby public school run by sadistic priests, he is quickly acclimated to the predatory nature of things, where intelligence is ridiculed and bullies prey on the weaknesses of others while priests turn a blind eye.  The innocence of the times, however, is reflected in the earliest stages of the music video, where Brendan is euphoric how music is literally transformed through the power of images, SING STREET - Duran Duran Clip - The Weinstein Company YouTube (1:09).

While Conor quickly gets picked on as well, an easy target as he’s a good student, but he can’t help noticing the daily presence of a gorgeous girl standing all alone, where nobody has the nerve to talk to her, though apparently others have tried but gotten shut down.  So Conor gives it a go, finding her mysteriously alluring, Raphina (Lucy Boynton), asking if she wants to appear in his video, claiming he’s a singer in a local rock band.  Incredulously, she takes an interest, as she turns out to be an aspiring model who could use the exposure.  Like an answer to his prayers, Conor is dizzy with delight afterwards, hardly able to contain himself, setting out immediately in search of a group of musicians to form a band.  Identifying his best friend, the diminutive Darren (Ben Carolan) as the manager, his first recruit is a sensational multi-talented instrumentalist Eamonn (Mark McKenna), who can apparently play any instrument with ease, but serves primarily as the lead guitarist, choosing a black dude Ngig (Percy Chamuruka) simply for his aloofness and look of cool, but the guy can play keyboards.  Before you know it, they rehearse a bunch of 80’s cover songs in Eamonn’s living room and record a demo tape.  But when Brendan hears it, he smashes it to pieces, calling cover music nothing more than junk, claiming if they want to have sex with a girl they’ll have to take chances, claiming rock music is all about attitude and risk, Sing Street Exclusive Clip: The Last Thing the World Needs Is Another Cover Band (1:03).  With that, Conor and Eamonn turn into a Lennon and McCartney writing team, reeling off several original songs, where they finally have a reason to call Raphina and make that music video.  It turns out she knows more than modeling, adding hairstyles and make-up while reshaping the look of the band, even changing Conor’s name to Cosmo, resulting in the raucously hilarious silliness of a song recorded in a back alley somewhere, SING STREET - THE RIDDLE OF THE MODEL Music Video Clip (1:45).  With Ferdia Walsh-Peelo singing on all the songs, the playfulness of the fun they’re having overshadows Conor’s original motivation, finding time to be with the enthralling and strangely beguiling girl.

Conor develops a new persona as Cosmo, suddenly familiar with the likes and looks of Robert Smith in The Cure - Inbetween Days on Vimeo (3:00), M - Pop Muzik (Official Video) - YouTube (3:13), and Daryl Hall & John Oates - Maneater - YouTube (4:24), growing his hair longer, bleaching his bangs and wearing make-up to school, which the priests find an abomination and a direct confrontation to their authoritarian rule, using brutally cruel, strong-armed tactics to force him to capitulate.  While Conor is a somewhat opaque, sympathetic figure, where it’s hard to find offense with anything he does, the more intriguing figures are Brendan, whose musical mind is tapped into throughout, and the elusive beauty of Raphina, whose inner complexity is surprising, as she is always more than she seems, becoming a darker, more tragic figure over time, the damsel in distress that is always worth fighting for.  When Conor reports to his brother that she already has a boyfriend, recalling that they were listening to Genesis in his car, Brendan reminds him, “No girl is ever going to take a guy seriously that listens to Genesis.”  The on-again and off-again relationship that develops between Raphina and Conor exists throughout, always dropping off tapes of his new songs at her door, where she becomes the central force driving his every move even as she disappears for long stretches of time.  Meanwhile the band keeps popping up in their own music videos, creating a lighthearted world of pop fantasy that is continually challenged by the more searing realism of the times, where the songs represent the only affirmative hope to be found anywhere in the vicinity, SING STREET - BEAUTIFUL SEA Music Video Clip YouTube (1:12).  These kids want nothing of the drab world surrounding them, where the romantic inclinations between Conor and Raphina grow more magically surreal, where the delirium of teenage love exists largely in the delusions of the imagination, where some of the more brilliantly conceived scenes are just the two of them alone, where the line between fantasy and reality continually co-mingles.  One of the better set pieces in the film shows the band playing at the senior prom, creating a song that is beat-for-beat the same rhythm section as “Maneater” in Drive It Like You Stole It - YouTube (3:37), where what exists in Conor’s head grows to ecstatic dimensions, always infused with a hyper-realistic romanticism that becomes the guiding light of the film, idealizing a kind of world one hopes and dreams for, as opposed to the one they inevitably find themselves stuck in, SING STREET - Adam Levine "Go Now" Music Video - YouTube (3:50).  With a belief that brighter days are ahead, the magical realism of the finale is as tragically naïve as it is exhilarating, where one is left in a euphoric haze of youth and unbridled enthusiasm.    

