Sunday, July 30, 2017

Sing Street (2) - A few more observations

A few more observations which I forgot the first time around.

As the excellent quality of the music irks me, so does the fact that the group's videos are supposedly filmed with a hand-held super 8 camera (such devices are hard to find now). Hand-held - but no shaking; edits - exactly how are they achieved? Too much nit-picking on my behalf.

The excellent tv tropes site lists one of its tropes "Gilligan cut" as basically when someone says that they're not going to do something, and then the next moment shows them do exactly what they said they wouldn't do. There are two nice examples in the film, which strangely enough to not appear on the tropes page for this film: at the beginning when Conor meets Eamon, they're having tea but decide to move to the shed for further discussion. Eamon's mother says "Remember: no smoking", and Eamon says that he's told her that he doesn't smoke. Cut to shed, where Eamon, Damon and Conor are all puffing away. 

There's an almost Gilligan cut later on when Conor shows Eamon an A4 sheet advertising the end-of-term dance, with 'DJ and Lights'. "We could do a short set", says Conor. Eamon disagrees, mentioning that he has to revise for exams. "Will there be girls?", he asks. Conor say yes, then Eamon says "Then we're playing". Cut to exam room: all six members of the group, along with Barry, their nemesis, appear to be totally lost when they see the exam paper.

With regard to smoking, the first half has almost everybody in the film smoking, although this tapers off towards the end. But strangely for this kind of Irish film, nobody swears (except for exactly one example)! The Commitments swear more than they smoke, and they smoke more than they drink.

I really enjoy this film when I allow myself to let reality slip a little.

Final trivia: as noted before, the group is named after a pun on the name of the school they attend which is named after Irish playwright J. M. Synge. Quote: Walsh-Peelo's [Conor] father attended the actual Christian Brothers School on Synge Street, as did creator John Carney. To fully square the circle, the real school was used as a film location. Carney has stated that he needed to get it as it's too famous in Ireland to believably double.

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