Once

I found out about this movie in a rather roundabout fashion. Not so long ago I was having issues with insomnia where I couldn’t fall asleep until 5 am. During this time I found a website that was powered by users who would post songs that were nice and calm; perfect songs to fall asleep to. One of the songs I found was called “Lies” by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. I figured they were a band or something and thought nothing of it. Anyways I loved the song and later found out it was from this movie. After doing some research I found out that the two wrote all the music for the movie which they won an Oscar for in 2007 I think.

Moving on…

It had been chilling near the top of my Netflix queue for months but I never could quite pull the trigger. Don’t know why. Maybe because the synopsis wasn’t terribly captivating:

In this charming contemporary musical helmed by John Carney, a street musician (Glen Hansard) in Dublin, Ireland, strikes up a friendship with a migrant street hawker (Markéta Irglová), and the duo ends up composing and recording a series of songs over the course of a week. The tunes mirror their burgeoning romance and help the young busker release his musical passions. The actors wrote the tunes they perform, winning an Oscar for their efforts.

I usually don’t do well with movies that are considered “charming”. I want someone to eventually get shot, stabbed, arrowed or told to fuck off at some point in the movies I watch. The really good ones can pull all of these off in a tidy 2-minute span. But still, I did love that song…

Finally I caved.

Boy am I glad I remember to use that thing that beats in my ribcage occasionally. There was something about this movie that made me wish I was a poor Irish street musician living with the crushing misery of a love lost. Because when the years of depression finally got me down enough an indescribably adorable Czech woman would show up and change my life.

At the risk of getting too schmaltzy I will just say that the relationship portrayed by the two is amazing. They are brought together by a love of music, which is really why I was drawn to it after all. Their cultural differences are forgotten with her at the piano and he at the guitar.

It’s not a musical, per se. That is another way in which the Netflix description is off. A musical is something with choreographed dance numbers where everyone on an entire city block for some reason knows the words to a song that someone randomly started singing on the sidewalk supposedly off the top of their head.

The music in this movie plays a part in explaining the story without a half hour of spoken dialogue about the past. He sings a song about his girlfriend that destroyed him; she sings about the extremely different path that her life took while with her husband. It works. For me at least.

If you love intense, lyrical music and a believable love story you will probably like this. Plus hearing his Irish accent say “cool” and her Czech accent say “mother” is worth the ticket price alone.

Oh, and prepare to fall in love with the girl. Goddammit. I don’t know if you’ll love the movie as much as I do, for which I am sorry…for you. I am in love with it. It was exactly what I needed to see at the moment I saw it. I watched it twice and will watch it many times more when I buy it.

And the music isn’t just ‘there’. The music is (to quote his father in the movie) “fucking brilliant.” You will remember parts of this long after it ends. Or at least I hope you will.

Score – 93