Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Upon a time

After hearing NPR stories and reading a lot of good reviews about Once, I was excited to watch it, but after such buildup I didn't want to dash the hopes I had for it.

Once is great. It is very touching, and I feel like it needed to be done because it is a low-budget indie-ish film that goes a different way than Hollywood romances. It is VERY cute: in one early scene the girl- whose name we never learn- brings her "Hoover sucker" (vacuum) to the guy- whose name we never learn- to fix it, and she ends up rolling it around town. At points its got a cerebral "what is love" sort of feel like Before Sunrise, but those moments do not dominate and are outnumbered by the number of times when the guy and girl share love.

Oh, plot summary, yes. It is about a guy and girl who meet while he is playing his heart out via guitar on the streets of Ireland. Her insistence at him acknowledging her (not in a romantic or sexual way, but more like "I'm not going to take the hints that you want me to leave, lets establish a platonic relationship because you are interesting.") eventually leads to them forming a romantic bond through music and off the movie goes. She helps him make the leap of faith and act on his dream of being a professional musician.

I loved the art of this movie. Multiple scenes are shot like a music video or a reality TV show. It made me want to go out and shoot a movie (I started playing around with the video editing software pre-installed on my computer after watching the movie). In the special features they talk about it being shot like a movie someone would make and that gives it a very real and approachable feel. The style enhances the simplicity of the story, sucking you in as a participant- sort of like being in the audience at a show- rather than as someone merely watching a movie. The principal actors have great chemistry. Lastly- and I hesitate to make this the last word, because music is a central part of the story-, it goes without saying that the music is fantastic (the most popular song from the soundtrack here).

Watch it.

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