May 16, 2008 02:36 pm
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I learned about “Once” purely by chance. While listening to a program on NPR, I heard a story about this little Irish movie, written and directed by a former musician. Intrigued, I kept an eye out for it, though I didn’t hold out much hope for it to play in Joplin. Lo and behold, it popped up for exactly one week — I guess there was an Adam Sandler movie that needed to be shown on four screens.
Sitting in the mostly empty theater, I was spellbound. I immediately bought the soundtrack — again, I was somewhat shocked to find it in Joplin, but thank you, Target. When I went to work on Monday, I tracked down a friend/co-worker with similar tastes and declared, “You must see this movie!” I then went to the Collection Development Librarian and declared, “You must order this movie!”
She did so, which is good because my friend missed “Once” during its brief run in Joplin and resigned himself to waiting for the DVD. In the meantime, I continued to listen to the soundtrack and spread the gospel of this movie until I’m sure everyone was sick of hearing about it.
Then, in March, the two leads from the film, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, won an Academy Award for best song. Their bare-bones performance of “Falling Slowly” was in strong contrast to the other overblown production numbers of the evening. Neither looked like they’d been converged upon by a Hollywood stylist, and Hansard played his trusty acoustic guitar, which has a splintered hole worn through the front of it. After the orchestra denied Irglova her acceptance speech, host Jon Stewart brought her back out and allowed her a moment in the spotlight. The speech she gave was touching in its gratitude and humility.
Two friends and I recently road-tripped to Kansas City to see Hansard and Irglova perform under the name The Swell Season. Like a big geek, I re-watched the movie the night before we left and was again struck by how special it is.
It’s such a simple film, but beautiful in its simplicity. Shot on a minuscule budget in what looks to be a chilly Dublin, “Once” takes place over the course of a week. Hansard and Irglova’s characters are never named. He’s a busker, or street musician, who’s nursing a broken heart and making a living working in his dad’s vacuum repair shop. She’s a young Czech immigrant who takes a number of jobs to get by, and sings and plays piano like an angel. They meet, discover their musical chemistry, and decide to record some songs before Hansard’s character leaves for London. During this burst of artistic inspiration, they also fall in love.
Perhaps part of the film’s charm is that its unassuming leads have lives not too far removed from the movie’s fiction. (In fact, if you watch the DVD extras, the stars reveal that fans sometimes think the movie is a documentary.) Hansard has been a working musician for years; he actually appeared in the movie “The Commitments” when he was young, and went on to helm The Frames, an Irish band that the film’s writer and director, John Carney, once played bass in; Irglova is a gifted Czech singer and pianist. Since shooting the movie, Hansard and Irglova have even become a real-life couple.
The low-key dialogue is realistic and delivered so naturally as to seem ad-libbed, which is surprising considering neither Hansard nor Irglova is a trained actor. The entire film was shot on location, so it has a “you are there” vibe.
And the music … sigh. I could write an entire review about the music. Hansard and Irglova wrote all the music in the movie, and it’s amazing. It’s raw, it’s sincere, it’s poetic. The CD hasn’t left the player in my car since I bought it. And hearing it performed live, with my friends and me only a couple feet from the stage, was a profoundly moving experience.
So I will say to you the same thing I said to my co-worker: You must see this movie! Only you can’t borrow my copy — you’ll have to use the library’s, OK?
Lisa E. Brown is the administrative assistant of the Joplin Public Library.
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