Contexts

The Commitments is an Irish film that was released in 1991.  Director Alan Parker was known for making films where different people from an ethnic group come together as one group to try to accomplish something.  The Commitments was one of those films (the ethnic group being the Irish).  In the 1980’s Ireland was in a miserable state economically and also politically unstable.  Since Ireland was in an awful state economically and politically during the 80’s the group of people tried to bring soul music to help the people and culture. 

  The actors in The Commitments were real musicians (except for Joey and Bernie).  All the musicians continued their music careers after the movie was made, some more successful than others.  Andrew Strong (Deco) was the most successful out of the actors touring with the likes of Prince, Elton John, and the Rolling Stones.
Another fairly successful member was Bronagh Gallagher (Bernie) who is regarded as one of Ireland’s most productive musicians, became leader of the Frames.  Another member of the Frames was Glen Hansard (Outspan) who also is the star of Once!Mostly all of the actors also continued their acting careers finding their way into roles in such films as Pulp Fiction (Gallagher), Angela’s Ashes (Johnny Murphy), and the sequel to My Girl (Angeline Ball).

  Surprisingly the film was based on a novel which was based on a true story.  The author of the novel was Roddy Doyle.  The Commitments by Roddy Doyle was actually a part of a trilogy of books called The Barrytown Trilogy.Doyle’s way of representing cities like Dublin in his writings were opposite of the famous James Joyce.  Joyce's representations made Dublin out to be an urban area instead of a high class place.  Doyle represented Dublin as a suburban working class town unlike Joyce, which made it parallel to the book.  Parker’s film and Doyle’s novel were strange in the way that they were very similar.  Doyle set his novel into an urban setting and the influences of modern culture are easily recognizable in it are two reasons why the novel was easily converted to film.  A small difference between the two was the book was comprised of mostly dialogue, so the setting was partly Parker’s ideas.