The premise of this little musical about an Irish street busker/vacuum repairman and a Czech immigrant is so simple you wonder why it’s never been done before. Over the course of a week or so, these two meet cute and you think, OK, indie musical rom-com, but all generic expectations get thrown out the window as the film slowly but surely evolves into something completely different–a moving testament to creativity, determination, love, loss, compromise, stasis, and the never-ending joys of a melodically infectious pop song. Noel Coward would be proud.
Sorry Mauer, I had forgotten your original post from March (so long ago). Good call, dude! The film is definitely worth the effort. Mike, you’ll like it and Kris will love it (there’s no singing and dancing, the music is incorporated into the plot quite ingeniously as little more than a bunch of songs our leading man hopes will land him a record deal). That being said, this is, through and through, a contemporary Irish narrative worth your time.
Yeah–Kris already loves it. After Mark recommended it, I told K, and she saw it in the theaters. She just got the dvd, so I hope to see it quite soon.
Yeah, I can’t tell you how happy I am about the (relative) success of Once. Glen has worked so hard to break his band’s music to a big audience – and also worked very hard to live down the “other” film he was in – The Commitments. Though this movie didn’t break big the way something like Little Miss Sunshine did last year (but it is a much simpler film with no movie stars at all), it did really well for what it cost to make, and it’s exposed a lot of people to Glen’s music. If the gods smile down just a little bit, he and Marketa will get an Oscar nomination and get to perform in front of a billion people. And if anyone here has ever seen him play live, well, he might as well possess a mad scientist’s Hypno-beam. Putting him in front of that many people for 4 minutes just might be the ticket he needs.
Ebert recently started writing reviews like mad now that he’s feeling better (he still can’t talk, but is cancer free). His review of Once is worth reading as well.
Yeah, Ebert’s review is quite good, though I have to admit I was not as involved in the “growing love” between these two characters as much as other critics (at least not a sexual love). SPOILERS: For me the relationship between the two is far more ambiguous. Certainly you want them to get together and certainly Hansard’s character seems to be “in love” with her, but that love “seems” misguided and is appropriately rechanneled into the music (where it probably belongs). Now, I must admit I knew a little background before I popped the disc into the machine (and Maurer you may know more). But Hansard, who’s 37, and Irglová, who’s 19, first met six years ago (when she was thirteen years old). There was something about that knowledge that would not let me root for their onscreen romance to blossom (so to speak). But I also know the two are now living together offscreen as lovers, and, puritanical as it may seem, that bugs me. Still, that final shot as the camera pulls away from the window is a heartbreaker–one of my favorite moments in film this year.
Good movie. The love thing–well, whatever. I gather, from my source of Irish information, that the Hansard/Irglova romance is already over. I repeat: whatever.
I loved the film as a musical. Dennis Potter’s stuff took the sense of the movie musical and imagined what it meant on the ground, in everyday lives–“Pennies from Heaven” erupting out of, breaking us off from despair, or just the dinginess of everyday life. I loved how this very different film also found a way to capture how music is tied to everyday lives, informs and suffuses these characters’ lives… it just seemed grounded, seemed to capture how music matters to me. (And that’s just as an avid listener–I loved, too, the sense of how it’s oxygen to musicians.)
Last shot–yeah, gorgeous. Really nice film. It was apparently filmed in January ’06, when we were there–probably wandering the streets around Stephen’s Green where they were playing and filming….
Oops. Their love is back on again.
Now off again. Yay! More material for songs!
After hearing an interview with Hansard, who was apparently not on his best behavior following a romantic rift with Irglova, Kris began calling him the Ginger Whinger.
This has nothing to do with the movie, which is grand.
