バンドを始める子供たちの5本の映画

Few cinematic experiences are as intuitively life-affirming as watching a group of schoolkids start a band. Disarmingly sincere, the premise – comfortably nestled inside the coming-of-age genre – channels something so evocative of adolescence that it continues to resonate with children, teenagers and adults alike.

The pleasures of the formula were already apparent in the 1940s, when MGM brought Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland together as teen musicians chasing big-band glory in Strike Up the Band. Later, Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s The Rocking Horsemen (1992) – in which a teenager falls under the spell of US rockers the Ventures and decides to start a band of his own – helped infuse the subgenre with a sense of rock’n’roll freedom in both form and narrative, approaching the adolescent experience with the emotional stakes and awe it deserved.

Perhaps it’s Japan’s wonderful infatuation with subculture that makes its cinema so ripe for this kind of story. Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Linda Linda Linda (2006), about an all-girl punk-rock cover group, established a cult following that has matured into international reverence over the years, while Richard Linklater’s School of Rock (2003) remains the mainstream gold standard.

To celebrate Linda Linda Linda getting a brand-new 4K remaster this week, we’re turning up the amps on five of the best films about schoolkids starting bands.

No other film has better utilised Jack Black’s lame-but-loveable, chubby-athletic-dad energy than Richard Linklater’s School of Rock, which perfected a formula that countless films would go on to imitate. None of its signatures are more prominent than what Black’s character calls stick-it-to-da-man-iosis, a potent strain of youthful rebellion that has continued to permeate the DNA of the subgenre for more than two decades.

The actor and Tenacious D frontman gives a career-best performance as rock burnout Dewey Finn, who assumes the identity of best friend and substitute teacher Ned Schneebly (The White Lotus creator Mike White) to make some quick cash for the upcoming Battle of the Bands. When he discovers that his class is brimming with musical talent, he decides to mould them into the world’s youngest rock’n’roll band.

From Black Swan to Whiplash, countless movies have dwelled on the destructive cost of artistic obsession. Swing Girls, on the other hand, embraces it.

Shinobu Yaguchi’s musical comedy follows a squad of delinquent high school girls who replace their school’s brass band after accidentally giving its members food poisoning. A quirky ode to practice making perfect, the film’s young cast actually learned to play their instruments during production, adding a touch of genuine determination that makes their climactic performance all the more satisfying. “There are two kinds of people in this world,” exclaims one student as he watches the girls on stage. “Those who swing, and those who don’t.” You can live on the sidelines, or you can find your rhythm. Swing Girls makes the choice a no-brainer.

A warm tribute to the fleeting nature of youth, Nobuhiro Yamashita’s hangout movie follows an all-girl rock band who must hastily learn a hit song by Japanese punk legends the Blue Hearts in time for their school festival. With just three days to go, they enlist Korean exchange student Son (the inimitable Bae Doona) as their lead singer.

Breezy and nostalgic, Linda Linda Linda is an uneventful affair, but beautifully so: there are unrequited crushes, petty squabbles between schoolgirls, all-night rehearsals and picnics on the school roof. Our four protagonists are decidedly more concerned with spending time together than worrying about what comes next, even as the future hangs over them like a quiet, bittersweet promise. Love, college, careers? There’s time for all that later.

In Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson’s We Are the Best!, rock’n’roll isn’t about talent, acclaim or even the music at all – it’s about rebellion. In the film, social outcasts Bobo and Klara join forces with classical-music prodigy Hedvig, turning their growing pains into instruments of furious anarchy and banging their sticks together in a gloriously noisy rejection of conformity.

The film’s most subversive move is its refusal to deliver the typically triumphant final-show payoff, instead showing the girls booed and heckled on stage. Not only are the young misfits not the best, but they weren’t even very good to begin with. Still, there’s something charming about the fact that they really, really believe they are – and no one, from school bullies to domineering adults, can convince them otherwise.

How many of the world’s greatest rock’n’rollers first picked up the microphone to impress a crush? An outcast at his rough-and-tumble Christian Brothers school Synge Street (get it?), Irish schoolboy Cosmo (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) assembles a rock band after falling head-over-heels for amateur model Raphina (Lucy Boynton) and inviting her to star in a music video for a song that doesn’t yet exist.

Soon, he falls for the music itself, cycling through Duran Duran, Hall & Oates and the Cure to find the band’s signature sound. “Rock’n’roll is a risk,” says Cosmo’s elder brother, Brendan. “You risk being ridiculed.” It’s here that Sing Street finds its perfect metaphor for adolescence, the first time in one’s life when the risk of humiliation becomes inseparable from the reward of self-expression.

Linda Linda Linda is out now on 4K collector’s edition via GKids.

