Sing Street

John Carney drew a lot of attention when his small, very low-budget film Once made a splash at Sundance several years ago. It shot him to prominence, at least in the indie-film world and lead to his first bigger-budget movie, Begin Again, which brought with it some star power in Keira Knightly, Mark Ruffalo, and Adam Levine. Now in his third outing, Carney gets even better with the warm and fun film Sing Street. If you've ever wanted to bottle-up the essence of positive youthful possibility and fearlessness, mixed with mid-1980's music culture, then look no further.

Carney has made himself the resident expert of a certain subgenre of musical film using the possibility of music as a career to therapeutically tackle and trascend whatever difficult situations life throws at you. Music is sound-in-motion, and paired with the medium of film--or pictures-in-motion--has been an exciting combination since it was first conceived. Music videos, while becoming a distinct short-form art medium delivering pop culture at scale through MTV in the 80's, have always been a part of film since sound was incorporated in some way. While silent film had a different soundtrack every time it played depending on who your house organist was, that flexibility allowed it to be always changing. The moment sound was added to movies music came right along (The Jazz Singer, 1927). In fact, one of the most timeless movies of all time, Singin In The Rain, is about the story of sound and music in film. While true musicals are few and far between nowadays (La La Land just stole our hearts) music in film as both a storytelling tool and as a narrative subject has never been better.

Sing Street takes this to the limit with it's surprisingly moving storyline about a young man and woman in Ireland in the 80's. The economic crisis there is dire and families are suffering. Conor Lawlor, our protagonist, is forced to attend a lower-class school as his parents work through marital and financial troubles. What I love most about Conor is that even as a generally introverted character, he has bravado in the moments that count and through that he becomes an unexpected leader. When he sees a pretty girl on the stoop across from his new school he builds the courage to talk to her and then, in a moment of desperation, he lies that he has a band and that she'd be good in their new video. As he walks away after having successfully gotten her number he hastily whispers to his friend, "We need to form a band." He's good at making it up as he goes along in the fake it till you make it category.

The core of Conor's journey in the film is his relationships with the girl, Raphina, and his brother. In both of them he sees a level of experience and worldliness that he seeks after while both learn unexpected lessons from his less-cynical and free spirit. The relationship with his older brother, Brendan, is one of the sweetest and most encouraging parts of the movie. How Brendan chooses to assist Conor in freeing himself from the confines of their complicated home life is one of the greatly nuanced and mature aspects of the story. He helps Connor see his parents from a more adult point-of-view that both helps him appreciate their struggles and recognize their flaws. Brendan also tells him step by step what he needs to do if he's going to be successful in using music to get girls. He asks, "You want to have actual sexual intercourse, right?" Connor is confused, "Yeah. Wait, what?". "The girl, it's all about the girl, isn't it?" Brendan asks. Conor obviously hadn't quite fully considered his more innocent intentions. This is a pretty basic part of the older brother job description (and probably why I never had any luck in that area in high school, not having any brothers).

One of the continual joys of the film is the many ways creativity and song-writing become the choice Connor uses to deal with a situation. Whether he's anxious to impress a girl, angry at all the oppressive forces at school, stressed about his family situation, deliriously happy, or working through any other number of things, he uses music as a positive tool to process what he's feeling. And we benefit. Songwriting team Carney and Gary Clark channel the 80's feel but with a modern sensitivity that makes the original songs instantly lovable. After watching Sing Street I went right out and bought the soundtrack. While it includes several of the genuine 80's songs used throughout the movie from groups like Duran Duran and Motorhead, I skip over those and go straight for the originals. Carney prioritized casting actual musicians so the group of kids are more genuine in their performances. They sound great.