Once

ONCE             A-            
Ireland  (86 mi)  2006  d:  John Carney     http://www.myspace.com/oncethemovie

a longtime master of sublimely melodramatic sad-bastard music 

—a commentator’s description on National Public Radio of Glen Hansard

One of the best double features seen in years, seeing ONCE immediately following Hal Hartley’s deliriously upbeat FAY GRIM (2006), shot in two weeks for under $150,000, this is one of those small films that works, a grassroots hit at Sundance generating such superlative reviews that by the time you get into the theater, you half expect it to fall apart at some point, while the other half, of course, hopes it’s everything it’s cracked up to be.  Fortunately, this film doesn’t need to grab you by the throat to pull you in, it does so instantly with the emotional sincerity of the music, which always sounds so heartening, even as it’s describing hearts that are breaking, beautifully shot by Tim Fleming who consistently captures the immediacy of the moment and the freewheeling swagger of the two wonderfully refreshing lead characters, making this one of the more unique twists on an age old love story.  Known only as the Guy and the Girl, he’s a thirtyish street singer that repairs Hoover vacuum cleaners at home with his dad, Glen Hansard from the Irish rock group The Frames and Alan Parker’s THE COMMITMENTS (1991), a guy whose songs bear a strange similarity to the optimism and melodic simplicity of Cat Stevens when he was Cat Stevens, while she, Markéta Irglová, is a younger Czech émigré who sells magazines and flowers on the street, living with her mother and small daughter, a girl with classical piano training who bears a strange resemblance to the recently deceased British actress Katrin Cartlidge, as she combines intelligence and a very forward curiosity with an eloquent stage presence, and at only age 17 during the filming, she reminds us of just how glorious it is to be young.  Written and directed by John Carney, who was a bass player for The Frames in the early 90’s, this film makes no attempt to overreach, but does an excellent job of living within its small means by creating two well-defined characters living on the fringe of working class Dublin, both with the love of music in common, and with the same loss of an affectionate “other.”  The Guy realizes early in the film his mistake at coming on to the Girl, and his face tells all, as he knows he screwed up the instant he violated this fragile trust these two developed on the street when after hearing him sing she was amazed at the profound seriousness of one of his songs, knowing he loved someone, as she could sense an intimate outpouring of personal confession, which he found exasperatingly obtrusive, finding it incredible and somewhat off-putting that this young stranger could see right through to his soul.  

Much like the poetic realism of Jacques Demy, who compiled a string of musicals in the decade of the 1960’s that remain at the pinnacle of the art form, this film has more than a passing similarity to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) (1964), immersing itself in the energetic spontaneity of the streets from which these characters spring, where their first sparks of love make the audience sense they are made for each other, soul mates, inseparable, perhaps projecting this chemistry onto the troubled relationships of the unseen “others” in their lives, even as they go their separate ways, much like the audience senses the misdirected love in CHERBOURG.  But establishing realism within the world they live in is essential, as from within this carefully defined lack of pretentiousness comes the sincerity of the music, which leads us ever further into the lives of these two young lovers, who mesh together so well in one of the opening scenes in the back of a music store where they basically put a song together for the very first time which is nothing less than revelatory, it’s simply movie magic.  Her soft piano and vocal harmony are so understated, yet so pure, it’s simply heartbreaking hearing the song “Falling Slowly” Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the movie "Once" (2006) YouTube (6:12) developing onscreen for the very first time:  “I don’t know you/but I want you/all the more for that,” as is her response to his request for lyrics to one of his melodies, where she scampers out into the night in her slippers and pajamas to the local music store where she can play his CD of the recorded music, returning later humming this song under her breath, completely oblivious to the outside world, allowing the audience to share in her joy at hearing her lyrics for the very first time accompanied by her pitch perfect harmonies.  It would be so easy for scenes like this to disintegrate into artificial grandstanding, but they are charmingly contained entirely within the musical structure.  By this time, it’s hard not to sense that we’re experiencing a different kind of film, a tone poem of young love that relishes intricate harmonies and the adrenal rush of waiting for the next chorus. 

