10 Most Emotionally Devastating Movie Moments Of 2016
5. Sing Street – Once, I Was A F*cking Jet Engine
Proving himself the master of the modern-day musical, Irish director John Carney returned to the big screen last year with Sing Street: a heart-warming dramedy set in 1980s Dublin about a young lad, Conor (newcomer Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) who forms a band with a ragtag group of mates to impress the girl of his dreams, Raphina (Lucy Boynton).
Brimming with toe-tapping songs – both original songs and 80s classics from the likes of Duran Duran and The Cure – the movie sits somewhere comfortably between feel-good musical, boy meets girl movie and coming of age story and was one of 2016’s biggest critical hits.
But for all its focus on the old ‘boy meets girl, boy forms band to impress girl, boy eventually gets girl’ focus, it’s above all a film about brotherhood. There’s a reason Carney dedicates his latest movie to ‘brothers everywhere’ and that’s because its most touching relationship isn’t between Conor and Raphina, but between Conor and his older brother and mentor Brendan (Jack Reynor) and also provides the film with one of its most powerful scenes.
A stoner dropout who feels like his life has passed him by, Brendan is having a heart-to-heart with his younger brother about the opportunities that still lie ahead for Conor.
It’s an emotional scene in which Brendan reminisces about his own potential as a youngster and is tinged with not only his regret, frustration and resentment but also his high hopes for his younger sibling’s future as he urges him to follow the dreams that he didn’t himself. Close to tears, Brendan ends his moving monologue with the words ‘Once, I was a f*cking jet engine’ – words that will resonate with anyone who’s regretted their wasted potential.