Loveable and charming, “Sing Street” is a film that uses music as an escapes for young people in John Carney latest film.
In “Sing Street,” Connor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is a boy growing up in Dublin in the ’80s who has fallen in love with rebellious outcast Raphina (Lucy Boynton). Trying to win her, over he starts a band with classmates with the hopes to feature Raphina in their music video.
With over the top antics in ’80s music videos from influences like Duran Duran, Connor and his band strive to go from bad to good. “Sing Street” is an easily relatable story for any musician or music lover as the young impressionable band transforms with each note they play.
The DePaulia spoke with the Irish musicians-turned-actors Mark McKenna and Ferdia Walsh-Peelo.
We see characters like Connor in “Sing Street” taking big steps into for their sake of their music. Can you relate to that as musician-turned-actors?
Peelo: We kind of put our lives on hold for the film a bit. This film sought me out. There will be a point where I’d have to take some risk and leave my home to pursue music. I know tons of people who have, and it hasn’t worked out for them and I know people who it has worked for them.
London is the place to go. Everybody does in Ireland, because in Ireland you have to get out of the country — especially if your perusing acting and music. L
Both your characters use music as an outlet. Connor pushes the narrative with his relationship in winning Lucy Buynton’s character Raphina over. What on-screen relationships can you relate to most?
Peelo: My favorite kind of relationship in the film is the relationship between the characters and music. Especially Cosmo and music, because first he gets the band to get the girl. Because he tells her he has a band – but he doesn’t actually have a band — he forms one to get her. As the film goes on it, becomes more than that. He starts getting really inspired by these pop bands but then it becomes his way of escaping from his world, which is is turned upside down for him.
Peelo: He finds refuge in it, with his guitar at home songwriting or with his Walkman on. His just transported into another world. That’s what director John Carney likes to capture in his films. That is a huge relationship in people lives.
McKenna: With my character, Eamon, I kind of see a see the relationship of music being an escape. In the film he doesn’t have many friends. His dad’s in rehab and is a musician, so I think he uses music as a way of connecting with his dad since he’s gone.
His dad can still be there with the music so he escapes through that. I can’t relate to that but I can relate to using music as a self form of self expression. As a songwriter, there’s only so much you can write about over and over again. So you have to explore yourself and express things that you haven’t before. It’s like a therapy session.