Within the film, the songwriting scenes are some of the most enjoyable to watch. There's the typical "get the band together" sequence where Conor and his new friend Mark round up all the musicians they know to create a ragtag group. Mark is the resident "real" musician and seems to know how to play every instrument under the sun. He becomes Conor's song-writing partner. By the end of the film you get excited every time Conor shows up at Mark's door to write a song. In a similar fashion to the scene in Begin Again where Mark Ruffalo's character envisions a full band accompanying Keira Knightley's solo acoustic performance, we'll see a time lapse of the writing of a song as you hear it with new band members joining in at key points as it develops. And combining Carney's own loves for both film and music, the music video sequences are especially joyful and hilariously cheesy.

While I've heard others disparage the ending of Sing Street, I don't know what they see. Without giving it away, the very final scenes, accompanied by a great song sung by Adam Levine (and co-written by Levin, Carney, and Once's Glen Hansard), it captures symbolically the hope and uncertainty of youth and someone determined to give his dream a chance when the odds are slim. It is the emotional climax, well-earned from the depth of relationships and struggle that Conor experiences throughout the film's story centered on both romantic and brotherly love.

Streaming now on Netflix

Eye In The Sky

A modern take on the 12 Angry Men concept but as a thriller, Eye In The Sky is a riveting exploration of group-think and morality in an era of depersonalized warfare where bureaucratic procedure and legal safeguards reveal there's still always someone that has to pull the trigger. Helen Mirren plays an English Colonel presented with an opportunity to take out several high profile most-wanted terrorists in East Africa. Her team consists of a joint task-force represented globally and coordinated through multiple forms of conference communication. Soldiers, technicians, and politicians are all connected via satellite from locations in England (Surrey & London), the US (Las Vegas, Hawaii, DC), Kenya, Singapore, China, etc. What starts out as a more simple mission of capturing a few terrorists based on solid intel becomes a more complicated decision of deploying a destructive payload from an unmanned aircraft towards multiple targets. The complication comes from one little girl selling bread in the street. Do they risk killing her or allow the potential killing of dozens from suicide bombers?

Overall I found Eye In The Sky to be a well-constructed demonstration of the choices facing those in power. Despite the shortcuts and possible fudging of numbers or of laws, I was impressed at the level of deliberation and thoughtfulness that went into a difficult decision like this. The situation is fraught with potential political, moral, and ultimately human consequences. The film does a great job of remaining an observer of the many viewpoints expressed for or against pulling the trigger and the subsequent collateral damage - one of many terms used as placeholder for the more terrible-sounding truth: possibly killing an innocent girl. There are no good choices.

The choices that must be made here by politicians and cabinet appointees are uniquely modern due to the progress of technology. The decision that would have been made by a soldier or officer in the field decades before is now being presented to, essentially, a committee. The existence of an omniscient eye guided by pilots half a world away allows real-time observation and analysis. The Kenyan intelligence team on the ground is just another resource available to Mirren's character and her team, always calculating percentages and probabilities that really represent actual human lives.

I was even more surprised to realize when the movie ended that Gavin Hood was the director (he also has a small part). After doing an A-for-effort job in directing the ultimately disappointing adaptation of Ender's Game I wouldn't have given him the credit of assuming he could deliver a film with such balance within ambiguity in Eye In The Sky, but I'm not as familiar with the rest of filmography.

The cast was convincing in presenting the many different points of view, most of them valid from one perspective or another. While Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, and Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips) all do an excellent job, I noticed Alan Rickman most especially considering this was his final film role. They all have their part in this international coalition. Some characters see the choice before them as simple. Are they brave or foolhardy? Others see it as more difficult to make and are unsure. Are they morally cautious or cowardly? The film provides an excellent exploration of these questions and the result could be interpreted easily as making the case for any of the different viewpoints - and that is reflection of great skill in writing and directing.

Mountains May Depart

Somewhere in Mountains May Depart there's a quote I can't recall that says, effectively, you can't spend your entire life with any one other person. While this may not be categorically true, if you think through the eras of a life - as a baby, toddler, childhood, teenager, young adult, middle-age, and so on - it is unlikely that any one person will be a part of your daily interactions throughout. Considering that, it can be true that the impact someone has on your life may be greater than the portion of time you spend with them. Through a handful of characters whose lives intertwine over three distinct periods of time - 1999, 2014, & 2025 - Chinese-born director Jia Zhangke explores and rejoices in the emotional resonance of our relationships in Mountains May Depart.

