THE SAFEST SPACE FOR MY UNSOLICITED OPINIONS

A simply heartwarming coming of age film at its best, containing newcomers playing a relevant teenage drama story and having 1980s Dublin as the background, Sing Street is beautifully made by John Carney. A proof that a musical film is not dead. Yes, it’s absolutely not, particularly when Carney works for it. He’s one of my favourite directors, and my most favourite one when it comes to this kind of genre. From Once, Begin Again and now Sing Street.

This movie is about the life of Conor Lalor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelor) who gets tangled between his family’s economic crisis and the rumoured affair his mother is currently having. Hence, he moves to a rough Irish Catholic all-boys state school at Synge Street. There he meets a bully (Ian Kenny) and gains special attention from the strict school principal Brother Baxter (Don Wycherley) who thinks of him as a regulation breaker for not using brown shoes. In fact, Conor just can’t afford to buy a pair.

He also meets an aspiring beautiful young model, Raphina (Lucy Boynton). This encounter makes Conor and his outcast schoolmate, Darren (Ben Carolan), decide to gather other local musician youngsters to make a real band: Eamon (Mark McKenna), Ngig (Percy Chamburuka), Larry (Conor Hamilton) and Garry (Karl Rice). Together they make originals which I’ve put already on my Spotify playlist: Up, To Find You, The Riddle of The Model.

As the story goes,  I’m personally touched by the warmth of the bond between Conor and his older brother Brendan (Jack Reynor, everybody!), the one who mentors and encourages him to chase a better future through music. It kind of breaks me to learn Brendan’s story for he too once dreamed of being a musician, a college dropout music buff who idolizes Duran Duran. “No woman can truly love a man who listens to Phil Collins”, he warns. I love Brendan, but I have to disagree with that, uhuh.

This movie is a mixture of perfectly crafted script, well performances, infectious music and amusing humor that shows the tenderness of young romance melancholy without any sex or nudity. Just that type of love. The innocent side of having a crush with someone that each of us might have experienced.

Carney puts the issue of how Irish young people at that time see United Kingdom as a land of future hope, which I find very relatable with Conor and Raphina’s perspective.  I reckon you will love this, a musical film that strikes the right note, even though you didn’t grow up in the 1980s or never lived in the country.