Movies

Ladies and gentlemen ... The Commitments.

The Commitments

Released: 1991

Genre: Comedy

Synopsis: They’re out of work. They live in Dublin’s working-class Northside neighborhood. They have negligible musical ability. And they’re Irish, of course. Naturally, they want to start an American-style Motown band, complete with Funk Brothers horn section and babelicious backup singers.

Initially, this loopy premise made sense only in the mind of author Roddy Doyle, who self-published his rollicking book “The Commitments” in 1987. In very short order, the idea went on to make sense to Doyle’s wildly enthusiastic audience.

Of course, to Doyle’s creation Jimmy Rabbitte, Jr.—the young, charismatic manager of The Commitments—it made perfect sense that a group of Dubs would want to play American soul music. After all, as Jimmy put it in his irresistable recruiting pitch to potential band members: “The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I’m black and I’m proud.”

The lads (and the trio of “young wans” recruited to provide backup vocals and occasionally flash some leg) turn out to be blessed with talent. Guided by an old fella—horn player Joey “the Lips” Fagin, who claims to have backed up James Brown and most of the Motown masters—they live up to Jimmy’s expectations and quickly become Dublin’s “Saviours of Soul.” They’re a huge hit.

They are also disastrously dysfunctional.

Joey the Lips—a 40-ish, goggle-eyed, Jesus freak with a scraggly pony tail and bad teeth, and who still lives with his mother—quickly and unexpectedly claims the title of the band’s rakish Paddy. One by one, he woos the girls, sowing the seeds of jealousy and leaving the boys to puzzle over his mysterious appeal. But the source of most of the friction within the band is the lead singer Deco, who is blessed with a the perfect white soul voice—like a young Joe Cocker—and cursed with a toxic personality. Everyone in the band hates him—drummer Billy “The Animal” Mooney, most of all. Billy, who has already done time for assault, promises to kill him. (That is, when he’s not promising to assault Deco with a drumstick in a way that requires Vaseline.) For his part, Deco alternately hits on the girls in predictably seamy ways and despises them any time they get the chance to step out of his shadow.

Through it all, Jimmy sees The Commitments as the “band of destiny.” Sure, but destined for what? Will they a.) land that contract with the fella Dave from Eejit Records? Or b.) will they implode first? (If you don’t want to know, skip the rest.)

Why it’s one of the best: First off, it’s not just me who says so. Back in 2005, the good people who make Jameson’s Irish Whiskey (you may all bow your heads), together with The Dubliner Magazine, named “The Commitments” the best Irish movie of all time, based on votes from more than 10,000 movie fans.

And 10,000 rabid movie-goers can’t be wrong.

Alan Parker manages to capture all the grit and poverty of Doyle’s Northside, while at the same time revealing the brutal, profane honesty and desperate passion of the kids who form the band. He draws perfect, spot-on performances from his cast of unknowns.

And the music—well, The Commitments aren’t exactly the Funk Brothers, but they’ll do nicely in a pinch. What they lack in experience, they more than make up for in enthusiasm. These kids rock.

And, although The Commitments fall apart in spectacular fashion at the end, it’s hard to feel too disappointed. Because, regardless of the outcome, The Commitments is about the power of hope.

Jimmy Rabbitte, predictably, is crushed and angry when his dreams for The Commitments evaporate along with the band. But Joey the Lips sets him straight:

“You’re missin’ the point. The success of the band was irrelevant—you raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons. Sure, we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way, it’s poetry.”

And it is.

P.S. for Parents: Massive F-bomb alert.

Visit “reel” Ireland starting on March 27 when the Irish Center, in cooperation with www.irishphiladelphia.com and WTMR radio host Marianne McDonald, presents a series of your favorite Irish films every Thursday night for six weeks.

The series, which will be shown at the Commodore Barry Club, Carpenter and Emlen Streets in Philadelphia, will open with the romantic comedy,The Boys and Girl from County Clare. The 2003 film from director John Irivn is the story of feuding brothers (Colm Meany and Bernard Hill) whose respective ceili bands go head-to-head at the All-Ireland music competition. Andrea Corr (of the Corrs) gives an outstanding performance as a young fiddler on whose questionable parentage the plot centers.