Ginger Whinger?
you people are trying to set me up, right? by pretending there’s a musical worth watching?
especially an Irish musical
i can do that.
we saw this film last night and found it appallingly bad. simon got up and went to grade papers. i’ve read your comments and ebert’s review and, also, found out that this film got some pretty impressive awards, and i am confounded. the story is just so bad. i found the songs pretty bad, too, but whatever. as a movie, though: really really bad. bad story, bad dialogue, pathetic editing, schmaltzy meaninglessness, etc. etc. even a motorcycle ride along the irish coast, for godssakes! and poor flowergirl never changes her clothes, even though she says that she shops at that used clothes store place b/c she likes their style. predictable step after predictable step and misstep after misstep.
i’m going to go watch obama youtubes. you guys are never going to trick me again.
colonialist!
hey i’m italian until not long ago italian-americans were black.
I remember when Gio was black. Insert uncomfortable use of stereotype here.
spat watermelon seeds during gottesman’s classes? did the cakewalk to the tune of o sole mio?
I didn’t know where else to put this…but holy shit! Did anyone see Karen Quimby in the audience of the DNC at Mile High Stadium? I was watching coverage on PBS. Twice the camera caught her–the second time, during Al Gore’s speech, was a long zoom that lasted several seconds. How cool is that?
John,
The only thing cooler would be catching a glimpse of Katie Mills from a distance during C-Span coverage of a Senate Hearing on the deficit!
i saw her too! and it’s karin quimby, thank you very much.
I take it this is someone you all know.
What did you think of Obama’s speech as spectacle?
karin was in grad school with us.
i thought obama’s speech was okay. what i really liked was the “regular americans” segment. especially pat from north carolina, and teresa from new mexico.
Sorry, yes. Karin. I thought the speech was excellent. In fact, the whole convention was extremely well handled.
Looking forward to the RNC, with the new GOP ticket, McCain/Whothefuckisthat?
I didn’t watch, alas, but I did just listen–and it’s a heckuva speech.
Spectacle. Hm. Certainly in many regards, but–I kind of think that, when done well, it pushes more toward ritual. I.e., the theatrical presentation of each speech, of the foregone dramatic conclusions (or even well-rehearsed beats and measures inside each speech), can nonetheless tap into a sense of politics as a meaningfully symbolic activity.
Sort of by accident, or a subconscious keeping tabs, over the last few weeks I’ve watched two films about politics that remind me of the convention. The Deal and Recount represent some interesting distinctions in national styles, both in the politics they represent and their own politics of representation.
Frears’ Deal adopts an almost Jamesian form, where the (familiar, public-record) reenactment or re-creation of various conversations suggest the complex inner lives of the two men at their center (Michael Sheen’s cagy Tony Blair, David Morrissey’s more cocksure blustery true believer Gordon Brown). It’s an interesting and subtle depiction of ambition; the familiar even-to-this-American narrative of how Blair ascended offers up a ready-made political story (and sticks to its template, as much generic as historical) but through the performance reveals a melancholic sense of potential lost.
Roach’s Recount plays almost like screwball farce, its also-all-too-familiar storyline and re-creations of much public dialogue/spectacle nonetheless seemed very fresh, productive, engaging. Engaging in the fullest sense: Kris and I watched this, in and around the build-up to Biden and the (familiar, sculpted-to-template) Demo convention, and despite both texts being rigorously orchestrated to repeat old standards, there was a sense we got from both of an invigorated moral anger.
I’m kind of rambling. In a nutshell: the convention and each film in some ways were just paint-by-numbers, and you could complain that in each case the stuff of politics is turned into some neat consumable commodity. But I thought all three texts used their familiar notes and generic conventions to draw viewers into reflection on the meaning of such symbolics…
Of course, I’m a notoriously m.o.r. appreciator of the system of politics, flaws and all, when done well.
agree, great speech. even in the cynical and fed up mode i’m in (obama going back on campaign promises even before being made the official fucking nominee, at which point he reiterates those selfsame promises), i managed to get goose-bumps once or twice. mostly, i liked seeing a black family on that stage for like 3 whole minutes. black parents, black kids. wow. what’s right with this picture? no one could have staged it. happy black families don’t make prime-time tv.
