The Commitments (1991)

Must have overdrawn on my blogger or something; it wouldn't let me embed this. I apologise for the subtitles.

The Commitments was directed by Alan Parker, also of Angela's Ashes, Pink Floyd: the Wall, Midnight Express and Bugsy Malone... essentially the most eclectic director of probably all time. The story is terrifically original, the music true to form, the characters rich and, yes, deeply committed to both their talent and their shortcomings. It's a film about how and why truly amazing things put together by multiple extremely talented people mysteriously, from the outside, fall apart.

Dublin in 1991, where the film takes place, was disasterously marked by unemployment, emigration, cramped housing and the pervasive feeling of decay and moral collapse. For those who have tried to be musicians, who have struggled with getting gigs, band members, doubt, a hope for fame and endless bloody frustration, this film was made. I'm frankly surprised by the number of working musicians who haven't seen this.

Most any review of the film would give a breakdown of the story and plot, and then talk about the music. The soundtrack is, frankly, a brilliant mix of utterly familiar soul music that does not need to be catalogued or talked about. The music itself is not the film. The film is ego, money, time, exhaustion and hopelessness grinding until it gives. In a very distant sense it reflects the struggle of black musicians in the sixties struggling to break out of their ghetto, where they created the music that paints the backdrop of this film. But this is not Detroit in 1965. This is Dublin.

What deserves note is that it's wonderfully, drily, unexpectedly eccentric and funny. All of it's played perfectly straight from beginning to end, which is why the comedy works. There are no comedic talents here — though Colm Meaney has always had good timing. What's here is comedy born of dire earnestness, superbly situational, absurd and fully not self-aware. I've seen the film at least a dozen times and still, which I watched this yesterday, I could not stop laughing or smiling.

It remains a little odd that in a film about a band, a member of the Celtic music group The Corrs is in the film, and she doesn't sing.