The Commitments

Film Notes

It’s an anniversary worth celebrating.  When it arrived back in 1991, The Commitments brought something new to music films. An edginess, something that pushed the proverbial boundaries, and with an irresistible exuberance and raw energy.

And Alan Parker’s story of “the world’s hardest working band” – aka a rag tag soul group from Dublin’s less affluent North Side – didn’t only go down well with cinema-goers.  The critics loved it as well, especially in this country, so much so that it won four BAFTAs, including Best Film.

For those who’ve not seen it, or need their memories refreshing, it’s based on Roddy Doyle’s book of the same name, about how would-be manager Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) pulls together a motley crew of a band.  It’s made up mainly of his friends, apart from bus conductor Deco Cuffe (Andrew Strong) who he hears singing at a wedding reception and trumpeter Joey “The Lips” Fagan (Johnny Murphy) who arrives on his moped, full of religious quotations and tales of working with the soul greats.  On the thinnest of shoestrings, they play several gigs, and they’re on the up, but Jimmy’s being chased for money and cracks between the members of the band are starting to show.

Doyle worked on the script as well, alongside the legendary double act of Dick Clement and Ian LeFrenais.  They were legends even in the 90s.  The result is rammed with great one verbal and visual one-liners.  The North Side of Dublin is chaotic, with kids vandalising derelict buildings and generally running riot.  Painted in large letters on a wall is the phrase “Caution.  Children At Play.”  Take it how you will.  The dialogue is just as sharp, overflowing with retorts and curses.  And there are times when 20/20 hindsight makes you feel you’re watching a forerunner of Father Ted.  A distant relative of Mrs Doyle is there, scraping away the melted candle wax in the church.  An elderly man, nodding off at the wedding reception is abruptly woken up by a child – and his reaction could come straight out of the mouth of Father Jack.  And when it looks like the band are going to get proper management, the record label involved is Eejit Records.  With Parker, no less, in a cameo as a sound engineer.

It doesn’t completely throw convention out of the window.  There’s all those unsuitable applicants knocking on Jimmy’s door, an idea repeated this year in Sing Street.  But what you remember most is that raw energy, not just when the band are singing but also in the performances of the young and, at the time, totally unknown cast.  Andrew Strong’s voice stands the test of time: in truth, his singing is better than his acting and his character is another convention, the beautiful voice belonging to somebody ugly.  There’s familiar faces as well.  Colm Meaney as Jimmy’s Dad, a devoted Elvis fan.  And Johnny Murphy’s memorable Joey “The Lips” who simultaneously galvanises the band and sows the seeds of its destruction.  Are all his stories true?  We and Jimmy doubt it.  Then it seems they might be.  As he rides his moped into the rainy night, we never really know for sure.

While viewing it in hindsight exposes the film’s reliance on conventions, it also demonstrates that time hasn’t dulled its energy.  The reputation of The Commitments lives on, both as a film and now also as a stage show.  If you’ve never seen it before, then you should.  You’ll be swept along by the gags and music.  And if you remember it from the 90s, then just get all nostalgic and enjoy it all over again.

Jimmy Rabbitte is the mercurial force at the center of the group, holding it together, but the real star of the music in the movie is a large, shambling, unkempt young man named Deco Cuffe (Andrew Strong). After Rabbitte has disappointing luck at a series of auditions for his new band (there’s a funny montage showing the would-be talent knocking at his door), he finds Deco at a wedding party, where he picks up the microphone and begins to sing while the band is on break.

Strong’s discovery in real life was scarcely less of a happy chance: He is the 16-year-old son of a Dublin singer that Parker was using to rehearse with, and when the father grew hoarse, the son stepped in, and Parker cast him on the spot. He’s one of those oversize, big-voiced natural talents, with the look of Meat Loaf and the verbal style of Joe Cocker, and he gives the music in the movie a driving energy.

Meanwhile, backstage stories multiply. The oldest member of the group is Joey Fagan (Johnny Murphy), who claims to have toured America with all of the greats, from Wilson Pickett to Little Richard, and he is indeed an accomplished session musician. But he is even more accomplished at sessions between the sheets, and with great smoothness and subtlety he makes his way through all three women who sing backup for the band. Parker has fun letting that level of the story sort of happen in the background; like Robert Altman, he is able to capture the spontaneous nature of real life by letting several stories unfold at the same time.

“The Commitments” is so much fun that maybe it’s unfair of me to expect anything more. But I was rather disappointed that the movie seemed to dissipate toward the end. The band is created with great conviction, we feel we really know several of its members, and then Parker seems to choose music over story, as the band members quarrel offstage but spend most of their time onstage, playing.

Could there have been something more? Parker never promises us a profound human drama here, and the band is so good that maybe music was the best way to go. But I was left with sort of an empty feeling, as if after the characters were developed into believable people, Parker couldn’t find anywhere to go with them. As film, this is not one of the major works by the man who directed “Midnight Express,” “Birdy,” “Shoot the Moon” and “Mississippi Burning.” But as music and human comedy, it works just fine.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, August 16, 1991