Note, in the front row: baby Glen Hansard!Jimmy Rabbitte (Robert Arkins) is obsessed with music. Two of his friends ask him to whip their band into shape, and he responds by taking it apart and putting together a new one: The Commitments. This soul cover band has a wise old veteran trumpeter, an egotistical dick of a lead singer, three talented female backups (who could easily have replaced insufferable frontman Deco), and five young nerds on guitar, bass, sax, piano, and drums. Will the band succeed, or will it be destroyed by too much infighting and not enough money?
Early on, one bandmember suggests that they may be too white to play soul music. Jimmy responds that the music fits them because "the Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I'm black and I'm proud." This sort of sentiment, well-intentioned though it may be, makes me really uncomfortable. First of all, it seems to render actual black people invisible? There are black people in Europe--and, indeed, Ireland--and if white Irish are "the blacks," then who are black Europeans? Also the blacks? Different blacks? Now, Jimmy's trying to draw a parallel between Britain's historical treatment of the Irish and America's historical treatment of black people. I get that. But that is itself problematic: you can't reduce "blackness" to just the experience of oppression or to a romanticized picture of musical "character" born of suffering. Not to be (even more) obvious (than usual), but it's a bit dehumanizing to treat people as metaphors instead of as, um, people.
This same sort of presumption manifests later in the movie, when club walls are papered with the band's posters proclaiming them the "Saviours of Soul." I'm sure Roddy Doyle, Alan Parker, et al. didn't mean anything by it, but saviors from what? I don't know. Maybe this isn't as bad as it seemed to me. I do this; I make a big deal over practically nothing. What do you guys think?
Race stuff aside, the movie seemed to me to have some structural weaknesses. The Commitments is based on a novel, and it felt like it would work better as a book. I haven't read the book, but I'm going to speculate wildly that there's probably more substantial character development there than in the movie. Plus, I think novels can get away with having less conflict than films.* There's a lot of conflict in the movie, but it isn't explored in a plottish way; it just erupts and subsides and erupts again, unhandled and probably unhandleable. (These are all official critical terms. Pauline Kael will back me up.) Anyway, to me, the movie felt a little thin on plot and on character.
Still, it's not thin on charm. I enjoyed watching it. I rooted for the band. I loved the dialogue between Jimmy and Joey "The Lips" Fagan at the end. Couldn't ask for a line much better than "That would have been predictable. This way it's poetry." Overall, though, I expected to like the movie more than I did, and I expected there to be more there there. (Not unlike my feelings on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.)
Maybe I should just be happy I got through it. In the last couple days, I have tried to watch Diabolique and Return of the Secaucus 7 and gotten bored with both. I think I'll go back to them. They're probably very good. Maybe my attention span is just shot. Maybe I'm having post-Moon malaise, as I predicted I would. Maybe, right now, I only have eyes for The Wire.
*It is possible that I'm full of shit.
- Liked It
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