Sundance Film #10: Once

Once
A Dublin busker, who ekes out a living playing guitar and repairing vacuum cleaners for his dad's shop, meets a young Czech immigrant who sells roses on the same street. She likes his song, and what's more...she has a broken vacuum cleaner! They soon find themselves playing music together in a nearby music store (since she can't afford a piano, the owner lets her play his floor models). Over the course of a week, they form a musical rapport and, newly inspired, decide to record an album.

Once may loosely be classified as a musical, but it has a refreshing verite inflection. Conceived by director John Carney as a "video album," it sports a scrappy, unembellished naturalism. Carney took a risk in choosing professional musicians over professional actors, but Glen Hansard (of the well-known Irish band the Frames) and Marketa Irglova (a Czech singer/songwriter) are not only remarkably charming together but they're equally adept with the more melancholy shades (Hansard's lonely soul, stuck on an old flame, Irglove struggling to support a mother and daughter). Burdened and brokenhearted, their musical bond is the heart of the film and their love.

Great music aside, what makes this film special is how little effort it seems to exert. If it's possible to be blindsided by simplicity - a light touch, Once does it.
(John Nein, 2007 Sundance Film Festival catalog)
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Once again, John Nein sees WAY more in a film than I did. I have to admit, I'm always wary of romantic films. I don't like people acting unnaturally in the name of "love," but I'm happy to say that it didn't happen here. Irglova was charming in the way that children can be charming - insistent in drawing Hansard into a good time that he looks like he desperately needs. The romantic tension of their initial first "date" is broken by the fact that she's dragging her broken vacuum cleaner behind her like a boxy blue dog.

I put "date" in quotes because this isn't a love story as such. It's obvious that the characters find each other attractive and they are obviously musically compatible, they never actually kiss and they don't end up together. Essentially, we have a very sweet story of two people who get together to make an album. That's the beginning and end of it.

Our tickets were for the World Audience Award for dramatic film. When the program director who introduced the film got up, she said that this was the first time she had ever seen an audience give a film a standing ovation. Between that and the fuss made about the outstanding music, I knew to be on my guard.

Sure enough, at the end of this sweet but not outstanding film, two of the folks in the row in front of us jumped to their feet during the applause. The Pirate leaned over and said "This is worse than San Francisco," referring to the tendency of San Francisco audiences to give a standing ovation to anything with a spotlight, including a drug deal on a well-lit streetcorner.

Besides the non-love story (with which I was perfectly okay), the music wasn't really my thing. It was the same kind of whiny-boy music that just makes me want to scream. It would have been okay if there had been a lot of varied sound, but they played the same single song over and over. It was during that song that I realized that two days ago, as the Pirate and I were walking from one film to another, we walked by two street musicians. At the time, I was surprised at what a huge crowd two unremarkable street performers had gathered. Now I realize that it was them, staging a performance for...I don't know what. I thought the song sounded sweet, but it wasn't enough to make me want to stop and listen. And that kind of sums up how I felt about the movie, too.

The Pirate says: Predictable, whiny music, otherwise unremarkable. It wasn't some fantastic thing, but it wasn't really horrible.