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Simply Perfect

Nice effects though.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

I am unable to join - or indeed to understand - what seems to be the universal chorus of adulation for this film. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing the matter with the acting, or the cinematography - the problem is, the plot. There isn't one. It is about a busker who decides he wants to make a demo CD, he gets together a scratch band and they record it. That's it, really. Along the way he befriends a married Czech woman who is waiting for her husband to join her in Dublin, and who plays keyboards in his band. At the end, the busker goes off to London to rejoin his former girlfriend. That's it. End of. The only moment of drama in the whole film comes right at the beginning when a thief tries to take the busker's takings and there is a chase down the street. Aside from that, nothing really happens. Was the demo CD helpful in promoting a musical career for the busker? We never find out. Having made the whole film revolve around the busker's efforts to record this demo, once it was made the director then seems to have lost interest in what happened to it. I don't know if maybe the only point of the film was supposed to be to showcase the music? Well, you either liked that or you didn't. Personally I didn't care for it.

Once is a nice twee film that by and large avoids the 'Oirish' stereotypes and tries to be true to its feelings even though it is bittersweet.The main characters are nameless. He is a busker trying to make a living when someone is not stealing his takings and also repairs vacuum cleaners in his father's repair shop. She is a Czech immigrant who asks him to repair her vacuum cleaner and she also plays piano.Together they meet and decide to produce and record music together, he writes a song to win his ex-girlfriend back who is in London. She has a toddler living with her and her mother as well as a husband back in the Czech republic.The film has been compared to 'Brief Encounter', I see it as an urban, streetwise romantic drama which certainly dangles a sweet love story but also hints that they have other factors that threaten to keep them apart. It is also a small scale film filled with some good songs which elevates the film more than it deserves to as the story is too basic.

Two singer-song writers get to know each other in Dublin. Once you get used to their accents, there is absolutely nothing interesting about either one of them. They seem to write the same song over and over again with the same four-note motif played and sung over and over again. All the fuss and all the awards given this film are prime examples of people bending over backwards to valorize all foreign, indie films over "slick Hollywood" movies. This is my considered opinion as I've watched the film twice now . . . actually one and a half times as I got so bored with the low-key acting and the gratingly repetitious sound track the first time that I only made it about half- way through before giving up. Their tedious songs are touted as brilliant within the film, but I just can't buy into it; the songs are meh and then meh and then more meh. Garsh! They don't even end up together so there isn't even the pallid solace of a true romance.

If you are the type of a person to watch movie to judge beautiful cinematography or look for masterful direction, don't look here. Thats not the only problem with the movie, editing is choppy, the camera setup is boring, blocking is very simple, and it is clear that the stars of the movie Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are not professional actors. So why does this film work so well? Perhaps it's because of the soundtrack recorded by the two stars. Their voices compliment each other perfectly in their tunes and it fits the story. The rough edginess of Hansard's voice blends with the soothing nature of Irglova's. However; if only the songs are what makes "Once" what it is, it would've not have gotten the accolades, awards, and nominations from variety of sources which made me be interested in the movie. So once again, why does this film work? Because of it's mistakes. Once is a romance, and usually movie industry does a poor job in conveying what romance really is. In movies love is too perfect, and beauty is above the truth. In here love is not beautiful, it's awkward, choppy, and unprofessional, that's why it works. The movie does not lose anything because of it's lacklustre qualities, in fact it gains something which many Hollywood movie can't even create, rawness. I heard that the director's next movie "Begin Again" with a similar premise but a bigger budget did not fare as well. While I haven't seen the movie yet (and would love to compare those movies) I assume that the bigger budget got rid of the rawness prominent in "Once." As a film, it lacks a lot. If you show this to your film professor, they will undoubtedly discredit the movie. However; we should not focus on it's lack of cinema techniques and look at what the movie revealed to us. Truth.