The Commitments – The Commitments (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

I've always thought that, leaving deep personal relationships aside, art in general, and music in particular, is what makes life worth of being lived and that creativity is one of life's best fuels.

That the bleakest of lives can be lightened up by simply grabbing a pen, a brush, a musical instrument... or whatever is your weapon of choice and letting yourself go.
And that sharing that with your fellow humans will also help lightening their lives.

As I see it, this is what Alan Parker (of "Mississippi Burning", "Angel Heart" or "The Wall" fame), masterfully depicted in "The Commitments": how the redemptive powers of music turned a bunch of average people into sorcerers that would, as Bruce Springsteen put once "[...] remind people of something they already know and feel deep in their gut. That when the world is at its best, when we are at our best, when life feels fullest, one plus one equals three. It's the essential equation of love, art, and rock 'n' roll bands. It's the reason the universe will never be fully comprehensible, love will continue to be ecstatic, confounding, and true rock 'n' roll will never die"

"The Commitments" is the tale of how Jimmy Rabbitte's love for music helped some people finding each other and, together, unleash their creative potential "bringing soul to the people of Dublin" even if it was for a short lived moment.

A bittersweet story that is backed by some killer soul classics performed by the actual movie cast (the actors were actually auditioned for their musical skills before getting the roles) like "Mustang Sally", "The Dark End Of The Street", "Destination Anywhere", "Take Me To The River", "I Never Loved A Man", "In The Midnight Hour" or "Try A Little Tenderness" to great effect.

At the end, it didn't matter if Wilson Pickett didn't show up at that gig: the important thing is that they were up there on that stage, becoming someone else entirely and, in the process, making the audience happy for a fleeting moment.

Because, as Berthold Auerbach once said “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”