Review: Once (2007)
Once opens, with a bit of urgent melancholy, as Guy (Glen Hansard) plays his lungs out on a street corner to a largely uninterested crowd of passersby. The opening, with the slow fade of the title, immediately conjures a sense of need, of being lost, of trying to find your own bit of mojo in a group of people who only seem to be interested in stealing from you (in a bit that’s funnier than it sounds.)
The entire film is executed with similar economy. I couldn’t help but wonder what Cameron Crowe thought when he first saw Once; the film weds its love story to its music in a way that Crowe, good intentions aside, could never quite manage in his labored, bloated Elizabethtown.
Guy meets Girl (Marketa Irglova) and the two, after some initial annoyance, find that they share both past disappointments and an affinity for music in common. They begin to hang out, and play together, and, well, that, and the terrific soundtrack (primarily by the two leads) is the entire film. Once is Brief Encounter with a live, catch on the fly musical current, one of the few narrative films I’ve seen that truly feels like an album.
I liked Once and I found the music, performances, and that final shot, all very moving. But the film’s chief asset: its minimality, (I’m trying to avoid the word slight), is also mildly annoying. Guy and Girl are saints, and they, some economic compromise aside, lead lives that seem to be devoid of much of the conflict of the day to day.
They work jobs that may have seemed a bit dated in a Charlie Chaplin film. Guy repairs vacuum cleaners with his dad, Girl sells roses and, I think, cleans houses. There’s no real temptation here, nothing so much at stake. Again, this is all clearly by design, but the design leaves little for surprise, particularly in a genre as shopworn as this one.
It’s Once’s story of a man finally finding the necessary push to create, to collaborate, to challenge himself, that I found most moving. The all night recording sessions, the driving around late to celebrate, these scenes have a ring of truth and exhilaration. Hansgard and Irglova are also immensely charming, selling you on characters that may have (well, still) come off as a little pat otherwise.
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