Lately, I've been in a writing slump. By lately, I mean the past year or so. I guess I've just been rather busy and life's been unemotional. Or I grew up, haha.
I'm making this post because I just watched a movie that made me want to start writing again and also to totally compose some songs on guitar.
Once is simply one of the most amazing movies I've watched in years. I'm not going to write a review or anything, but just my impressions and what really blew my mind.
In a sense, it's a musical, if you define musical as something with songs played through the movie in full length. There is a mastery in the way these songs are presented. Instead of choppy and strange transitions of suddenly breaking out into song at strangely opportune times, the songs blend into the normal progression and presentation of the movie. The quality of the movie itself is like something of a real life view. There is no dynamic stage lighting. Everything is real and shot on site, which adds more to the intimacy of the affair. There is a genuine nervous pause before the beginning of each song which is beautifully, honestly played by the singers/songwriters/stars of the movie, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. The acting is great in that the leads don't seem to be acting at all. Everything feels natural, as if it were a documentary or that you were simply an observer of their happenings.
The story is simple, boy meets girl on street and they begin their experiences playing music together whilst developing a relationship. However, they are both very realistic and human characters. The music is inextricably woven into their stories. Hansard's character, the Irish busker, sings and writes songs dealing with the heartache he feels in the aftermath of a break-up in which he was very much so in love, while Irglova's character, a Czech immigrant living with her young daughter and apart from her husband who is still in the Czech Republic, creates songs expressing her own anguish in being apart from her husband and having to raise her daughter without a father.
What, I believe, really makes the movie is the ending, which I won't spoil, but will simply say that there is such honesty and realism in the ending and the interaction between the two leads that makes it more delicate than many romance movies.
Buy this movie, watch this movie, and then buy the soundtrack. Then go watch it again. Each and every time you'll re listen to the soundtrack, you'll relive the splendor that is this movie. I can't recommend this enough.
Post a Comment