Much of this film was born as well in Paul Thomas Anderson’s MAGNOLIA (1999), reflective of the exquisite montage use in that film of the Aimee Mann song “Wise Up” Magnolia SoundTrack-Wise Up YouTube (3:38) spread throughout several characters which adds a hyper-realistic quality to the emotional content of the song.  In ONCE, this mesmerizing quality extends throughout the entire film, making this one of the most subtle musicals in the modern era.  Here the Guy’s reborn love is expressed in flashback images from a projected video of his distant love in London, who is actually in real life the girl friend of the director, but it’s a beautiful collage of mixed emotions, where he longs for the love that he’s actually experiencing again, rekindled by the crazy directness of the Girl, who kindly defers all matters of love, as she has a husband of her own living abroad who hasn’t been particularly helpful.  Instead, she’s visited each day by three burly guys next door who promptly sit on the sofa and watch her TV, the only one in the building, known in the credits as the men watching TV.  Before the Guy leaves for London, he decides to cut a record with the Girl and a few other street musicians, which is basically the end third of the film, watching them pique the interest of the sound engineer who comes to realize he is witnessing a unique recording session filled with undiscovered talent.  The strength of the session is the blending of textures and tones, the unabashed joy and genuine passion that comes from Hansard’s vocals, and the gorgeous melodic refrains, always underscored by the Girl’s talent for harmony.  The personalized intimacy of the characters is perfectly realized in their joining forces and coming together musically.  After immersing themselves in the cramped quarters of a recording session all weekend, there’s a wonderfully sweet release that is simplicity itself, where the music continues over the end credits, but where we know the real story is only getting started, this was just the beginning, a brief moment, once.    

Postscript                    

Like John Waters’ HAIRSPRAY (1988), this film was turned into a hit Tony award-winning musical on Broadway in 2012, winning eight Tony awards including Best Musical.

The Songlist from the movie from the 2007 IMDb Message Board, Bowie718 (link lost):

Did anyone else notice the song he played at the VERY beginning of the film? I was totally blown away that he was crooning one of my all-time favorite Van Morrison songs... "And The Healing Has Begun". That song holds special, sentimental value to me... and for the film to open with that... let's just say, there couldn't have been a better way to usher me into instantly liking it. Too bad that didn't wind up on the soundtrack as well (although, it was interrupted by a thief)

1. Say It To Me Now  - The song he sings in the beginning when they meet, from the album Fitzcarraldo by The Frames. - The very emotionally-potent song which the guy is singing, late at night, when the girl first spots him, applauds his music, and then tries to sell him a copy of Issues.

2. All The Way Down - A solo track by Glen Hansard/the guy, a very soft/subdued track from the beginning of the film. It was the scene in his bedroom where he was calling his ex...sitting on his bed playing this song.

3. Falling Slowly - THE song. The song in C that they develop together at the music store, and the one that plays again over the closing credits.

4. If You Want Me - The song (credited, in real life, entirely to Markéta Irglová, which I was surprised by! [she also co-wrote Falling Slowly and Lies with Glen Hansard, and, of course, is the composer of The Hill as well) which the girl is given to write lyrics for, and which she sings while listening to the CD demo while walking home in her sheepy slippers.

5. Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy - 'Nuff said. (The version on disc is precisely the one in the film, replete with 'Well...' introduction, and laughter at the end.)

6. When Your Mind's Made Up - The song in 5/4 which they record in the studio as their 'track 1, take 1', and which later plays, almost entirely again, over the montage in the car and at the beach after the recordings are complete.

