Alan Parker is most persuasive when people are making music together. We rate his ear for ensemble comedy highly, though his taste for polished images and forceful emotion can make rough lives look too carefully arranged.
Fi1m perspective
At the auditions in The Commitments (1991), eagerness is funny without being a reason to despise anyone. Parker lets the hopefuls try, and gives their efforts enough time to become jokes. We laughed because the cast's precise timing catches how much these people want to be heard. This is the Parker we recommend most warmly: attentive to performers, amused by ambition and willing to give the music time.
His first feature, Bugsy Malone (1976), was a gangster musical with an all-child cast. The breakthrough thriller Midnight Express (1978) took him elsewhere, before Fame (1980) returned to the ambitions of people who want to perform. He kept moving between genres, including the detective story and supernatural elements of Angel Heart (1987). Music remained a recurring interest rather than a genre he settled into.
In The Commitments, Roddy Doyle, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais give him a script built around the practical trouble of organising people. Robert Arkins makes Jimmy Rabbitte's enthusiasm seem exhausting to everyone nearby. Andrew Strong, Angeline Ball and Maria Doyle Kennedy help prevent the ensemble from becoming merely his audience. Parker's preference for unfamiliar faces is useful here, but freshness alone would not make these exchanges work. He gets controlled comic timing from people who still seem impatient to have their say.
Editor Gerry Hambling is crucial to making that ensemble work. He moves the band's formation along while leaving room to hear its members begin to work together. The weakness is that Parker sometimes makes those beginnings look too tidy, and some characters get too little attention. We can hear and enjoy the collective effort, but the film does not give everyone an equally interesting part in it.
Parker's advertising background helps explain the atmospheric lighting and carefully arranged grit across his films. His ability to build an atmosphere serves Angel Heart well, though elsewhere he can push too hard for an emotional response. We prefer him when the actors have room to establish the feeling themselves. Start with The Commitments, accepting that even his untidy Dublin band looks a little tidier than it should.
Biography
Alan Parker (1944–2020) was a British film director, screenwriter and producer. He began his career as an advertising copywriter in the 1960s before directing television commercials and transitioning to feature films.
His films include Midnight Express (1978), Fame (1980), Mississippi Burning (1988), The Commitments (1991), Evita (1996) and Angela’s Ashes (1999). Parker was chairman of the British Film Institute and founding chairman of the UK Film Council. He received the CBE in 1995 and was knighted in 2002.
