Les Commitments

The first time I saw "The Commitments" I got surprised because it doesn't seem to be a Hollywood-like movie (talking about money) but it's a great example of good script and great performance of the actors/singers. When you see the movie, it seems to be a real-life-documentary.

The music is great! And the best of all is that some of The Commitments' members really play and sing... I recommend to buy the soundtrack (Vols. 1 & 2) if you really are a fan of soul-music. You're gonna love it!

Really... it's one of the best movies that I've seen! It's a movie made with the Soul!

The Commiments holds a very unique place in Irish modern movie history. For a start you have to understand that the Dublin that the film was shot in was incredibly bleak in the early '90's. Unemployemt was huge, money was scarce etc. When the film opened in Dublin it was a genuine phenomenon. The biggest cinema in Dublin (The Savoy) showed the picture around the clock on it's opening weekend and it played to pretty much full houses at all shows. I watched, for the 4th time, with a crowd of approx 500 at 6.00am on Sunday and the atmosphere was electric. This was a film we could relate to, it was about us and where we lived. Suffice to say it was a monster hit in Ireland at the time. I was working in the cinema business at the time (managing UCI) and I was lucky enough to be at the premiere. When the cast were introduced one by one the roof lifted. I attended the party where The Commitments (all of them) played in a tiny club on the docks called The Waterfront and to say that was pretty special is an understatement. To this day I'm still friend with Dick Massey (Billy Mooney) and and from to time to time he will remissness about his time with the film. The Commitments only played live together three times, the Dublin premiere, the NY premiere the LA premiere. I saw then in their home town! While the movie is certainly flawed it is still a classic for it's time.

Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) is a small time hustler selling pirated tapes and T-shirts. Outspan Foster (Glen Hansard) and Derek Scully (Ken McCluskey) ask Jimmy to manage their wedding band. Jimmy declares that they need to be a hard working Soul band. He puts an ad in the papers and it's a parade of wrong music. His Elvis loving dad (Colm Meaney) doesn't get it. Sax playing Dean Fay (Félim Gormley) is the first brought into the band. Billy Mooney (Dick Massey) is the drummer. Jimmy gets Natalie Murphy (Maria Doyle Kennedy), Imelda Quirke (Angeline Ball) and Bernie McGloughlin (Bronagh Gallagher) as the backup singers. After watching a drunken Deco Cuffe (Andrew Strong) sing at the wedding, he gets him as the lead singer. Joey "The Lips" Fagan (Johnny Murphy) is the womanizing experienced trumpet player who comes up with their name "The Commitments". He hires the volatile Mickah Wallace (Dave Finnegan) as their security.

This is fun. It's great music. The cast is mostly musicians trying their hands at acting. Some of them would become quite interesting. It's based on the first of novelist Roddy Doyle's lower class Barrytown trilogy. It's heart warming and then sadly inevitable. The portrayal of the Irish lower class is one of loving profanity. The one word I would use is life. This movie is full of life. The movie could have ended with something predictable but this way it's poetry.

There's a reason why working-class areas are darlings for sport or music-themed 'Cinderella' films: when you come from a poor neighborhood, that's almost the only options you have. So there's a truth-to-life that Alan Parker effectively explored in "Fame" and that he transposed in the Northside of Dublin with a more cynical tone, less inclined to tell an inspirational underdog story à la "Fame", but tailor-made for the 90s.

"The Commitments" is adapted from Roddy Doyle's tale of an Irish band that invented 'Dublin soul' and it is indeed a boisterous, energetic, funny and vibrant ode to soul music, invigorated by the kind of youthful spontaneousness that works like a double-edged sword as sometimes what makes great bands can also undo them. Still, there's something inspirational in the central protagonist Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins): a man with a vision and a mission so incongruous it could actually work.

Jimmy worships soul for it's the music that best conveys the emotional turmoil of the average man... much more it's a genre that requires vocals, bassists, a chorus, trumpetists, saxophonists, drummers, it's a combination of collective forces rather than the clashes of egos that killed so many bands before. "The Commitments" will commit to their music and stick together, at least on the paper.

Jimmy insists on that with the same damn seriousness as the 'Blues Brothers' who feel like they're on a mission from God. And in the film's most infamous sequence where he shows James Brown as a model to measure up to, Felim Gormley (at the sax) asks him if they're not too 'white' for that and Jimmy's answer establishes that 'skin' is a matter of opinion, and what counts is how much of an outcast you feel in your own world. That line makes a subtle bridge with "Fame" and as Parker said: any poor kid from London or Detroit could identify with the Commitments.

