The Best Film of the Year!

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2007)

Once:
A movie that really is hard to put into words, but demonstrates that you don't need a multi- million dollar budget, A-list Hollywood actors/directors and special effects to make an incredible film. It does what any good movie should do, tells a story honestly and drops the viewer right into the action so as to feel you're there and care about what's happening.
In this case it's the story of a young man and woman who wound't otherwise have anything in common other than she has a busted vacuum and he works at a vacuum repair shop, or so it seems, until you discover that these two ordinary poor people actually have the same passion for writing and playing music, neither having the capacity to do so in the way they would like. For him it's playing songs in streets and his tiny apartment for anyone who'll listen but no one who can understand. Enter a woman who hasn't been able to outlet her own musical creativity due to a young child and failing marriage and you get an explosion of musical and romantic creativity.
John Carney's film is really an album on screen, and I have to mention that it is the music that drives the picture, but it's not a musical in the vain of people randomly breaking into song that drives normal people crazy (because no one ever does that in REAL LIFE) but he shows you where GREAT music really comes from and how it's created. Never once are you thinking 'Oh great there breaking into song again' because not only is the music incredible (mostly written by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova) but it's given real time and they don't cut songs short but let you listen as if you were there in the store, studio, apartment, bus or wherever.
The movie just has so many perfect little scenes and touches like the banker who wants to play them a song of his own when they ask for a loan, or the scene when they finally get to record and it's abundantly clear that no one knows what they're doing. Lastly I have to mention that it is the treatment of their interest/relationship that is the best part of the film. It's refreshing to see romance done right, without sex or over the top cheesy melodramatic dialog, the type of crap that only happens 'in the movies', here it doesn't need to be said because like true romance it's not spoken, it's felt. Carney avoids the horribly overwrought sexploitation of male/female relationships in modern film and actually respects these two characters enough to end the movie right, with the viewer walking away just like the two smitten musicians...wanting more of their music and of each other.