A discussion and a music session will follow the film, led by local musician Fintan Malone, a native of Miltown Malbay, County Clare, where the annual Willie Clancy Festival of traditional music is held every year, much of the action at his family’s pub, Tom Malone’s. Musicians are encouraged to bring their instruments.
Admission to the performances, which start at 7:30 PM, is free. Refreshments, including alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, and Barry Club Manager John Nolan’s famous fries (also known as Irish popcorn) will be available for sale.

Other films in the series will include:
April 3: The Secret of Roan Inish
April 10: Butcher Boy
April 17: The Snapper
April 24: Bloody Sunday
May 1:My Left Foot

By Marianne MacDonald

The Butcher Boy

Released: 1997

Genre: Dark Comedy

Synopsis: “The Butcher Boy” is Neil Jordan’s adaptation of the shocking, award-winning novel by author Patrick McCabe. That book shook the modern Irish literary world on its publication in 1992.

I had read the book before seeing the movie, so I had some trepidation. I wondered whether the movie would accurately portray the vividly portrayed characters of McCabe’s novel. Never fear … the movie successfully captured, in rich detail, young Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens), his Da (Stephen Rea at his usual brilliant best) and his Ma (Aisling Sullivan).

Set in the uneasy early ’60s at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the story depicts an Ireland quite unlike the Ireland of thatched cottages, peat bogs and fiddlers by the fireside.

Young Francie was a typical pre-teen lad bent on playing cops & robbers with his pal Joe, and tormenting the life out of prissy Philip Nugent and his mother, played with chilling acumen by Fiona Shaw. As the plot unwinds, we learn of the deadly illnesses inflicting Francie’s parents. Ma is a certifiable loon, listening to the song of the day, “The Butcher Boy,” over and over again, as she swings from manic bouts of baking to despairing depths of depression. Da is a washed-up musician suffering from the alcoholism all too common among Irish men. The best parts of their lives already seem to have passed them by.

Eventually tragedy strikes the Brady family and Francie begins his own descent into a life of violence and madness as he tries to make sense of what is totally senseless. He loses all that he loved, and so he comes to see the world as his enemy—and rightfully so. From the righteous prigs of the town who look down on Francie and his Da, to the pedophiliac priests, to the horrors of the mental hospital to which he is eventually consigned, Francie inspires in the viewer a righteous anger at a world too ready to dismiss the child as “evil, wicked and no better than a pig.” When Francie returns to the town that turned away from him, we find his escalating sense of anger and overwhelming need for revenge strangely comprehensible.

Why it’s one of the best: Watching “The Butcher Boy” is a bit liking watching an accident as it happens, but it is still an unforgettable film. I saw it first in the movies and then rented it to watch at home. I caught it on cable a few years later. I found myself telling friends about it. The movie shows a side of Ireland (and indeed, it could be small-town America as well) that Bord Failte would sooner you never saw, or were even aware of. As difficult as it is to witness Francie’s loss of innocence, there are memorable moments. For example, Sinead O’Connor turns up in an hysterical portrayal of the Virgin Mary, and veteran actors Brendan Gleason and Milo O’Shea portray pedophiliac priests in the boys’ home where Francie is sent.

There is surely a lesson to be learned from this film. Is the message that all children are a product of their environment, that it takes a village to raise or damn a child or that childhood is either hell or heaven? That’s up to the viewer to decide. What is certain, though, is this: Once you’ve seen the film “The Butcher Boy” you will remember the horrors that can be visited upon the young, whether here in the U.S., in “idyllic” small-town Ireland or in any corner of the globe.

Disclaimer: This film is rated R for profanity/violence/adult situations and is not for the faint of heart.

Marianne MacDonald is host of “Come West Along the Road,” broadcast Sundays at noon on WTMR-AM (800 AM), with archived shows available on the Web.

Waking Ned Devine

Released: 1998

Genre: Comedy

Synopsis: Ned Devine, a bachelor farmer in the Irish town of Tullymore, wins the Irish National Lottery. His unbelievable luck is revealed to him one night as he sits in front of the telly, watching the numbered balls roll into place.

