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Once in a lifetime

A genuinely small hit hits town
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 31st, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Street scene. Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová meet on Dublin's streets in Once.
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Once

Directed by John Carney
With Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová

The film’s budget was minuscule, and it shows. The leads are not professionals, and have even been disparaging of their own acting skills. Structurally, the story offers no classic “journey” for either its characters or its audience, and the whole ends on a note hanging in the air. So why has the small Irish film Once become such a sensation?
By its very genuineness and earnestness, Once has won over the critics and punters, even garnering an award from Sundance. Perhaps part of its allure is that, as we are trapped in times that seem stranger than fiction, audiences have been starved for the “real,” be it in the form of documentaries (when has the film documentary ever enjoyed such popularity?), or lowbrow reality television. Once is a simple slice of life lacking, as life itself does, tidy plotting and firm answers.
What story there is is simply told: A busker playing his guitar on the streets of Dublin meets a young Czech woman who works the streets selling flowers. She tells him that she’s a musician too, and invites him along to a music shop where the owner allows her to play his floor-model pianos during lunch hour. The two begin to play together, and suddenly realize they are kindred souls.
This man and woman, never given names, will exchange songs with each other, jam in each other’s houses and begin rounding up some fellow musicians to cut a demo CD of their work.
Although they fall in love, they both check their passions from going too far, for various reasons. In fact, after the CD is finished, they will go their separate ways. Will their songs be a hit? Will they find a label or producer to back them? Will they ever be free of other personal entanglements to be together? The film provides no clues, nor has it any interest in the questions. The whole point is that two very talented musicians happened to meet … once.
Other than some television work, director John Carney, the former bassist for the Irish band The Frames, has few credits behind a camera. Still, within a budget rumored to be less than £100,000 ($205,000/3.8 million Kč), and with only 17 days to shoot, including a few location shots in Dublin for which he had no permit, he’s managed to do much.
Originally, Once enjoyed a larger budget, when it looked as if the popular Irish actor Cillian Murphy would play the lead (Murphy, prior to his screen fame, was a promising singer). Without Murphy, who pulled out of the project due to artistic differences, Carney turned to his ex-band mate Glen Hansard, whose prior film work included a stint in Alan Parker’s film The Commitments. It was a sound move.
As Carney said in an interview, “Though I was initially thinking of using a good actor who could half-sing, I quickly realized I should do it the other way around, and get a good singer who could half-act.”
Hansard may not be a natural actor, though he has a refreshing naturalness about him. But the man can sing, and it’s his voice, which can slip from bedroom whisper to raw-wound howl, that drives Once. Opposite him is the Czech pianist and singer Markéta Irglová, who, if anything, seems even less confident before a camera. Yet, when these two are immersed in one of their own compositions, the absence of RADA or DAMU certification becomes irrelevant.
Carney creates some beautifully composed shots, such as the two musicians leaving their first jam session together with the woman dragging her damaged vacuum cleaner behind her down a Dublin shopping street. The script sounds mostly improvisational, packed with clichés and commonalities — in other words, natural speech, adding to the film’s realism.
Yet it’s the music of Hansard and Irglová that really gives voice to this small film, and makes it worth visiting twice.
    

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (31/10/2007):

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