Joyous yet refreshingly real

Rating: 10/10 (3 June 2016)

The warm and idealistic yet poignantly real Sing Street—about an Irish high-school student in the 1980s who starts a band—has the power to make you nostalgic for a childhood that wasn't your own.
We meet the fifteen-year-old protagonist Conor hiding in his bedroom with a guitar, as his parents argue about their financial troubles and failing marriage. When Conor must transfer to a state Catholic school in a different part of town (based on director John Carney's childhood school), viewers aren't spared the harsh first encounters with his classmates and headmaster. He is, for example, punched and threatened by a school bully and forcibly handled by the school's headmaster after a dress-code violation. These moments and others carry with them a palpable realness, devoid of melodrama or sentimentality. The film's unique realness is present in the difficult moments (the bullying and rough family situation); it is also present in the mundane and witty—from Conor's family watching early MTV music videos together, to the extensive record collection and the poster of Freud in the older brother's bedroom, to Conor's friend's unapologetic love of rabbits.
It's the realness of many of the film's moments that makes its accompanying youthful idealism powerful. The film's plot-line itself is one centered around youthful hope and naiveté. Conor starts a band to impress a beautiful aspiring model who lives across the street from his school. Although she is dating an older man, Conor hopes his music and persistence will win her over. The characters' budding romance is accompanied by a soundtrack of 1980s rock and roll hits and Carney's original '80s-inspired pop tunes, sung in the film by Conor's band.
Sing Street is a life-affirming story about what one can do with hope and music, but it also gives a nod to those with unrealized dreams who use music as a form of escapism. Conor's brother (a frustrated college drop-out), like the movie's viewers, rejoices in Conor's triumphs, and Carney celebrates the older brothers of the world who pave the way (sometimes at their own expense) for their younger siblings.
Sing Street is a film that is both realistic and idealist, that both celebrates the glories of youth and playfully mocks them and that both nostalgically celebrates the music of the 1980s and makes viewers want to, like Conor, be a "futurist" who, without looking back, drives life "like you stole it."