lowquality.net

As with most things in my life that I love, it took me awhile to finally get around to watch­ing Once, the film by John Car­ney and star­ring Glen Hansard (of The Frames) and Markéta Irglová. One of the great ben­e­fits of liv­ing in the Ghent neigh­bor­hood of Nor­folk is that I am only a few blocks away from Naro Expanded Video, which is eas­ily the most exten­sive video store in Hamp­ton Roads (and per­haps the snot­ti­est: in order to rent Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I have to remem­ber that, the direc­tor, Terry Gilliam was a mem­ber of Monty Python and despite his being Amer­i­can, all of his films are stacked in the British sec­tion with the other Pythons). When I saw Once sit­ting on the “employee picks” shelf I remem­bered that, when it was in the­atres, this movie was rec­om­mended to me by every­one rang­ing from close friends to casual acquain­tances that I met at ECPI and, as usual, I dragged my feet about going to see it. And, as usual, I regret that.

When Guy (a street musi­cian) meets Girl (a Czech immi­grant who sells roses in the street) for the first time she asks him why he never sings his orig­i­nal mate­r­ial dur­ing the day when peo­ple can hear it and only sing is own songs at night. His answer was one I have said many times: peo­ple don’t want to hear orig­i­nal songs, no mat­ter how good they are. Peo­ple want to hear some­thing they rec­og­nize. She insists peo­ple would lis­ten because it’s a good song (also some­thing I’ve said myself). Their friend­ship ensues from this moment on. To some, music is sacred thing. There are those who would sac­ri­fice a small for­tune for the oppor­tu­nity to hear four notes played by their most admired musi­cal heroes. Guy plays music in the street for pocket change and Girl, unable to afford her own piano, sneaks indul­gent piano ses­sions at a local music shop. They are musi­cians for life, whether they make their careers out of it or not. Once is a love story, and non-musicians and non-artists will enjoy it on that level, it also tran­scends the trap­pings of a typ­i­cal love story. This film is about what peo­ple are will­ing to sac­ri­fice for some­thing as “friv­o­lous” as art. Some can sac­ri­fice every­thing to “make it,” while oth­ers can only go so far. Some­times they sac­ri­fice “mak­ing it,” which is the case of Girl.

Despite her family’s poverty, Girl steals money from her daughter’s piggy bank in order to buy bat­ter­ies for Guy’s portable CD player so she can write lyrics for one of Guy’s songs. This is a small sac­ri­fice, but it is hardly her only sac­ri­fice. At the end of the film, Girl knows that stay­ing with Guy the night before he is sup­posed to leave for Lon­don will risk keep­ing him from leav­ing and keep him from his aspi­ra­tions. Although her fam­ily makes for a rea­son­able excuse, the pos­si­bil­ity of Girl ever leav­ing with him for Lon­don is strained by her oblig­a­tion to take care of her mother and daugh­ter. Even though she admits that she doesn’t love her daughter’s father, she feels the need to have him back in the pic­ture for her daughter’s sake. Maybe, though, Girl uses her fam­ily as an excuse to keep from weigh­ing down Guy. By bring­ing her estranged hus­band back into the pic­ture, it fills the void Guy may aspire to fill him­self. We can only assume this because she never tells Guy that she loves him in words he can under­stand (she says “I love only you” in Czech and refuses to trans­late it for him). This is Girl’s sac­ri­fice for music. Surely, she could be happy with Guy, if she were to keep him in Dublin, which she is very capa­ble of doing.  She knows Guy will be suc­cess­ful, and it seems every­one they come in con­tact with agrees, but only if he keeps the momen­tum he’s cre­ated by record­ing this music and choos­ing to move to Lon­don. She can’t stand in the way of that and she won’t allow her­self to do so.

Guy has no one in his life at the begin­ning of the film except his Dad. He has noth­ing keep­ing him in Dublin, really. He’s really just feel­ing sorry for him­self because of a bro­ken heart (which has also inspired some of his won­der­ful new songs). By the end of the film he has Girl, but she is also the muse from which he draws the inspi­ra­tion to record his music and go to Lon­don and seek out his career (and his ex girl­friend, which, though it is never said, seems to be less and less of a moti­va­tion by the time he leaves). Since it was a girl that got him into his funk to begin with, it is only nat­ural that it be a girl that brings him out of it. Guy sac­ri­fices a pos­si­ble future with Girl, but it seems like maybe he isn’t as will­ing to sac­ri­fice as she is. He seems to be look­ing for a way to sab­o­tage him­self near the end of the film when he invites her back to his place after the record­ing ses­sion and when he tries to visit her before he leaves. He’s look­ing for the oppor­tu­nity to express to her how he feels about her and cre­ate the clas­sic roman­tic cli­max so com­mon in this kind of film, but he doesn’t get the chance. So whether he likes it or not, he is on his way to Lon­don to be a suc­cess­ful musi­cian and live with his old girl­friend. Some­thing he knows he should do, and ulti­mately wants to do, but per­haps isn’t sure about right now. I don’t imag­ine Guy makes a lot of money as a street musi­cian or from work­ing in his father’s vac­uum repair shop so I won­der if buy­ing her the piano wasn’t a huge sac­ri­fice for himself.

I actu­ally had more than one per­son tell me that this movie reminded them of me, which is a cute thing to tell some­one when you see a movie and it def­i­nitely intrigued me a lit­tle. Then when I saw the promo posters I saw a red­headed guy with a beard and a gui­tar and I fig­ured that’s all they were refer­ring to. Maybe that is what they were talk­ing about, but damn if Once doesn’t hit close to home. It is so refresh­ing to see a film made by musi­cians and, to some degree, for musi­cians but is not about the music indus­try or being in a band. It’s so dif­fi­cult to for­get how pure and amaz­ing music can be when you get all wrapped up with play­ing in bands and try­ing to make money. It’s not that music becomes some­thing unde­sir­able, it’s just dif­fer­ent. It’s like being in a rela­tion­ship, the most excit­ing times are usu­ally at the begin­ning when you don’t know any­thing about the per­son, and once the but­ter­flies get out of your stom­ach, things change. They don’t nec­es­sar­ily change for the worst, but they change. This movie is sort of about an requiented romance, but its really more about Guy and Girl falling back in love with music all over again and, even though their time together is brief, they leave an indeli­able mark on each other for the rest of their lives.