Dreamers Rise An Open Notebook And for those who choose the twisty road, prefer it to the straight Let joy beat out old misery, as love will conquer hate. Illustration by Henry L. Stephens from The Goblin Snob (ca. 1855) A sort of electronic broadside, composed of rants and reviews, conceits and speculations, and whatever else feels the need to be here. Issued as chance will have it. Once (film by John Carney) Spoilers here, so be advised. I had a feeling I would like John Carney's low-budget feature, and I did; in fact I enjoyed it more unreservedly than I suspected I would. Shot in Ireland, Once opens with a thirty-something busker (played by Glen Hansard) strumming Van Morrison's “When the Healing Has Begun” on a Dublin sidewalk. It's one of the last pieces of music you'll hear in the film that's not written by Hansard and his co-star, Markéta Irglová. The latter, who looks to be about twenty (in fact she was still in her teens when the film was shot), turns up a couple of scenes later, in the evening of the same day or maybe another day, to find Hansard still strumming, this time an original song that, like much of the music in the film, starts out calmly and rises to a soaring stridency. Accosted by Irglová, who speaks English in a fetchingly Czech-flavored Irish accent (or Irish-flavored Czech accent, if you like), he reluctantly confesses that the song was prompted by his recent breakup with a longtime girlfriend who had cheated on him but for whom he still pines. One thing leads to another, but mostly not where you'd expect. The two become friends, but never lovers. Fairly early on Hansard tentatively propositions her, but she takes offense, then the next day accepts his apologies and lets it go. Irglová, it turns out, has a husband back “home,” from whom she is semi-estranged; she lives in a Dublin flat with her young daughter (the motive for her marriage) and her mother. She's also a talented pianist and a songwriter, and before long she and Hansard are playing together and then composing together. Eventually they scrape together a band, get into a recording studio for a weekend, and put a demo of some songs together. As far as plot goes, that's about it. At the end — I did warn you there would be spoilers — Irglová's husband flies in to patch things up and Hansard heads off to London to re-unite with his old love and pursue his music career. Which apparently goes well, because as Once ends we see a piano — a gift — being hauled up to Irglová's flat. The film was shot for next to nothing and has no “stars.” Neither Hansard nor Irglová are professional actors; in fact they are basically playing themselves, though their characters' story is not their own. Carney, the director, had originally only intended to have Hansard (an old bandmate in a group called the Frames) write some songs for the film, then decided to go ahead and cast him and Irglová (a friend of Hansard's, and now more recently his girlfriend) as the leads. Watching the film, it seems almost inconceivable that he could have cast anyone else. The pair have a naturalness and sincerity, an easy rapport with each other, that would seem impossible to achieve by “acting.” Reportedly neither of them has much interest in future film work. Once began as a script, but much of the texture of the film, the way scenes were shot, the details of the dialogue, was improvised or worked out by Carney, Hansard, and Irglová during the shooting of the film. There are some brilliant, subtle touches: standing on a bluff over the sea, Hansard asks Irglová how to say “do you love him?” — him meaning Irglová's husband — in her native language. She pronounces the words, and he repeats them to her, expecting her to answer. She says something in Czech, which he doesn't understand; you have to watch the “special features” on the DVD to learn that what she says is ”I love you.” Sometimes the things you don't know are the most important of all. As affecting as the leads are and as imaginative and deft as Carney's direction is, the film would hardly fly if the music didn't work, since music-making takes up a hefty portion of its running time. Hansard and Irglová won a well-deserved if unexpected Oscar for one composition, “Falling Slowly,” which is typical of their songs in being quirky and haunting, brooding and passionate by turns, and refreshingly unlike much else in current pop music. Fair play to both of them. The film's ending, at first glance, seems bittersweet. We expect the couple to fall into each other's arms at last, as they would doubtless have done had this been a Hollywood production, and we're sad that they don't. But who's to say that they're not better off, Hansard with the woman he's loved for years and Irglová with the father of her child? The real world is short on cut-and-dried choices between better and worse; more often in order to get what it is that we think we want we give up something we can never replace. That's the inevitable consequence of the lightness of being, as one of Irglová's compatriots might well remind us. And in a strange way this is a very Central European, even very Czech, movie. Partly this is because of Irglová's presence, her poise, her simplicity and sadness, her classical discipline as a musician, all so unlike the boisterous, uninhibited transatlantic culture with which we are endlessly inundated. Though she herself is too young to remember life before the Velvet Revolution, her character displays a groundedness that must owe a great deal to her country's store of memories, both happy and otherwise. The few scenes with Irglová's screen mother, who speaks little English, poignantly remind us of old ties and old sorrows. (Of course the Irish have some memories as well.) Hansard and Irglová have lately been recording and touring as the Swell Season, a name borrowed from a book of stories by the great Czech writer Josef Škvorecký. The book is said to be a favorite of Hansard's. May 20, 2008 [ Permalink ] Previous page Next page Home Index About Email me