"Once" thrills

Rating: 9/10 (10 May 2007)

"Once", the Audience Award Winner at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is a gem of a movie. I had the pleasure of seeing the film last night at the Tivoli Theater with the film's leads and director in attendance. Hoping for great word of mouth, they are touring around the country with their film answering audience questions and performing songs from the film.
"Once" is a musical but not as you might expect. There are no scenes of passerbys bursting into song and dance as the leads fall in love or swelling string sections as the lovers embrace. Rather, director John Carney fashioned a stripped down, more "realistic" musical where the songs emerge from the leads as they perform on street corners, for friends, and in recording studios. Carney informed the audience that the film was made in only seventeen days and for only $150,000. The leads are professional musicians, but have never acted before. No one will mistake this for a big budget feature, but in the rawness of its presentation and performances the film gains extraordinary power.
Carney's film--which he also wrote--is a love story about waiting and deferring gratification. It's about the struggle of making ethical decisions when caught up in the fever of new love. Musicals are frequently larger than life odes to seizing the day and falling in rapturous love, so much so that you can't help burst into song. Carney subverts our expectations of the musical and presents a film about quiet, reserved lovers-to-be who struggle with the consequences of what a rapturous affair would mean to those they love.
But don't think the movie is a bore. Rather, it is a spellbinding and fantastic romantic film. Glen Hansard, lead singer of The Frames, stars alongside Czech singer and Dublin resident Marketa Irglova. Their musical performances are raw and powerful. Their harmonies are otherworldly and fantastic. The music is reminiscent of Damien Rice. Hearing them perform live after the film, I realized how little the recordings we hear in the film have been altered. Fans of Rice and singer/songwriter performers will enjoy this film.
After the multiplexes have beaten you in to a pulp striving to entertain you this summer, you would do well to seek out the quiet, haunting "Once". It sticks with you and has you humming on your way out of the lobby. It'll certainly make a bracing tonic to the sure-to-be-overstuffed "Hairsprapy".