Movie Review - Once
Once is in some ways a very simple movie, minimalistic in cinematography, script, scenery, and most of all in plot...all the way down to the unnamed main characters, Boy and Girl (at least that is how they are listed in the credits). But in its own way it is as complicated and intense as real life, which in itself can me minimalistic when you silence the bombardment of noise all around us. Life is also beautiful, and it makes its own bittersweet music in much the same way as the characters in Once.
Billed as a musical, Once is not the kind of movie where you'll see a chorus of dancing Dickensian street urchins doing somersaults through the streets of Dublin, where the film takes place. The music is provided by the characters themselves. Yet like many musicals, the plot can be squeezed down to Boy (Glen Hansard) meets Girl (Marketa Irglova). Hansard plays a street musician who earns a few pounds strumming his guitar and playing songs when he isn't working with his father at the vacuum repair shop. At night, however, he'll stop playing the "established songs" the crowd enjoys, and instead plays heartfelt songs of his own composing. Irglova hears him perform one night, and they strike up a friendship. Soon they find themselves discovering they have mutual musical tastes and talent, while learning that they share some similar scars from prior relationships. Together they begin to rediscover some hope for happiness. The question remains whether that happiness is to be found with each other as friends, or as something more.
The dialog is simple and everyday, but the music that surrounds it is moving and personal. The songs aren't part of a background soundtrack...in this film they're performed within the plot, not as devices but simply as the songs both musicians write and work on. In fact, most of the songs were written by the actors themselves, which may explain why the personal performances seem so appropriate.
Writer and Director John Carney was once a member of a band with Glen Hansard, and in him he has found a brilliant performer who can sing and emote without making it look like the overacting and false emotion of the overused "guitar face" every 80's video (or air guitar rendition of a rock anthem) is engulfed with. Marketa Irglova has a soft and lilting voice which blends perfectly with Hansards, but which can also stand out on its own, with an odd combination of strength and vulnerability. Like many people, her character (and her voice) is a contradiction in terms, multi-faceted and dazzling.
It is hard to review a film like Once, because the movie is more of a compilation of parts which together form the basis for what the characters are learning to accept: that life is beautiful and painful and bitter and delicious and complicated, and simple, all at the same time...the same way music can be. Whether it is a full orchestra or one person with a guitar or piano, honest music can touch a soul like almost nothing else.
Billed as a musical, Once is not the kind of movie where you'll see a chorus of dancing Dickensian street urchins doing somersaults through the streets of Dublin, where the film takes place. The music is provided by the characters themselves. Yet like many musicals, the plot can be squeezed down to Boy (Glen Hansard) meets Girl (Marketa Irglova). Hansard plays a street musician who earns a few pounds strumming his guitar and playing songs when he isn't working with his father at the vacuum repair shop. At night, however, he'll stop playing the "established songs" the crowd enjoys, and instead plays heartfelt songs of his own composing. Irglova hears him perform one night, and they strike up a friendship. Soon they find themselves discovering they have mutual musical tastes and talent, while learning that they share some similar scars from prior relationships. Together they begin to rediscover some hope for happiness. The question remains whether that happiness is to be found with each other as friends, or as something more.
The dialog is simple and everyday, but the music that surrounds it is moving and personal. The songs aren't part of a background soundtrack...in this film they're performed within the plot, not as devices but simply as the songs both musicians write and work on. In fact, most of the songs were written by the actors themselves, which may explain why the personal performances seem so appropriate.
Writer and Director John Carney was once a member of a band with Glen Hansard, and in him he has found a brilliant performer who can sing and emote without making it look like the overacting and false emotion of the overused "guitar face" every 80's video (or air guitar rendition of a rock anthem) is engulfed with. Marketa Irglova has a soft and lilting voice which blends perfectly with Hansards, but which can also stand out on its own, with an odd combination of strength and vulnerability. Like many people, her character (and her voice) is a contradiction in terms, multi-faceted and dazzling.
It is hard to review a film like Once, because the movie is more of a compilation of parts which together form the basis for what the characters are learning to accept: that life is beautiful and painful and bitter and delicious and complicated, and simple, all at the same time...the same way music can be. Whether it is a full orchestra or one person with a guitar or piano, honest music can touch a soul like almost nothing else.
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