So with there being an inclination towards musicals on this blog, I’m doing a musical too. It’s Sing Street, one of the very few musicals that I like. It’s a completely Irish film, which is nice. It’s directed and written John Carney, who directed another musicky rom-com film starring Glen Hansard, called Once. Your mam might have loved it.
The Plot and the Characters
Sing Street follows the story of the Lawlor family as they deal with the recession in Dublin, 1985. Conor is the youngest son, played by Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, who is moved from private school to the public Synge Street CBS in an effort to save money. One day, after a rough start at the school (which is run by evil priests), he sees a girl that he fancies outside the gates. Her name is Raphina, she’s played by Lucy Boynton, and Conor ends up starting a band to get her attention. That’s the main premise.
What ensues is fun and bittersweet, particularly for an Irish audience, many of whom might have experienced the 80’s in Ireland firsthand. You have Aiden Gillen as Robert Lawlor, Conor’s father, and Maria Doyle Kennedy as Penny, his mother. They are going through a divorce, which is another reason Conor desires to escape through music.
You also have Mark McKenna playing Eamon, Conor’s musically talented songwriting partner. Jack Reynor plays Brendan, Conor’s older rock and roll brother, who is the best character. He laments the difficulties of being the oldest sibling, carving a path that the younger siblings can follow – but by the end, it’s Brendan who enables Conor to leave Dublin, hopefully for greater things. It is both heartbreaking and joyous to see Brendan urging his younger brother on, while he is destined to be stuck in the family home. As the credits roll, we see the film is dedicated “To brothers everywhere”. The film is about Conor and Raphina, but it’s about Brendan too.
The 80’s trend of the late 2010’s
As mentioned above, the movie is set in the 80’s. In the later half of this current decade, you might have noticed that there’s been an unhealthy amount of popular film and TV set in the 1980’s.
2016: First there was Stranger Things, which became popular for it’s nostalgia factor – the arcades, walkie-talkies and board games. Soon after was an episode of the TV series Black Mirror, titled “San Junipero”, which was set in a beachside 1980’s town. It’s worth watching, but the most interesting thing about it was how deeply viewers fell in love with the 1980’s aesthetic of “San Junipero”. This is when I first began to notice the trend.
2017-2019 : After this, we had both of the IT movies – with a very similar, slick 80’s look to them. Some of the same actors as Stranger Things too, with the same haircuts.
2019-2020: Finally, right now, we have the following Netflix shows: Sex Education, The End of the F*cking World, and I Am Not Okay with This. Hopefully with these, we’ve reached the nostalgia peak. They are not explicitly set in the 80’s, but they all generate a feeling of nostalgia by using 80’s wardrobe, 80’s cars, and weirdly American settings, even though the first two of those shows are actually set in the UK. The shows are good, and the settings are absorbing and pleasant on the eye. However, there is something disingenuous about it. The time and location of these shows are purposefully ambiguous, designed to make us feel nostalgic.
There’s something about the simplicity and the whole look of the 1980’s that has viewers in this current age of information fawning over the decade. Netflix and Co have been copped on to this for a while now, and we’re probably going to see this trend continue.
Sing Street came out in 2016, so the timing is right, but it deals with the 80’s in a different way. It shows the desperate, colourless and jobless 80’s that happened on the other side of the Atlantic. Conor’s band explore the different subcultures of the time, flitting between influences, Adam Ant, Duran Duran, The Cure, but it all seems to be escapism from the miserable situation in Dublin. I love this movie, for not glossing over the 80’s, and keeping it real.
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