He’s thrilled. He’s shocked.

And, in moments, he’s dead.

Before long, word gets out that someone in the village has won the big prize—6.9 million pounds—but who is it? Ned’s not talking.

One of the elders of the village, Jackie O’Shea (Ian Bannen), sets about trying to find out. He enlists the aid of his wife Annie (the stunning Fionnula Flanagan) and his old chum Michael O’Sullivan (the diminutive David Kelly). In a campaign as cunning and subtle as the invasion of Poland (substitute a chicken dinner for the Stuka dive bombers) Jackie eventually rules out everyone in the village—everyone except one man.

Jackie and Michael go to visit Ned at his cottage—and there they discover the terrible truth. They find Ned in his comfy chair in front of the set, a smile frozen on his face, the winning ticket on the floor.

For a while, all seems lost. But then Jackie manages to convince himself that Ned would have wanted his two good friends in the village to share in his good fortune. He hatches a plot to persuade the lottery authorities that his pliant pal Michael is, in fact, the winner Ned Devine—but things rapidly spin out of control and, before long, the whole town is in on the action.

Will they be able to fool the lottery agent who comes to town in search of the winner? Will they persuade the town’s cantankerous, back-stabbing biddy to join the conspiracy—or will she turn them all in for the reward money?

Why It’s One of the Best: Written and directed by Kirk Jones, “Waking Ned” was one of the last films of veteran Scottish actor Ian Bannen. He died in 1999 in a traffic accident, just a year after this film was released. Let’s just say he saved his best for last. In the role of the conniving charmer Jackie O’Shea, Bannen is utterly convincing.

Then again, everyone in this fictional town seems real, from the grasping Lizzie Quinn (Eileen Dromey) to the tender-hearted but malodorous hog farmer “Pig” Finn (James Nesbitt, seen in “Bloody Sunday,” the first film we reviewed in this series). In a film that spans just an hour and a half, we somehow come to know everyone. It feels like we’ve always known them. Then again, if you grew up in a small town, as I did, then you probably have always known them.

Ultimately, “Ned Devine” is a charming confection of a film about friendship and the loving kindnesses of neighbors. It’s about the secrets we all know about each other, good and bad. It’s about community.

It’s also about lottery fraud, too, of course. Ah, but what harm is there in a bit of fraud among friends and neighbors? In the end, you’ll believe, as Jackie does, that Ned would have wanted it that way. So let’s all raise a glass to Ned Devine. And good night and joy be with you all.

Bloody Sunday

Released: 2002

Genre: Drama

Synopsis: A brilliant—though, at times, painful to watch—dramatization of the January 30, 1972, civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland, led by activist-politician Ivan Cooper. The march began peacefully, but it ended in a hail of gunfire. In just 10 minutes, 14 civilians lay dead in the streets, shot by members of the 1st Battalion of the British Parachute Regiment; 12 others were wounded. Two more were struck down by British armored personnel carriers. (And the official whitewash virtually on the spot.)

Why it’s one of the best: Written and directed by the innovative filmmaker Paul Greengrass, “Bloody Sunday” is shot in a documentary style, with handheld cameras. It’s all blur and herky-jerky motion, like Vietnam battle footage.

The technique yields a film of compelling immediacy. We feel as if we are all on hand in the Bogside on that awful day, marching alongside Cooper, Bernadette Devlin, Father Edward Daly—and young protestor Gerald Donaghy, who, with so many others, took a fateful wrong turn on a day when the British troops assigned merely to stop the illegal march turned instead, all too easily, to indiscriminate slaughter.

Donaghy died that day, shot in the belly.

Two performances are particularly noteworthy. The Northern Ireland (Coleraine) actor James Nesbitt—if you watch BBC America, you may know him as Murphy of “Murphy’s Law”—turns in the finest performance of his career as Ivan Cooper. Cooper was then a member of the Northern Ireland Parliament who led the ill-fated march.