That said, he didn't forget to provide that Irish texture with a fair share of folk music, a little Riverdance and accents that are literally written on subtitles: "bollix" and "eejit" are new words I entered in my vocabulary. He doesn't always dodge the clichés (there had to be a bar brawl) but Parker assembled a fine gallery of young lads and lasses from Ken McCluskey and Glen Hansard at the guitar to Andrew Strong as the singer whose success went up his pony-tailed head. The Commitmettes are Imelda (Angeline Ball) the pretty one with distracting skirts, Bronagh Gallagher as Bernie the mousy fish-and-ship vendor with the sweetest voice and there's Nathalie (Maria Doyle Kennedy) who has a crush on Jimmy. As for the drummers, the hot-temper issue turns into a running-gag almost as memorable as in "Spinal tap".

Speaking of which, there are times where I wondered if Parker was so transported by the rock music he let it roll toward "mockumentary" territory. I'm not sure the film needed this musical sequence full of comical snippets such as the band rehearsing in an abattoir, a bus, on the streets women were hanging their laundry, sometimes all you need is a simple line such as "I feel like Madonna" or the group training while Bernie is babysitting. The rawness is lost in these trailer-baity scenes while sometimes comedy is best taken on small doses: the confession scene where the priest corrects Steven (Michael Aherme) about the singer of "When a Man Loves a Woman" is one of the film's highlights, and it's funny as hell.

Speaking of priest, the most inspired casting is Joey the Lips (Johnny Murphy) who talks about soul like preaching a gospel, his smile is the vector of cohesion in the whole group, and he seems to have an endless list of name-dropping anecdotes and even one that include the idol of Jimmy's father (Colm Meaney) Elvis Presley whose portrait is hanged above the Pope's. It's very unlikely that he tells the truth but the point is that you don't have to be credible to build a band but be a band first and build credibility afterwards.

And the road to glory contains many many steps: from the failed auditions with door closing on wannabe Joan Baez or Boy George to getting the equipment and then the first gigs in local churches or pubs, the real challenge isn't to prevent an eventual power outage but to contain the anger and the egos of the band members who complain about the lack of wages, the tight schedules, the arrogance of Deco who acts like a prima donna or Joey who gets all the girls ... the musical interludes make us appreciate how talented they are and yet how unprofessionally they constantly behave backstage.

I concede the arguments get a little repetitive, the film insists too much on that point as if it was trying to warn us that this time Cinderella wouldn't find the Prince... and that the collective dream would crash under the reality of individuals. Anyway, I kept thinking of "The King of Comedy" with Rabbite trying to imagine an interview to a journalist which is exactly what people with dreams of glory have in mind and that reveals maybe his desire to form a group is to fulfill some narcissistic void. But still, it was nice while it lasted and paraphrasing Rupert Pumpkin, at least we know they will never be schmucks for a lifetime, they were kings for a night, and many other nights.

"The Commitments" is one of these films that had to exist, I can imagine Parker wanting to make that film, posting announcements on newspapers, auditioning, having to handle all these clashing egos as well and coming to the final product, the making of film echoes its own point, if the film about that band could be made, then the band could exist.... And always hand-in-hand with its fictional content, the film didn't even do well in the box-office, but you know as Joey the Lips said, even that was poetry.

This is the simple and captivating story of Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins, fantastic like the whole cast), a young guy who decides to form a soul band in Dublin, and all the amazing people who join him. They've got musical talent and big dreams, but is that enough to climb to the top (and stay there)?

Alan Parker has made some very diverse films ("Midnight Express", "Angel Heart", "Mississippi Burning", "Angela's Ashes") in his long career, but you can see that music is in his blood and one of his favourite themes ("Bugsy Malone", "Fame", "Pink Floyd The Wall", "Evita"). He orchestrates a mostly unknown cast (which includes a very young Glen Hansard, from the recent hit "Once") in a tale of hope, determination, and great music. The British have a great eye for the bittersweet side of life and misfits in general ("The Full Monty", "Little Voice", "Billy Elliot" are fine examples), often with music as an important factor in the background (coincidence? I don't think so!). "The Commitments" is a beautiful, cheerful film, as passionate and memorable as Cameron Crowe's masterpiece "Almost Famous", and certainly one of the best music films of all time. 10/10.