The three epochs of the film are each brilliantly conceived aesthetically to provide a subtle atmospheric guide to the scenes they are home to within the story. The boxy, more realistic and grainy style of the 1999 sequence - designed to match actual documentary footage the director and his cinematographer shot from the same period - is a little more raw, like the youthful emotions the characters experience in their mid-20's. Here we have a love triangle where our central character, Tao, is confronted with a choice between the brash, rich, and charming Jinsheng and the humble coal-miner Liangzi. The 2014 section is a wider aspect ratio with a higher quality, yet natural visual reflecting Tao's middle-aged experience. Life's lessons have provided a bit more perspective and the muted colors are like some of her dreams that haven't worked out as planned. She's divorced and facing a continental estrangement from her 7-year old son. A fully widescreen format with an artificial, over-developed HD quality evokes a 2025 that is equally more advanced and more separated from the past. This is the backdrop as Tao's son Dollar has to learn why he feels unsettled in a life he's done little to create for himself. Here, in a bit of an Oedipal twist, he develops a relationship with a surrogate mother of sorts that reminds the youth, now so far removed from his past that he can't even speak his first language, where he came from. For the first time of his own volition he makes the choice to search and reach backwards so that he can progress and grow. It hurts. You don't know if he achieves what he's reaching for but the important thing is that he chooses to do it.

Zhangke uses artifacts from his own life, from pop-culture, and of a more universal nature to serve as totems for emotional relationships that bridge the difference timelines. In 1999 Tao is young and bright, greeting each moment with a smile. She rejoices in music and food that bring her joy. Later in 2014 she faces losing everyone that is or has been important to her and these things become tools for holding on to what she's lost. A divorce left her with lots of money and a lost custody battle for her young son, whose father is abandoning all remnants of their culture and taking him to Australia. After panicking, Tao resolves to make the most impact she can on the impressionable and hungry heart of her little boy. She prepares several tokens for him to keep close through taste, touch, sound and feeling, as they will become further away than ever. The keys she gives Dollar are based on the director's own mother doing the same for him. It's possible she may never know the impact they have in his life but they become figuratively the keys to his unlocking his own freedom (see what I did there??) as he comes of age in 2025. These tokens used throughout the film, and especially two key pieces of music and the light-touch score from Yoshihiro Hanno, immediately have the same effect on the viewer each time they are re-introduced to signify a key relationship and emotion whose origin may be otherwise untraceable to the characters.

While I understand the Chinese title refers to a well-known proverb, the English title Mountains May Depart is biblical:

"For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you" -Isaiah 54:10 ESV

Love of many types is shared between several characters throughout the film and can have a lasting effect. Take the character of Liangzi. Although he presents the purer, more caring and loyal offer of love to Tao in their youth, she chooses the wealth and charm of Jinsheng. We meet him again in middle-age with a young family and the type of health that come from a life in a coal-mine and Tao sees and reflects on what her life might have been had she made the other choice. That unrealized love he had for her helps drive her pure love for her son Dollar. It is that seed she plants that then helps Dollar overcome the stifling circumstances his father has created for him, helped to grow through the spark of his teacher, Mia.

Ending with a note on more to think about on a second viewing, the movie has much to say on the evolution of Chinese culture through the years that can be universally applied to how culture changes over time. An entire class of children of Chinese expats in 2025 Australia is dedicated to attempting to teach in a classroom what their parents didn't pass on naturally. Zhangke comments on labor & economy, class warfare, the isolation of technology, an increasingly complex global world, and just the sheer scale of his homeland. Despite all these shifts through several decades, there is resilience in the foundation of the human relationships. Plus there the whole thing is book-ended by some great dancing that serves as a signal tot he filmmakers hopefulness and is also just kinda fun.