Few cinematic experiences are as intuitively life-affirming as watching a group of schoolkids start a band. Disarmingly sincere, the premise – comfortably nestled inside the coming-of-age genre – channels something so evocative of adolescence that it continues to resonate with children, teenagers and adults alike.

The pleasures of the formula were already apparent in the 1940s, when MGM brought Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland together as teen musicians chasing big-band glory in Strike Up the Band. Later, Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s The Rocking Horsemen (1992) – in which a teenager falls under the spell of US rockers the Ventures and decides to start a band of his own – helped infuse the subgenre with a sense of rock’n’roll freedom in both form and narrative, approaching the adolescent experience with the emotional stakes and awe it deserved.

Perhaps it’s Japan’s wonderful infatuation with subculture that makes its cinema so ripe for this kind of story. Nobuhiro Yamashita’s Linda Linda Linda (2006), about an all-girl punk-rock cover group, established a cult following that has matured into international reverence over the years, while Richard Linklater’s School of Rock (2003) remains the mainstream gold standard.

To celebrate Linda Linda Linda getting a brand-new 4K remaster this week, we’re turning up the amps on five of the best films about schoolkids starting bands.

No other film has better utilised Jack Black’s lame-but-loveable, chubby-athletic-dad energy than Richard Linklater’s School of Rock, which perfected a formula that countless films would go on to imitate. None of its signatures are more prominent than what Black’s character calls stick-it-to-da-man-iosis, a potent strain of youthful rebellion that has continued to permeate the DNA of the subgenre for more than two decades.

The actor and Tenacious D frontman gives a career-best performance as rock burnout Dewey Finn, who assumes the identity of best friend and substitute teacher Ned Schneebly (The White Lotus creator Mike White) to make some quick cash for the upcoming Battle of the Bands. When he discovers that his class is brimming with musical talent, he decides to mould them into the world’s youngest rock’n’roll band.

From Black Swan to Whiplash, countless movies have dwelled on the destructive cost of artistic obsession. Swing Girls, on the other hand, embraces it.

Shinobu Yaguchi’s musical comedy follows a squad of delinquent high school girls who replace their school’s brass band after accidentally giving its members food poisoning. A quirky ode to practice making perfect, the film’s young cast actually learned to play their instruments during production, adding a touch of genuine determination that makes their climactic performance all the more satisfying. “There are two kinds of people in this world,” exclaims one student as he watches the girls on stage. “Those who swing, and those who don’t.” You can live on the sidelines, or you can find your rhythm. Swing Girls makes the choice a no-brainer.

A warm tribute to the fleeting nature of youth, Nobuhiro Yamashita’s hangout movie follows an all-girl rock band who must hastily learn a hit song by Japanese punk legends the Blue Hearts in time for their school festival. With just three days to go, they enlist Korean exchange student Son (the inimitable Bae Doona) as their lead singer.

Breezy and nostalgic, Linda Linda Linda is an uneventful affair, but beautifully so: there are unrequited crushes, petty squabbles between schoolgirls, all-night rehearsals and picnics on the school roof. Our four protagonists are decidedly more concerned with spending time together than worrying about what comes next, even as the future hangs over them like a quiet, bittersweet promise. Love, college, careers? There’s time for all that later.

In Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson’s We Are the Best!, rock’n’roll isn’t about talent, acclaim or even the music at all – it’s about rebellion. In the film, social outcasts Bobo and Klara join forces with classical-music prodigy Hedvig, turning their growing pains into instruments of furious anarchy and banging their sticks together in a gloriously noisy rejection of conformity.

The film’s most subversive move is its refusal to deliver the typically triumphant final-show payoff, instead showing the girls booed and heckled on stage. Not only are the young misfits not the best, but they weren’t even very good to begin with. Still, there’s something charming about the fact that they really, really believe they are – and no one, from school bullies to domineering adults, can convince them otherwise.

How many of the world’s greatest rock’n’rollers first picked up the microphone to impress a crush? An outcast at his rough-and-tumble Christian Brothers school Synge Street (get it?), Irish schoolboy Cosmo (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) assembles a rock band after falling head-over-heels for amateur model Raphina (Lucy Boynton) and inviting her to star in a music video for a song that doesn’t yet exist.

Soon, he falls for the music itself, cycling through Duran Duran, Hall & Oates and the Cure to find the band’s signature sound. “Rock’n’roll is a risk,” says Cosmo’s elder brother, Brendan. “You risk being ridiculed.” It’s here that Sing Street finds its perfect metaphor for adolescence, the first time in one’s life when the risk of humiliation becomes inseparable from the reward of self-expression.

Linda Linda Linda is out now on 4K collector’s edition via GKids.