[yasr_overall_rating]
Funny, musical and occasionally dramatic, this is the story of the tumultuous rise and fall of a Dublin Soul band, The Commitments. Managed by Jimmy Rabbitte, an unemployed wheeler and dealer with a vision to create “The Worlds Hardest Working Band.”
I was 19 years old when “The Commitments” was released in 1991. While it went on to become a huge success worldwide, there was something quite spectacular about it when it opened in Dublin, the setting of the fictional suburb within the movie, Barrytown. Up until then, the majority of Irish movies were relegated to dramas such as “My Left Foot,” “The Field,” “In the Name of the father,” “Taffin,” and “Da,” not exactly the kind of titles that inspired the Irish movie-going public to rush out to their nearest cinema to be first in line. With “The Commitments” however, the trailer for the film made you realize that this was something special, it was a movie that was aimed at the youth of its time, something that had never really been done before. And it did not disappoint.
Based on the book of the same name by Irish school teacher Roddy Doyle, the film centers on Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins), an unemployed musical entrepreneur who is fed up with the Dublin music scene and decides to do something about it. With the help of two musician friends, Outspan Foster (Glen Hansard) and Derek Scully (Ken McCluskey), they hold auditions to discover the remaining band members. Once he has assembled the group, which he calls The Commitments, he proceeds to tell them that they will be playing soul music, à la James Brown, Martha Reeves, and Sam Cooke. Between them all, they have a dynamic and energetic sound and quickly rise through the local music scene’s ranks, bringing all sorts of attention, from music producers to record labels, but while there is no denying their distinguishing, sweet-sounding melodies, behind the scenes, everything is far from perfect.
When they first start out, as expected with any musical group, there are a few personality clashes, especially with lead vocalist Deco (Andrew Strong), who thinks he is God’s gift to singers but as the band’s success gradually accelerates, so do each of their egos, making arguments and physical confrontations a daily routine. Naturally, there comes the expected tipping point, where it becomes plainly obvious that the band can no longer work together as a team and sadly, they part ways. Director Alan Parker utilized the same approach here as George Lucas did with “American Graffiti,” introducing you to a group of young people, allowing you into their lives for a short period of time, and then telling you what happened to them after the collapse of the band. Unlike “American Graffiti” though, which told you how the rest of their lives panned out, “The Commitments” only informs you as to what they are doing with their lives now, leaving it wide open for a continuation.
The majority of the players in “The Commitments” were musicians first and once cast, director Alan Parker worked with each of them on their acting abilities. Parker has said over the years, that making “The Commitments” was one of the most enjoyable filmmaking undertakings he ever experienced, in all his years as a director and said the biggest reason for that was because the relatively unknown young cast had no huge expectations and were down-to-earth people who were grateful for the opportunity, unlike the cast of “Fame,” another musical which Parker also directed in 1980, citing “These kids were extremely self-obsessed, capricious and irritating to work with.”
“The Commitments” was released in the summer of 1991 and went up against movie juggernauts “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” and Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and in Ireland, went on to become one of the biggest hits of the year, and one of the biggest Irish hits of all time. For many years after its release, 20th Century Fox, based on the fact that the film had gone on to become a worldwide box office smash, claimed they were working on a sequel, which would take place in New York a few years after the events of the original, but sadly, that never came to pass. “The Commitments” was only the first book in the “Barrytown Trilogy,” a fictional Northside Dublin suburb, and because Fox owned the rights to the story and the characters’ names, it meant that Miramax Films and English director Stephen Frears, who went on to adapt the remaining two books, “The Snapper” (1993) and “The Van” (1996), into movies, had to change the last name of the Rabbitte family and the only actor to appear in all three films, was Colm Meaney, who played the father figure in each adaptation. While “The Commitments” was filled with musical episodes, its successors were devoid of anything melodic, choosing instead to focus on more dramatic components, fused with comedic elements.
“The Commitments” was also filmed while Ireland was experiencing one of its bleakest recessions in years, which resulted in high unemployment and mass emigration, and this is quite evident from some of the scenes throughout the movie. The story was not about a band who go on to become rich and famous, rather, it was about the hopes, dreams, and aspirations it infused into the young people of Ireland at a time when they did not have much of anything to look forward to. As Joey ‘The Lips’ Fagan, played by the late Johnny Murphy, quotes to Jimmy after the band’s self-destruction, “Look, I know you’re hurtin’ now, but in time you’ll realize what you’ve achieved.” To which Jimmy responds, “I’ve achieved nothing!” Joey finishes with, “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 that’s exactly why “The Commitments” performed so well, not just in Ireland, but around the world, because the underlying message was that you could achieve anything, if you just put your mind to it.
On a side note, when “The Commitments” was released in the summer of 1991, I was hard at work on a screenplay for a film I was planning on making about a young Dublin band who eventually makes it big. I didn’t have a title for the movie at the time but I had planned on using the members from a Northside Irish rock band from the area I grew up in, Donaghmede (pronounced Don-a-meed), called Lir. The band’s drummer, Craig Hutchinson, and I, had been best friends since we were kids and I knew the rest of the guys very well. Suffice to say, once “The Commitments” came out, I stopped working on my screenplay. I was asked by many people at the time, and since then, why I didn’t go on to make it and it was quite obvious that had I completed the film, people would have undoubtedly compared it to “The Commitments” and said I stole that movie’s idea. And so it goes, in the film industry, you never know who is working on the exact same idea that you are, it’s just a matter of who’ll get there first!
“The Commitments” 25th Anniversary Available On Blu-ray, DVD & Digital August 30th
