Return of 'The Blair Witch Project'

Rating: 1/10 (27 December 2007)

At Gitmo, one of the things the interrogators do to 'break' prisoners is to subject them to prolonged exposure to songs from TV's Sesame Street. It turns out that even when it's designed to be benign or even therapeutic, being forced to listen to certain music truly is torture. Also at Gitmo, if a 'detainee' tries to end his suffering by means of starvation, the U.S. military will force feed him so as to prevent this. By the time I had sat through 'Once,' it seemed like I could vividly imagine just what those experiences must be like.
'Once' is a force-feeding of folk music.
The musical performances in 'Once' are characterized by an affected earnestness and a self-styled soulfulness. They are self-conscious without being self-aware: in other words, a pre-ironic mindset. Watching them made me uncomfortable in the way that one is uncomfortable when a naïve, sensitive, and bad poet insists upon reading you his work and asking for feedback.
This film is photographed with a blurry, hand held camera, and to say that the script is minimalist is an understatement. It is possible to momentarily forget that this film is fiction, that someone scripted this. In my opinion, this is a deliberate cheat, a gimmick to conceal the thinness, corniness, and improbability of the plot.
This is 'The Blair Witch Project,' but with music.
There is a sense of arrested development with Glen Hansard's character, a self-pitying 36-year-old still living at his father's house. It's creepy to know that when this movie was made, Marketa Irglova was just 17. The pair are reported to 'dating' nowadays, and it is reasonable to suspect that the relationship was probably not 'platonic' when they were composing and performing together prior to filming.
In short, this film feels like the fantasy of a college sophomore, neglecting his classes in hopes that music will be his ticket out. If you have ever wondered what it would be like to have a street musician move in with you, I strongly recommend this movie. It makes 85 minutes seem like a month.