Sing Street

Yes, I know that Sing Street has already had its theatrical run, but considering the fact that it's now available on pretty much all digital streaming platforms as well as DVD and Blu-ray, I figured I had to write a review of it as it is without question the best movie I have seen in 2016 so far (and that says a lot, considering how much I loved Nuts! and Life, Animated, among others).

Throughout my life, I have always seen music as having the power to allow people to connect with each other and to communicate messages more than simple words can. I often turn to classic rock acts like Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, and U2 as being artists who allow their words and melodies to carry stories and messages of hope and, in some cases, sociopolitical commentary that give their listeners greater insight into the world around them. Even some modern pop artists like Taylor Swift and the up-and-coming indie pop band Echosmith are using stories and meaningful lyrics to communicate with their listeners. Either way, music has been a big part of my life and a huge part of what's shaped the way I see the world (along with film, obviously, and theatre). And I don't think any filmmaker has quite captured the power of music as well as John Carney has in the few movies that he's done. As much as I absolutely loved Once (I haven't seen Begin Again yet but I intend to very soon), this film hit me on an emotional level unlike any other film I saw in the first half of 2016 and it reminded me of why I'm going into film as a career.

Set in 1985 in inner-city Dublin, a young boy named Conor Lalor is just starting his freshman year at a conservative prep school known as Synge Street CBS. After the first couple of days are complete hell, by the third day he meets a teenaged orphan girl named Raphina who lives across the street in a home for other orphan girls. Instantly infatuated with her, he tries to impress her by falsely saying that he's in a band and they need a girl to play a model for their new music video. After she agrees to it, he tells his new friend Darren that they need to immediately go and form a band. Putting together a ragtag team of amateur musicians from the school, they start out rough but eventually turn out to be quite good, drawing influences from numerous MTV bands at the time such as Duran Duran and The Cure, all as a part of forming their own style and (of course) impressing the girl. 

What an incredible film this is. And when I use the word "incredible," I don't necessarily mean in terms of deep hidden meaning and subtext and symbolism or anything worthy of film scholars. I mean simply in terms of the sheer joy that eminates from every frame and every performance and every line of dialogue in this movie. I wasn't even born in 1985. Heck, I've never set one foot in the country of Ireland. But after viewing this film months ago, I felt like I knew this era and this world like the back of my hand. I felt like I knew Conor and Raphina and Conor's co-songwriter Eamon (who's kind of the Lennon to Conor's McCartney) as if I had been friends with them my whole life, and I wanted to see those characters again and hang out with them long after the film ended. Lucy Boynton (having seen her in this and The Blackcoat's Daughter within a short timespan) is one of my favorite newcomer actresses of the past several years and she dazzles in this film, as do Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as Conor, Mark McKenna as Eamon, and Jack Reynor as Conor's brother Brandon (who's perhaps this film's equivalent to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lestor Bangs in Almost Famous).

But perhaps the part of the film that struck me the deepest is its emphasis on "happy-sad." It stems from a brilliant conversation with Conor and Raphina when he's depressed about how crappy his home life and school life have become and how it's resulted in him writing sad songs, but Raphina tells him that his problem is that "he's not happy being sad," and that love by nature is "happy-sad." He quickly begins to channel that into his art, writing various "happy-sad" songs with a forward-thinking "futurist" mindset (even his piano ballad about being "friend-zoned" by Raphina, "To Find You," has glimmers of happiness and hope). This was a huge awakening for me personally as a creative writer and also in my outlook on love in general, because in reality, nothing is ever "all happy" or "all sad". The rush that I get when I have intense love-like feelings for a girl is happy, but then the blow when I realize she just wants to be friends is sad. The highs of a first date and a first kiss with a girl are happy, but the pains of the break-up phone call are sad. I've already begun to channel this into my writing, as hard as it is not to paint things as "all happy" or "all sad" depending on how I'm feeling at that moment. 

I absolutely adored every frame of this film, and I walked out of the theatre feeling the best that I've felt after a movie since Brooklyn last November (yet another Irish film). John Carney has crafted a masterpiece of a music-based script unlike any since Once while channeling the best things about School of Rock and Almost Famous into it as well. Now that it's widely available on video, everybody reading these words right now who didn't get a chance to see this film in the theatre should rent it immediately. If you're not impressed by your summer theatrical options now, stay home and watch Sing Street. Well-made feel-good movies like this don't come around very often anymore, and this is not only the best of 2016 so far, but it's one of the best movies I have seen in at least the last five years, with a soundtrack that I listened to for a long time afterward. It's a masterpiece of music-based filmmaking and filmmaking in general.