Sing Street (2016): Favourite Films Series

Sing Street (2016): Favourite Films Series

Why do we love movies? I’m not sure it’s possible to fully explore every answer to that question. For myself, I have many reasons, but one of them is being moved emotionally. For all the action-packed-sci-fi-superhero-horror-fuelled-special-effects-extravaganzas I love watching on a regular basis, I also love getting so wrapped up in the story and characters and conflict, I forget what I’m watching isn’t real. This doesn’t happen very often anymore—after seeing as many movies as I have, and making my own, knowing how it works to bring something to the screen, I find it difficult to fully suspend my disbelief. By extension, most of my favourite films are not that recent. I’ve seen plenty of movies in the past ten years that I truly enjoyed and talked about and continue to watch again and again, but looking back, only one has been able to take root in my mind and become something special and endlessly re-watchable. 

 

What is Sing Street about? A fair question, since it remains surprisingly low key and underrated, despite being championed by those who have seen it. I don’t want to go too in-depth; plot summaries are never that interesting at the best of times, and I think the tagline says it all: “Boy Meets Girl, Girl Unimpressed, Boy Starts Band.” That’s really all you need to know, but here’s a little more. Conor loves music, in big part thanks to his older brother Brandon, and when Conor is transferred to a new school, he meets an attractive young girl named Raphina who doesn’t go to school because she’s a self-proclaimed model, and is going to get out of Dublin and make it big one day. Well, Conor plans to make it big one day, too, and he may have started up the band just to win her over initially, but it evolves into more than just some kids getting together to play music. Friendships develop, such as Conor and Eamon, who write original songs together, and the whole group rises up despite the oppression of the principal, Brother Baxter, and their dysfunctional parents.

Sing Street has the elements of a typical American high school comedy-drama, but it avoids cliché by being about kids who feel like real kids. The core group is made up of unique personalities with notable traits, even though some of them don't actually get that much screen time or character development. There’s Barry, the typical bully character that antagonizes Conor, but even he is more interesting and better developed than the stereotypical version usually featured in this setting. The kids are just a talented group, all very likable, and I can’t imagine how anyone couldn’t be compelled watching them grow both as musicians and as characters. The casting is unique and perfect. 

Here’s my own personal history with Sing Street. I’d heard it was a coming-of-age-music-filled story set in 1980’s Ireland and that it was really good. That was it. I watched it on Netflix on New Year’s Eve 2016, when I was in a transitionary period of my life (as well as down with a particularly nasty flu bug) and I was completely enraptured with it from beginning to end. The characters, the story, the music, and the emotions stayed with me. I watched it again two months later…and twice more in that same month. And again in the summer. And again at New Years in 2017. By that point, it had become cemented not only as a go-to feel-good empowerment film for me, but something more than that. I developed a deeper personal connection with Sing Street that will never be severed. It’s a combination of having come at a pivotal point in my life, but also in just capturing lightning in a bottle (to unintentionally quote a lyric from “Riddle of the Model”) in a way that spoke to me. 

 

An integral part of why Sing Street works so well and is so memorable is the soundtrack. Sometimes you get an OK movie with a great soundtrack, but rarely are the two so inseparable. Something I love is how the band starts off genuinely sounding bad. They don’t come out and nail a perfect cover of “Rio” by Duran Duran, they butcher the song, and then their first original song/music video “Riddle of the Model” ends up being the absolute perfect balance of corny beginner-level quality and good-sounding talented original music. They only go up from there, and by the end, you’ll feel like you are witnessing the birth of a new musical icon at that school dance. 

 

You know when a movie uses a really great song, but only has a little bit of it play then cuts the track short? I hate that. When I first saw Sing Street and the iconic “Drive It Like You Stole It” began, I was so worried it would cut away at any second, because the song kept getting better and better as it went on, but lo and behold, the entire track plays from beginning to end, in what ends up being the centerpiece of the film: an imagined sequence where Conor has some students dance for his video while they play “Drive It Like You Stole It” and it morphs into a fantasy. We see what Conor wants the video to really look like. Everyone dressed up, the gym decorated like a classic school dance, everyone he wants to have there shows up, and it’s just such a fist-pumping feel-good scene that you don’t want it to end.

 

I found something unique about Sing Street in its re-watchability. The first time I watched it, I found the songs really enjoyable, but then when I watched it again after I was more familiar with the songs, I found the scenes where you witness them actually create the music and lyrics and sounds and beats really stand out more. Maybe because I’m a creative person and I enjoy paying witness to the creation of art, but certain moments just stand out more the second (and third, forth, fifth, etc.) time around. The evolution of “Riddle of the Model” from Eamon’s first demonstration of what he was thinking for the guitar to the eventual song they record is completely captivating. Similarly, I love when Brandon plays the Hall & Oates track “Maneater” on the record player for Conor and his sister while his parents are fighting in the other room, then not long after, we see the band practicing in Eamon’s living room and we hear the beginning beat of “Drive It Like You Stole It” when they first start to play, which is recognizably similar.

 

So, with fantastic music, believable, relatable characters, plus quotable, meaningful dialogue (this exchange gets me every time: Conor: “Can you really not swim?” Raphina: “Nope.” Conor: “So why’d you do that, then?” Raphina: “For our art, Cosmo. You can never do anything by half. Do you understand that?”), and pacing that is so perfect I never notice the time passing when I watch it, there’s not much more I can say about Sing Street other than I recommend it to everyone and anyone. It might not hit home for you as much as it did for me—in fact, I’d say it’s unlikely to, but I have yet to hear anyone say they didn’t like it, or it didn’t at least make them feel good.   

 

“This is your life, you can go anywhere
You gotta grab the wheel and own it and drive it like you stole it”