Musical Mondays: Sing Street

      Sing Street was released in 2016. It is directed by John Carney and stars Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, and Jack Reynor. In it Conor (Walsh-Peelo), a boy growing up in Dublin in the '80s, escapes his strained family life by starting a band to impress Raphina (Bynton), the girl he's attracted to.

     Sing Street is loosely based on Carney's own experiences growing up in Dublin. The director formed a band in his teenage year while attending Synge Street CBS High School. This helped him to deal with bullies, won him some semblance of approval from his parents and teachers and allowed him to date the girl he liked. Like most teen romances, this movie is filled with a lot of angst but its also, occasionally, a little corny, which isn't a bad thing. It reminds me of Richard Linklater's School of Rock but feels a lot more honest and down to earth then that film did.

    The cast all have great chemistry, particularly Ferdia Walsh-Peelo and Lucy Boynton. The performances are very naturalistic and the dialogue often has an awkward quality that it might in real life, especially during the romantic bits. The music is quite good and I appreciate how the songs get gradually more and more sophisticated as Conor matures and gains more experience musically. This parallels his emotional growth, as he learns to better cope with home and school.

     Though Conor's attraction to Raphina drives the films plot, his relationship with his older brother Brendan (Reynor) is really at the heart of the story. Brendan was successful in his youth. He was a good athlete, could play the guitar and he was popular with girls. But then he dropped out of college and became addicted to pot. He sees a lot of himself in Conor and wants to keep him from making the same kinds of mistakes. He tries to help him navigate the stressful environment at school and at home and he sparks Conor's interest in music. It seems clear watching this film that John Carney's older brother must have had a profound influence on him. In the closing titles there is a dedication: "For brothers everywhere."

     There are some plot elements that, as a Catholic viewer, I found morally questionable. Between Brother Baxter's physical abuse of and implied sexual interest in Conor and his parents loveless marriage, the film has some anti-Catholic vibes. It is important to keep in mind that Carney is drawing from his own personal experiences here. In an interview with Screen Crush he said, "There was a guy, Brother Byrne. I’m not even remotely scared of saying who he was because he was a vicious thug and I couldn’t care if he sues me. It was based on him." So these elements, though they might come across as harsh, come from a place of truth. They are also off-set by the films positive portrayal of the relationship between Conor and Brendan and also its inclusion of a redemptive arc for the school bully Barry (Ian Kenny). On a less moralistic note I have mixed feelings about the film's ending, which plays like a piece of fantasy/wish fulfillment but at the same time feels a little foreboding and ambiguous.

     Despite some of my reservations I think that Sing Street is really good. It's a deeply personal film that manages to find light amidst some rather bleak circumstances and it speaks to the power of music and artistic expression as a positive means of catharsis.

Score: 8.5/10