Once is John Carney’s melancholy, modern-day love musical from the streets of Dublin, Ireland. The film stars Glen Hansard, lead singer of the Irish pop rock band, The Frames, and Markéta Irglová, the teenaged singer songwriter who released an album (The Swell Season) with Hansard in 2006. The eighty five minute film is simple enough in plot, centering around the happenstance meeting of a love scorned street performer (Guy) and a quirky Czech immigrant (Girl) who discover and merge their mutual love of music to form a makeshift band and record his soon to be smash hit album. But theirs in an unrequited love; he still longs for the lover he has left in his past and she is the married mother of a young daughter. Through stunning performances that highlight the two accompanying each other in song, Once is certainly a feast for the senses, but the overall meat of its story is a slim picking.
I feel I must clarify myself a bit when I speak of this film as a “musical.” There are no flashy costumes, no arms flailing through dance routines. Guy and Girl wear the same wooly scarves about their necks the entire time and are rather static as they play and sing brilliantly together throughout the film. Nevertheless, their performances are fierce, especially in the passion that rips through Hansard’s expression. I was most struck the first time the two played together, after Girl takes Guy to her favorite music shop, where she plays on the pianos she cannot afford, and he teaches her the notes and the lyrics to one of his original songs. This moment, like other scenes, is filmed rather voyeuristically, the camera peeking over and around the instruments, straining to gain access to the personal and touchingly awkward encounter. Watching this, I wished I had a song to teach someone. And, as if I were in the front row at the most exhilarating live concert, I felt compelled to clap through the ending notes of each song.
But, beneath the breathtaking musical numbers, there isn’t much depth to the movie’s story line. Girl is estranged from her shot gun husband; Boy is torn over a lost love. The lyrics they write are of past relationship damage, Girl even breaks down as she sings one of her songs, but the audience never gets justification for the magnitude of each character’s pain. Their former loves are mere shadows throughout the film, hardly coming forth enough to explain anything. At times, Once becomes extremely sentimental. Home video flashbacks of Guy and his old lover romping around in silly costumes and eating fruit are almost unbearable to watch. Really, who has videos like these?
“When your mind’s made up there’s no point trying to change it.” Such are the lyrics to the movie’s main theme and the reason the two eventually go their separate ways. While the music was spectacular, by the end of the movie, the main song was a little played out. If Guy really were to make it big in London, would he have been a one-hit wonder?
The end of this film was especially beautiful. As Guy purchased his ticket to London and the movie’s most prominent love theme began blaring with full instrumentals, I felt the closing moments come eerily close to falling into the kind of sap scenario films like Garden State get stuck in and never find their way out of: boy meets girl, boy decides to leave girl because (let’s face it) things just wouldn’t work out, but then (surprise!) boy runs back through train station/airport terminal/boarding dock because he just can’t let girl get away. But the love story in this film does indeed live up to its name, and the encounter between this boy and girl is a one time only deal. The final images are striking and telling in a tragically ominous way.
It’s always a film critic’s buffet in the bathroom after the show. As I reapplied the mascara that I’d shamefully cried off during the film’s more touching moments, I caught the quote of this filmgoer’s day. “Let me tell you,” said one overdone lady to another, “That was so much better than Music and Lyrics.”
And that, kids, just about says it all.
Liz Licorish
Direct comments or opinions to: lizflix@gmail.com
