Music to escape from a narrow world

Rating: Null/10 (9 October 2001)

The simple plot of this movie ( the rise to success of a group of Dublin working-class soul musicians, and their consequent decline, owing to petty, trivial inner quarrels) is just a pretext for a vivid, effective picture of Dublin life. The outlook on that part of society aims mainly to explore the wish, among the young generations, to escape from a narrow-minded world, from squalid urban suburbs, from unemployment, from a reality which has nothing to offer them: lacking any prospects for the future, young people own low expectations and narrow horizons (Joey's final sentence to Jimmy summarizes efficaciously this mood: "the success of the band was irrelevantyou raised their expectations, you lifted their horizonsthis is poetry"). The forced urbanization, in a country of rural traditions, has produced paradoxical effects: a little boy tries insistently to enter a horse in a lift; the music critic (who also writes crime news) is met while reporting an accident occurred to another horse in the road traffic. Parents are unsympathetic as they have different values (on the wall in Jimmy's home there are pictures of Elvis Presley and Pope Giovanni XXIII), or they are simply struggling to get by (Bernie's mother). The heavy influence of the Catholic Church is shown throughout all the movie: Steven practises on the organ of the Church; the first gig of the group is in the Church Community Centre; sacred images, processions, confessionals, recur in the scenes underlining the constant presence of religion in people's daily life. Another feature which is pointed out is the young people's moral behaviour: an unexpected moralism lurks among boys that do their best to be "transgressive" but run into gossip and heavy malignity when a girl seems to be involved in a love affair (Bernie with Joey, or Imelda seen on Joey's motor-cycle). Pregnancy, however, seems to be the obvious cause of great part of marriages: both Imelda's sister's wedding, which opens the film, and the one of Imelda herself, in the end, happen for this reason; at her sister's wedding party, at the sentence: "I suppose you'll be next" she answers "I'm not pregnant". Not yet. Dangers such drug and street violence are taken into account too, but are developed in a non-dramatic way, with an ironical outlook, in the characters of Duffy, the drug-dealer who also rents music gear, probably stolen, and of Mickah Wallace "the savage" who loves fighting in the street, but fears the reproach of his friends' mothers. To be recommended to teachers dealing with Ireland present life: it's better than a textbook.