Here is a lovely little film from an Irish original that makes the most of a simple premise.
Nick Kelly, late of The Fat Lady Sings, decides to cycle all the way from Dublin to Glastonbury to play an early slot in one of the British music festival’s less roomy venues.
The motivation is partly environmental. Kelly realises all you need for such gigs is a guitar and a shiny shirt. Why waste Earth’s resources? It is also about personal landmarks. He will fulfil a lifetime’s ambition to play Glasto on his 60th birthday (not that you would know it to look at him).
And, of course, the project will also generate a film. Seán Millar, his partner in the duo Dogs, is to follow by public transport and team up for small gigs in the evening. Which is Don Quixote? Which is Sancho Panza?
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You can do a lot with portable equipment these days. Once the pesky Irish Sea is negotiated, Nick is revealed cruising in Lycra through the abundant green of a Welsh summer. No druid made such a splendid journey to the pagan hub.
Director of the 2017 film The Drummer and the Keeper, and a prominent figure in Irish advertising, Kelly knows how to fashion an economic story. The trip (perhaps inevitably) becomes a meditation on his passage through life.
Particular focus falls on his loving, though not always understanding, relationship with an extraordinary father. Well known for his TV appearances to any Irish person upright in the 1970s, John M Kelly was a lawyer, Fine Gael minister and distinguished academic.
As the director approaches his seventh decade, he remembers that Dad – who was not happy about his son’s adventures in pop – died at the untimely age of 59. An emotional reckoning works itself out while Dogs home in on Somerset.
The Song Cycle feels like a film that found its own purpose in the making. If it counts as a personal indulgence, then it is one that allows others entry. It is funny. It is wise. It is rather sweet.
Following its initial run at the Irish Film Institute, Kelly will be climbing on his bike and escorting the film to screenings throughout Ireland in May and June. Good cheer will, no doubt, attend every event.
Screening from Friday, May 1st