you know what bums me endlessly yet seems perfectly fitting for the way this presidential campaign is being handled and will be conducted in the months to come? that the republicans rushed to steal obama’s thunder by announcing a female GOP candidate the second our first black presidential nominee let his vocal cords rest from one of the most historical speeches of our communal history, and the media went for it. tons of stories on palin today, not as many on barack’s speech. arrgh.
really, though, once the movie suuuuuuuuucked.
so how are things in St. Paul with the Republicans all whipped up over their new crackpot VP choice? Has the demand for bondage and discipline gone up? are the riot cops pushing around polite Minnesotans? the churches are filled to bursting? terrorist cells are cowering? The craven liberal professors in Dinkytown run to ground? The Grain Belt sign taken off the Hennepin Bridge so as not to offend “family values?” The Twin Cities ready to go after those Iranian bastards? Fight on!
Can’t respond now, Michael–too busy smashing windows.
We watched some news footage last night, and Max decided he too wanted to do some protesting, so he pulled all his books off a shelf and began running around doing ninja poses.
Meanwhile, USA! USA! USA!
I watched Palin last night prepared to be daunted by how good she would be . . . and yet, I thought the speech to be dull and uninspired (sure, full of red meat, but plodding rather than uplifting). I know the MSM can really do nothing but celebrate her night but I find all the references to her “rallying the base” or “electrifying the delegates” to be code for . . . uh, not that great unless you are a conservative Republican. I mean I was scared she would nail it, and she certainly is a charismatic candidate (maybe even likeable in an alterno-world of my own making), but this is the best she can do? I thought to myself: she’s way out of her league. Plus, why sharpen her knives on Obama? Do the Republicans really believe that a woman, any woman, will be given a free pass for the next ten weeks just because she’s woman? Didn’t she open doors McCain and crew will be dying to slam shut at some point in the next five days? And her family. They looked like deer in the headlights (am I supposed to stand now? who gets the baby? why does grandma Palin look like she’s been shopping on 5th Avenue instead of Target). Finally, the cutaway shots to the convention hall (at least on PBS) revealed a lot of dour faces (unanimated, unsmiling, often blank). It was like some strange Stepford community. They stood and applauded and hooted at all the right moments, but the in-between spaces were more telling. I missed (and perhaps you have to be there) the wow factor in the room that all the media are declaring was there. This is literally the fifth best convention speech I’ve heard in the last two weeks–at best. Sure, the base is primed (did we really imagine they wouldn’t be as we moved closer to November), but the undecided and those independents? I’m not so sure.
Misogynist!
USA! USA! USA!
These moral bullies have been touting their direct line to God and their adherence to “family values” since at least Reagan. But now when their VP choice has a 17 year old kid with a baby, the topic’s off limits. huh? just wait until you hear the flood of small-town America and family values piety that comes down the pike in the next month. you may never stop throwing up.
I’m sorry, I know you can’t hear a flood of piety coming down the pike. Why don’t you go stick your head in the river of beer flowing over your grandmother’s paisley shawl?
eh, michael–are you skipping this season’s pigskin pick’em???
I hope you are right, Jeff. I am appalled, first at the choice of Palin and then, even more, at the attempts to justify that choice, and to claim foul play at any criticism of the choice. Just when I thought the Republicans couldn’t get much lower, they show an almost awe inspiring capacity for cynicism. I have been lukewarm about Obama, but there is nothing like a view of the Republican Party up close and personal to make you a believer in change (and in the crucial and unique role that Jon Stewart now plays in keeping me sane).
John–I’m in. prepare to suffer.
Looking at your picks, the only thing I’ll be suffering from is hysterics.
Every one a Maserati!
John–it sounds painful. I recommend Rectocaine.
hope hanna is treating you well, john.
Hanna caused us no problems. Just a lot of rain. The winds knocked over our tomato plants, but that’s about it.
As it was the last time we closed down the college, it was a little too much ado about close to nothing.
we are getting a bit tense about ike.