The film turns on Cooper’s actions on that day—from the morning, when he and others still dared to hope that they might be allowed to march in peace, to the news conference in the aftermath of the massacre in which he warned the British government that its actions had “given the IRA the biggest victory it will ever have. All over this city tonight, young men, boys, will be joining the IRA, and you will reap a whirlwind.” Watch Nesbitt’s face as the names of the dead are read out. You’ll see why he just might be Ireland’s best actor.

The veteran British actor Tim Pigott-Smith plays the cold, pitiless Major General Robert Ford, the British Army’s most senior officer in Derry on the day the Paras ran rampant. He played a similar character, in a way, in the BBC mini-series “The Jewel in the Crown,” about the last days of the British Raj. Pigott-Smith masterfully portrays that odd combination of bloodlessness and bloody-mindedness characteristic of so many British military men, particularly in colonial settings.

As I say, “Bloody Sunday” is not easy going. But if you want to understand and appreciate the history of Northern Ireland and the “Troubles,” this film is indispensible.

The Snapper

Released: 1993

Genre: Comedy

Synopsis: This is a story about babies, alcohol, and the connection between the two.

“The Snapper” is based on the second installment of Roddy Doyle’s Barrytown trilogy. (We’ve already talked about the first movie: “The Commitments.” The third, “The Van,” has its moments and, although accomplished, ultimately collapses under its own weight.)

For my money, “The Snapper”—that’s the Dublin slang term for “baby”—is the best of Doyle’s three stories. It documents the trying but ultimately triumphant pregnancy of Sharon Rabbitte (Sharon Corley, in the film). The central question is: “Who’s the Da?” (Or, as the residents of Doyle’s fictional Barrytown might put it: “Who’re yis havin’ it for?”)

The prime suspect is revealed to readers early on—but to Sharon’s family and friends, his identity is veiled in mystery. (Was it really, as Sharon coyly suggests, a Spanish sailor?) Sharon was flying high at the moment of conception, but she was just barely sober enough to remember who did the deed. And it was no Spanish sailor.

Of course, a secret like this one is too big and embarrassing to keep. It’s only after Sharon’s father, the irascible Jimmy, gets wind of a bit of barroom braggadoccio—Sharon, evidently, being reported as “a great little ride”—that the answer is revealed to all of Barrytown. And, as they say in the movies, hilarity ensues.

Why it’s one of the best: First, it’s a Roddy Doyle story. It would be hard to make a better start. All the characters are engaging. Even minor characters, like Jimmy’s pals, the barflies Bertie and Bimbo, are fully realized. At the center of it all is the relationship between Jimmy and Sharon. Let’s just say it’s complicated, but it is clear that this daddy-daughter bond is unbreakable—even when Sharon’s great secret is revealed, to Jimmy’s everlasting horror.

The dialogue, as is always the case with a Roddy Doyle yarn, is spot on. It’s salty, peppery, and any other kind of spicy seasoning you care to add. Most of what turns up in the book survives, mostly intact, in Doyle’s screenplay.

The cast is first-rate. The ubiquitous Colm Meaney plays Jimmy; the role of Sharon is played by Tina Kellegher, who would go on to play the part of Niamh Egan in the BBC Northern Ireland series Ballykissangel. The brilliant Ruth McCabe plays Jimmy’s long-suffering spouse Kay. All of the kids—and there are many—are well cast.

But of course, the story revolves around Sharon, and Kelleher shows herself more than equal to the task of slipping into Sharon’s skin. She’s a tough kid, this Sharon, and she accepts her fate with grace and ballsy good humor. She has moments of doubt—but doubt, so often described as “nagging,” never really gains a foothold here.

Finally, there is the masterful direction of Stephen Frears (“The Queen,” “Dangerous Liaisons,” “My Beautiful Launderette”) who mostly tries not to get in the way of great material and talented actors. Frears keeps the whole enterprise moving along at a fast clip, and he never descends into gross Hollywood sentimentality.

Oh yes … and you’ll love the theme music in the opening and closing credits. Elvis, wherever you are (and I’m pretty sure I saw him working in one of the toll booths at the Ben Franklin Bridge), eat your heart out.