Once

As the Celtic Sage has mentioned before British Cinemas are becoming a bit like British Pubs – No Go Areas for the Grown Ups of the land. The Pubs are full of one armed bandits, inane music played loudly, (normally through bad speakers to maximise the pain) and “Big Screen” sports just in case anybody with a mental age of 12+ is tempted to engage in the dying art of conversation. Their menus are based on pre-fab meals off the weekly delivery truck designed to be prepared by people who are not trained to cook. Perhaps it is these places Jamie Oliver had in mind when he said recently "We have lost our traditions," and that Britain's "poverty shows in the way they feed themselves." Basically, he says they do so by spending everything on technology and booze, rather than meals around the dinner table. At the cinema multiplexes there is an increasing diet of main stream popcorn movies and the more screens they have; conversely the less selection there appears to be in reality.

So I was delighted to catch the indie low budget Irish Movie “Once”, which is shot in Dublin, which has been featured at the Sundance Festival and won an Academy Award for Best Original Song. There is much of "fact follows fiction” about Once as the plot of Irish Songwriter meets naïve but talented Czech girl in Dublin and collaborate on writing / performing has been mimicked in the real world where the main actors Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglová have become an item and won an Oscar and Grammy for their music thereby echoing the tale in the movie.

The Movie tale is this; A Dublin busker falls for the naive charms of a Czech immigrant in John Carney and Glen Hansard's lyrical love story. Writer and director John Carney says he wanted to make a "visual album" with Once, and the result is an innovative piece of musical cinema. Casting musicians rather than actors in the main roles and telling the story for the most part with songs rather than dialogue, he ties film and music together to make something that looks and sounds nothing like a conventional musical.

Shot for only €130,000 ($160,000), the film has been very successful, earning substantial per-screen box office averages in the United States. It received extremely enthusiastic reviews and awards such as the 2007 Independent Spirit Award for best foreign film. Hansard and Irglová's song "Falling Slowly" received a 2007 Academy Award for Best Original Song and the soundtrack as a whole also received a Grammy nomination. Produced with a shoestring budget, about 75% of the budget was funded by Bord Scannán na hÉireann (The Irish Film Board), plus some of Carney's own money. The director gave his salary to the two stars, and promised a share of the back-end for everyone if the film was a success. Shot with a skeleton crew on a 17-day shoot, the filmmakers saved money by using natural light and shooting at friends' houses. The musical party scene was filmed in Hansard's own flat, with his personal friends playing the partygoers/musicians — his mother, Catherine Hansard, is briefly featured singing solo. The Dublin street scenes were done without permits and with a long lens so that many passers-by didn't even realize that a film was being made. The long lens also helped the non-professional actors relax and forget about the camera, and some of the dialogue ended up being improvised.


Killiney Hill overlooking Dublin Bay

Neither of the main characters were professional actors and they don’t even have names in the credits - Glen Hansard is listed as “Guy” and Marketa Irglová is listed as “Girl”. Glen Hansard is the lead singer of Irish rock group The Frames, and here he plays a Dublin busker with holes in his guitar and a sad song in his heart. When he meets a nameless Czech immigrant girl (Marketa Irglová) and befriends her, they begin to play music together and a tentative but tender relationship blossoms. Like the best works of art, John Carney’s Once is both melancholy and beautiful, a fragile poem that seems almost too delicate for the big screen. So modest it doesn’t even bother to name its characters, the movie nevertheless imparts a near-miraculous wealth of information in the position of a camera and the dressing of a set. Once is a rarity: a musical more concerned with music than costumes and a love story more interested in love than sex. At a time when most musicals rely primarily on bombast and big names, this tiny gem is an object lesson in how to do things right.

Any film that has two people breaking into song in a silent music shop requires the boundaries of realism to be stretched; Hansard and Irglová as the eccentric Czech girl carry it off with a captivating charm. There's a happy naivety to their acting that makes it clear they are not professionals, and the pair make a virtue of their obvious inexperience. For example, Hansard strums out a song on his guitar, which Irglová listens to once and the two promptly knock out a cracking duet. It's so effortlessly and naturally performed by both actors that it appears strangely unaffected, and is quite lovely to watch. Songs are written, a studio is found and a demo tape is made; but instead of being simply the backdrop to a love affair, the film’s music, at once ethereal and shattering, is also its point. Each protagonist is a catalyst for the other, and though you may think you’re watching a heart-on-its-sleeve romance, the truth is quite different and, like life, infinitely more complex. Some of the storyline is both amusing but at the same time incredulous, such as when she brings him a Hoover to repair which becomes an excuse for lunch which leads to them going back to his flat and playing music! And like all the greatest love stories, the movie is a story of unrequited loves, of might have beens, of roads not travelled for they turn away from each other, he to his “ex” who has moved to London, she to the father of her two year old child. Yet the lingering impression is that they have done the wrong thing for the right reasons that they have sublimated their instincts to a greater good. A bonus was seeing some of the Auld Town in the locations, Glen Hansard strolling up Fitzgibbon Street past the Garda Station, Sandymount, Killiney Hill Park and the hostel on Mountjoy Square not to mention Dunnes Stores in Grafton Street!

An unexpected hit at Sundance in 2007 (where it won the Audience Award for best drama), Once works by balancing the alluring charm of its bittersweet story with the scruffy realism of Dublin street life epitomised by the relationship between the street singer in his no hope “day job” repairing vacuum cleaners and the single mother immigrant living in a hostel with her mother and child and doing cleaning and selling flowers to scrape by. The songs - haunting melodies of agony tinged with a tentative hopefulness - pair perfectly with the film’s cobblestone streets and gloomy bed sits. Blasting the emotions the couple is too repressed to convey any other way, the music allows the actors to develop a natural affinity for their characters (aside from Hansard’s small role in The Commitments, neither has acted before). Irglová - just 17 at the time of filming and with limited English - found her role especially challenging, though her performance blends seamlessly into the film’s overall insistence on the charm of imperfection.


Grafton Street, Dublin.

But the occasional unreality of the plot pales beside the real life personal and musical journey of Hansard and Irglová, for while “Once” doesn’t have the edge of the Commitments life has mirrored fiction as the then 19 year old Marketa Irglová makes clear in her Oscar acceptance speech for Best Original Song for "Falling Slowly";

“Hi everyone. I just want to thank you so much. This is such a big deal, not only for us, but for all other independent musicians and artists that spend most of their time struggling, and this, the fact that we’re standing here tonight, the fact that we’re able to hold this, it’s just the proof that no matter how far out your dreams are, it’s possible. And, you know, fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up. And this song was written from a perspective of hope, and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are. And so thank you so much, who helped us along way. Thank you.”

By the end of 2007, this Irish indie budget movie shot “on the hoof” for $160,000 had grossed $14 million at the box office. Due to the stranglehold of the Great British multiplexes on distribution you will have to catch it at a DVD player near you soon.