7. Lies - The song the guy writes and then sings over the video recordings of his ex-girlfriend.

8. Gold - The song performed by the group (the soundtrack gives their name as Interference) at the evening roundtable sing, with violin and cello accompaniment. (This is the only song on the soundtrack not credited to either Hansard or Irglová, having been composed by Fergus O'Farrell, who sings the track as well.)

9. The Hill - The girl's solo song, which she demoes in the film for the guy on the piano hidden away in the studio. (This is a different version from that in the film, more 'professional' [i.e., containing a complete ending, rather than that of the girl's crying breakoff in the film], with a few extra lyrics and a short instrumental postlude.)

10. Fallen From The Sky - The other main song performed for the recording sessions, with the girl playing a small electronic keyboard while seated cross-legged on the studio floor. (The CD, incidentally, credits this as an old track performed by The Frames, and Markéta, contrary to the film, does not actually appear on it at all [Glen is the one credited for playing the keyboards, with additional keyboard work by a certain Craig Ward].)

11. Leave - You know, I can't remember precisely where this comes from, although I know it's somewhere in the film, because I remember thinking that the guy's voice sounds almost exactly like early-1970's Cat Stevens/Yusef Islam on this solo vocal and guitar track (with a small touch of bass at the end?, although the instrument is not listed in the liner notes). But more than that, I cannot pin down. Suggestions? (The main vocal hook is the repeated line 'You've said what you have to, now leave'. Wrought and dramatic, particularly towards the end.)

12. Trying To Pull Myself Away - Can't recall this from the film, for the life of me. A full band and then some (a synthy string section, for instance) performance. The best I could think of would be the session from the guy's (suddenly rather spacious) bedroom during their preparation for the recording sessions, but it somehow doesn't seem quite right. Perhaps a song recorded specifically for the soundtrack?

13. Once - A softer duet with Markéta, some percussion and a little extra occasional instrumentation. I imagine this must have been especially for the soundtrack, as I seem to imagine I must have noticed a 'title song' being such somewhere in the film. Plus, all the guy/girl songs seem very memorable. But, then again, I can be very, very unobservant at times. Very unobservant.

Begin Again

John Carney (left) with Mark Ruffalo on the set

 

BEGIN AGAIN           B+            
USA  (104 mi)  2013  d:  John Carney              Official site

Oddly enough, the beginning of this film plays out much like the Coen brother’s Inside Llewyn Davis (2012), where a singer performs alone to a relatively disinterested audience in the dark smoky confines of a small club in the East Village of New York, including a clever somewhat literary use of flashback sequences to show what led up to that moment, where the heart of the film draws a line in the sand between studio processed music and a voice of authenticity, where a common theme in both is refusing to sell out to a faceless corporate music industry that for all practical purposes wants to reshape your songs in their image.  Despite the fact you’re the artist and creator, they’re the ones that end up lining their pockets, earning nine dollars out of every ten.  That tradition is called capitalism, and many an artist has lost their soul trying to make it in the crass and exploitive atmosphere that is the music business.  Made by the director of ONCE (2006), which was turned into a hit Tony award-winning musical on Broadway in 2012, winning eight Tony awards including Best Musical, John Carney was a former bass player in the Irish rock group The Frames in the early 90’s, whose lead singer Glen Hansard starred in his earlier film as the writer and singer of most of the songs, where the beauty of the film was paralleling a budding personal relationship with the collaborative artistic process of making music, turning it into a joyful and uplifting experience, much as Craig Brewer did in HUSTLE & FLOW (2005), two films that thrive on authentic atmosphere and inspiring performances, turning into exhilarating musical love fests.  Carney again features a similar storyline, where he seems to have his finger on the pulse of the music business, which has undergone drastic changes in the last decade, where the prevalence of artists putting their own music out on YouTube or iTunes has altered the playing field, allowing the artists themselves instead of some record company to determine their own destiny.  This individualized shift in marketing has led to more intimate musical releases that are not burdened with a mass-produced sound that makes every song sound the same.  While the songs here are not on the same level as those used in ONCE, they are instead far more toned down to reflect a quiet softness of the female character, nonetheless there’s an authentic degree of sweetness and sincerity from Keira Knightley’s performance (that includes singing her own songs) to generate appeal. 

