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Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Personal Canon - Once

The Personal Canon is a recurring column highlighting my favorite films of all time.  While they may not necessarily be "A" rated, they are the movies that, for some reason or another, hold a special place in my filmgoing experience.

Once (2007)
Starring Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová
Directed by John Carney


I don't know if it's because I've played the piano for nearly 25 years, but for some reason or another, music in movies can make a major impact on me.  Whether it be a soundtrack culled from other sources (see my previous Personal Canon post on Sleepless in Seattle) or created specifically for the film as in this latest entry into the Canon, Once, I have an affinity for scores and/or songs in cinema.  If you were to ask me, "Are you more of a movie or music buff," my answer unequivocally would be film, but putting these two mediums together is oftentimes fascinating to me.  Certainly, this mixing of the two is one of the major reasons why I love the movie Once.  It certainly helps that the film has a good (though incredibly simple) story and two fantastic lead actors, but it is the melding of cinema and music that makes this film stand out to me.

There are two scenes in Once where the lead actor (Glen Hansard) watches the lead actress (Markéta Irglová) play the piano.  [It should be noted that neither lead has a name in the film, so for the purposes of this review, they'll be Guy and Girl].  We see everything in Guy's eyes.  He loves Girl.  Even though they've met only hours before (in the first instance) or days before (in the second instance), when Girl sits at the piano, it's her true self and it fascinates and intrigues him.  Admittedly, I never noticed this before, but in this, my fifth or sixth time watching the film, these two scenes were stunning in their simplicity.  No words are spoken, but the audience knows every single thing that's going on in Guy's eyes.

That's certainly a tribute to Glen Hansard, lead singer for the Irish group The Frames and co-lead of his duo with Ms. Irglová, The Swell Season.  The film totally goes for a naturalistic, day-in-the-life style of filming and Hansard (in what is essentially his first and only acting role) is nothing short of electric.  Then he starts to sing and he gets even more into his element and it really becomes a beauty of a performance.

Marketá Irglová (also a non-actor in her first film role), a mere seventeen years old when the film was shot, is infinitely wiser beyond her years (and not playing seventeen in the film...it should be noted that the discovery that she was seventeen kind of freaked me out because I would never have guessed that she was so young).  When she first meets Guy as he performs his music busker-style on the streets of Ireland, you can see that she's kind of crushing on him.  But she plays hard to get quite convincingly.  The pair find a mutual respect and love for one another through music, but both are being pulled away from each other romantically by separate forces -- Guy by his ex whom he maybe still loves who is now living in London and Girl by her estranged husband with whom she has a young daughter.  The pair tries to tell themselves that these other forces from the past are more important than the obvious tangible feelings in the present, but it's obvious to them (and to us) that they're simply too afraid to admit their true feelings to one another.  (It should be noted that the chemistry between these two is palpable.)

And then there's the wonderful music which takes up over half of the film's 86-minute running time.  I saw Hansard and Irglová in concert with The Frames about two years after they won the much deserved Oscar for Best Song for this film and they were fantastic.  Out of context, the songs from the movie still work amazingly well.  However, in context, they're even more beautiful.  Once isn't a "musical," per se, with people breaking out into song to express their feelings.  Instead, the two leads are musicians and the music simply comes naturally to them.  There is never a sense that any song feels forced into the film simply to pad the running time...they're all there for a reason and, goshdarnit, I love them.

And it's that melding of music and movie that make Once an unmitigated success to me.  It's an incredibly simple film with gorgeous music, great performances from non-actors, and nice documentary-esque, natural direction from musician-turned-director John Carney.  Much like a viewing of Psycho has become my Halloween tradition, a viewing of Once has now become this non-Irish guy's way of celebrating St. Paddy's Day.

The RyMickey Rating:  A

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