Happy St. Patrick's Day!
In continuing with my series, which I'm tentatively calling "Random Pop Culture Crap My Family Loves" I'm going to discuss today one of our most obscure (on this continent at least!) obsessions. The Irish film The Commitments.
The Commitments is the story of a bunch of young Dubliners who start a soul band that plays in some bars and changes their lives, but not by making them rock stars, just by giving them something to do, for however long they want it.
Come to think of it, there's a little bit of Jimmy Rabbitte (the band's manager) in myself, seeing as I started my theater group on kind of the same principle.
The music of The Commitments is what got me first, since I'd practically worn out the film's soundtrack years before I was allowed to see the movie. My brother and I clocked it once and the say the "F" word once every minute and a half, which is pretty amazing considering it's only about two hours long and at least forty minutes of that is singing, where there are no "F" words.
The movie is sharp funny, and very Irish. The nation's history is summed up in a quote by Jimmy, when one of the other band members question whether they've any right to sing soul:
"The Irish are the blacks of Europe, and Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northsiders are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once and say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud!"
Once, following that same logic my brother and I decided that we had every right to blues, because our family are farmers from Roscommon, so if Dublin is urban black America with soul, Roscommon is the Delta.
2 comments:
i NEED to see this movie.
ps - goin to the island of your people sometime in june. let me know if i should give ur regards to any place/person in particular :)
Depends on where you're going, but if you're in Dublin say hey to Joyce's grave for me! I was too young when I went to appreciate that particular awesomeness
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