ONCE

by Kevin Koehler

Roughly fifteen minutes transpires in Once when a struggling Dublin street musician teaches a girl he just met a song he'd written. She plays piano, he the guitar. The scene takes place at an instrument shop, closed while the proprietor eats lunch. The girl comes there sometimes to practice. "Falling Slowly" is the name of the song and, for reasons I don't really know, I began to cry. I'd prefer not to overanalyze it, honestly; rather, be thankful that there are films still capable of provoking that kind of visceral response by virtue of how genuine they are, by their depiction of authentic, uncynical human interaction.

Glen Hansard, who not only plays the male lead but wrote and performed many its tunes, would prefer his film weren't marketed as a musical. Characters break into song, quit a bit, actually, but only because these characters are musicians and this is what musicians do. The picture very much takes place in the real world, the one outside our front doors, not inside the television set (enforcing the realism, most of Once is shot with a hand-held camera). There's no dancing, no top hats, no jazz hands, no chorus lines, and no production numbers, at least not in the traditional sense. Regardless, the music does tell the story of the film, so it is sort of a musical, so sorry Glen Hansard. The songs are great, though.

The plot is simplicity in action, so simple in fact that the film's leads don't even have names. Boy (Glen Hansard) plays guitar, regaling passersby on the street with covers of pop hits on his guitar. It's what's known as a "busker." Despite being thirty-ish, he still lives at home with his aging father. He's been meaning to do something with his life, ever since his estranged girlfriend cheated on him, but just hasn't gotten around to it. Most of his money, which isn't very much, comes from fixing vacuum cleaners.

Girl (Marketa Irglova) is an immigrant from the Czech Republic. Girl lives with mom. When she's not selling flowers to tourists and young lovers, she cleans houses for rich people. One day, Girl meets Boy as he plays a song she hasn't heard before, something he won't do during the day because no one wants to listen to anything that hasn't already been pounded into their heads by radio and MTV. "Did you write that?" she asks. He did. She'd like to hear more. She also has a vacuum cleaner in need of repair.

Like being a musical but not, Once is also a love story without being a love story, either. Irglova is pretty, but not in the way we've come to expect lead actresses be pretty (she writes and performs her own songs). Hansard may be a rock star (he is the lead singer for Irish band The Frames; writer/director Carney used to play bass for same) but does look like one. The casting is just one of many things that progress contrary to custom - from an awkward courtship that defies genre assumptions and a conclusion that enlivens, even uplifts while also denying the audience what they think they want. A climactic sequence takes place in an airport, the familiar setting du jour for all tiresome romances; here, it only reminds us how rigidly, unimaginatively conventional those prefab films truly are.

Movies like this need not be like that.

Interesting footnote: The picture was actually written with the intention of casting well-known Irish actor Cillian Murphy (28 Days, Batman Begins, Red Eye) in the lead. Murphy ultimately dropped out and director John Carney asked Hansard, who has already contributed songs, to take the role. This is only his second motion picture role, having previously appeared in Alan Parker's 1991 film The Commitments. Marketa Irglova has never acted in a film before. The two previously recorded and released an album together, entitled The Swell Season.

© Pretentious Musings. This review may not be reprinted, in whole or in part, without the express consent of its author.