Carney, who started out making music videos for The Frames, seems to specialize in creating “moments of intimacy” both in the musical numbers and in the developing personal relationships, where the entire film seems to be a collection of small and often forgotten moments that people have a tendency to overlook, but here they’re magnified into magical realms through a healing power of music that comes to personify Carney’s area of expertise.  The film actually starts out rather amateurishly, as the songs are poorly lip-synched, which causes a needless distraction, while Knightley as Greta is forced unwillingly to sing one of her songs onstage, where there’s little to no appeal in her performance.  Simultaneously, Mark Ruffalo as Dan the A & R man, a guy responsible for finding and signing new music talent, is a hard corps alcoholic whose life is tailspinning away from him, already separated from his wife Miriam (Catherine Keener), a musical journalist, and their teenage daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld), where in the early scenes he’s little more than a disgrace and an embarrassment, where in no time at all he’s kicked to the curb from the indie record label that he founded, spending the rest of the day drinking his troubles away.  If all of this sounds a bit pat and formulaic, it is, even uncomfortably so.  But not to worry, as that’s about to change when Carney rewinds the tape back to Greta’s first nightclub performance where Dan is seen sitting at the bar, and in his state of inebriation he hears something altogether different, which suddenly takes shape onscreen even though it’s only playing in his head, where like Disney’s FANTASIA (1940) other instruments suddenly appear onstage and start playing themselves, adding drums, cello, and piano, even a violin, where this sheepishly awkward performance that everyone else hears suddenly develops a sound.  Dan blurts out his ideas that he wants to record her, handing out his business card (where he was fired), where he has to admit he’s dead drunk and that his life is in such turmoil that it would be hard for anyone to take him seriously, but he’s emphatically optimistic about her song.  The urgency of his intentions are met with appropriate suspicion and disbelief, as who would believe that guy?  Fortunately in the modern era we can Google people’s names and Greta discovers he was an influential force in the music industry, actually reading out loud what it says about him when they meet the next day.  Dan, however could care less about the past, and is a rush of enthusiasm about the possibilities of their future working together. 

The backstory with Greta is far more intriguing, as she was professionally and romantically involved with fledgling rock star Dave Kohl (Adam Levine from Maroon 5) for the past five years, co-writing his songs, where his career took off after one of his songs was featured in a hit movie.  As he cashes in on his success, Greta gets left behind and cheated on, and despite coming to New York to be with him, she was on her way out of town until Dan’s proposition stopped her in her tracks, as he wants to record an entire album of her songs, but they’ll have to do it on the fly, as they don’t have access to a recording studio.  Out of nothing, things start to materialize, as they decide to record songs in various outdoor New York street locations, hiring a bunch of student nobodies that are thrilled to be working anywhere outside the classroom, borrowing a few seasoned musicians from artists that Dan helped along the way, including rapper CeeLo Green as Troublegum, whose hilarity is only surpassed by a surprising humanity in his character.  The street locations elevate the film into rare territory, becoming an impressionistic tribute to New York itself which is impressively rhapsodized in music, much like Woody Allen’s MANHATTAN (1979), saturating the screen in a sumptuous glow of romanticism, wondrously shared through a playlist of their favorite songs from their iPods, heightening the film with a rapturous feeling of love in the air.  Most of the music is written by Gregg Alexander of the New Radicals, though Glen Hansard also contributed the first song recorded in an alleyway called “Coming Up Roses,” Keira Knightley - Coming Up Roses (Begin Again ... - YouTub YouTube (3:14), where the sequence of song recordings come together like the mad crescendo of Busby Berkeley numbers in FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933).  This rush of energy is the appeal of the film, as the initially dour and awkwardly uninteresting characters suddenly surge with a newfound belief in themselves, where their electrical connection is felt throughout the entire cast, becoming wonderfully infectious.  Carney has a marvelous eye for small, unembellished moments, as Dan tries to reconnect with his family, especially his aloof daughter Violet, where there are poignant, beautifully written scenes of Greta and Violet with Dan tagging along where he doesn’t even have to say a word, which is only magnified later when they all come together in a Beatles rooftop LET IT BE (1970) moment that feels spontaneously alive.  The film captures the joyous spirit of personal discovery, and while it’s bathed in musical romanticism, the overriding power is this unique emotional candor that thrives on the revelatory experiences of life itself.