Andrea Corr | Through the Shattered Lens

First released in 1991 and based on a novel by Roddy Doyle, The Commitments is the story of a manager with a dream and a band with a chip on its collective shoulder.

Living in working class Dublin, Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) dreams of managing a band. He’s a fan of old school soul and rock and roll music, the type that was played by black artists in the American South. Jimmy feels that the Irish have a special connection to that music because, as he explains it, “the Irish are the blacks of Europe.” (I think one could argue that the black people living in Europe are the blacks of Europe but we’ll go with it. I understand Jimmy’s argument, even if it is the sort of thing that would send social media into a tizzy if it were made today.) Jimmy puts an ad in the paper and discovers that there are a lot of aspiring musicians in Ireland and very few of them know much about soul music. Even Jimmy’s father (a delightful Colm Meaney) seems to believe that he could be a part of the band. In the end, Jimmy puts together the band himself, recruiting an unlikely collection of friends and barely know acquaintances. He finds a lead singer in the talented but unruly Deco Cuffe (Andrew Strong), a pianist in the religious Steven (Michael Aherne), a saxophonist in Dean Fay (Felim Gormley), a guitarist in Outspan Foster (Glen Hansard), and three back-up singers in Bernie (Bronagh Gallagher), Imelda (Angeline Ball), and Natalie (Maria Doyle). He also finds a mentor in trumpeter Joey “The Lips” Fagan (Johnny Murphy), an American who claims to have played with everyone who is anyone and who names the band The Commitments. They’re a working class band and one that doesn’t always mix well with each other. Deco’s gets on everyone’s nerves from the start but, as Dean puts it at the unemployment office, he’s much happier being a saxophonist on the dole than a plumber’s assistant on the dole.

There’s a raw energy to The Commitments, as both a film and a band. Both the film’s comedy and its music comes from a very real pain. No one in the film is rich. No one has been given much of a chance by British society. Deco may be obnoxious but he also epitomizes the wild spirt of someone who refuses to be tamed by society. Jimmy Rabbitte may occasionally be a bit in over his head but it’s hard not to admire his refusal to surrender. From the minute the band comes together, it’s obvious that they’re not going to last. Nearly every gig ends in disaster and Joey, despite his knowledge of soul, is a bit rigid in his demands of the band. When Dean improvises, Joey acts as if it’s the end of the world that Dean would rather play jazz than soul. Joey sees jazz as being elitist. Dean sees it as being a way to express his own artistic vision. The wonderful thing about The Commitments is that they’re both allowed to be right.

The band might not last but the film leaves you happy that they still had their moment. The Commitments is a film that feels alive, not just with artistic desire but with the anger of people who have been pushed to the side by the establishment. For a while, the band gives them a chance to express that anger and, afterwards, it’s gratifying to see that the majority of the members still carry the legacy of The Commitments with them, with some members continuing to pursue music and others returning to their everyday lives in Dublin. It’s a good film, one that celebrates both music and humanity.

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

Last night, if you were in a hotel room in Alabama and you discover that you couldn’t get to sleep despite having a busy day ahead of you, you could have always turned on the TV and watched the 1996 musical extravaganza, Evita.

That’s what I did!

Evita, of course, is based on the award-winning musical by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Opening in 1952, with Argentina being thrown into mourning and chaos by the death of Eva Peron (Madonna), the film then flashes back to follow Eva as she goes from being a child of poverty to a well-known actress to eventually the wife of Argentina’s president, Juan Peron (Jonathan Pryce). The majority of her story is told to us by Che (Antonio Banderas), a cynical observer who pops up in various disguises and who is always quick to accuse Eva of selling out the poor while, at the same time, professing to be as obsessed with her as everyone else. Much as they did with the story of Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar, Rice and Lloyd Weber use the story of Eva Peron to explore what it means to be a celebrity in an unstable world.

(If anyone ever decides to produce a musical about the Kardashians, they would be fools not to approach Rice and Lloyd Webber to write it.)

Evita is kind of a strange film. On the one hand, it’s a wonderful spectacle. Director Alan Parker does a wonderful job visually interpreting the music. The sets are huge and ornate. The costumes are to die for. There’s never a moment when you don’t want to look at the screen. Parker keeps the action moving and, regardless of how cynical one may be about politics, it’s hard not to be impressed by the army of extras that march through the film, chanting “Peron.” While both the musical and film undoubtedly took liberties with the actual story (and don’t watch this film expecting to see any acknowledgment of the countless number of Nazi war criminals that Peron welcomed to Argentina after the fall of the Third Reich), it still does a great job of capturing the sweep of change and revolution. You watch the film and you understand why the citizens of an unstable country would put their faith in messianic leaders like the Perons. Jonathan Pryce does a good job playing Peron and Antonio Banderas is absolutely on fire as Che.

(In some stage productions, Che is specifically portrayed as being a young Che Guevara. Guevara, of course, was a racist mass murderer who became an icon because he was photogenic. Fortunately, the film is content to portray Che as simply being a politically active citizen of Argentina.)

And yet, there is an emptiness at the center of this adaptation of Evita and that emptiness is named Madonna. Strangely, for someone who has been a star longer than I’ve been alive, Madonna has absolutely zero screen presence. She looks glamorous enough for the part and she’s got a good enough voice for the songs but, whenever she actually has to act, Madonna’s performance feels awkward and forced. Her performance is too obviously calculated, and, as a result, there’s nothing natural about her or her interpretation of Evita. To put it simply, she tries too hard. She comes across as the type of performer who doesn’t so much smile as she acts the process of smiling. When Madonna performs opposite Pryce and Banderas, they’re both good enough to carry her through their shared scenes. But whenever Madonna has to hold the screen on her own, the film falls strangely flat.

The end result is a strangely uneven film, one that leaves little doubt that Eva Person was loved while, at the same time, never seeming to understand why.