Musicians have their charm, but not in this bland excuse for a musical.


by Julie Sesnovich

This movie does not need to exist.

Let me now propose and defend what may seem like an unnecessarily harsh assessment. Once is an 86-minute little truffle from first-time director and former musician John Carney, featuring musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova singing and playing their way through a nonexistent plot. It’s a love story where nobody falls in love and a musical where the music doesn’t really tell a story. So what’s left? A music video. Last time I checked, music videos get pretty tedious when they clock in at 86 minutes. And I’ve seen plenty of music videos that have more plot than this “boy meets girl, they record music, and then retreat back to their exes” junk.

The music is the fundamental problem, in that it ended up blinding the filmmaker and cast to the most important elements of cinema. Carney proudly stated in the DVD bonus features that he wrote an extremely vague script and that sixty percent of the film was the music. Usually that’s fine for a musical, but the issue here is that the music consists of generic love songs that don’t drive the plot. Take a very basic musical, like Aladdin The songs are about genies, magic carpet rides, and deserts — in other words, specific to the film and descriptive, so they don’t feel forced. The director of Once made it clear that this film is just a showcase for the songs. Don’t get me the wrong, the music itself is amazing and beautiful, and I promptly downloaded several songs after watching the film. However, there’s another form of media specifically designed for that kind of thing - it’s called an album.

The stars admit that they haven’t acted before and probably won’t again. The cinematography is digital, mostly hand-held, and ridiculously amateur-looking. The lighting source is obvious in many shots, the shadows are awful, and the colors are muted. I get it: it’s low-budget, verité cinema. However, in order to intentionally make films like that, you first have to know what you’re doing. Alfred Hitchcock could make a scaled-down, cheap-thrill movie like Psycho because he had already demonstrated a clear mastery of the craft. Once just makes Carney seem clumsy behind a camera. Maybe I’m just being cynical, but I don’t find improvisation by non-actors, poorly-framed shots and flaccid storylines to be charming and “indie.”

My dislike of this film was reinforced by what I watched later that night - Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Made in 1964, it’s a candy-colored French musical where every word is sung, every emotion is heartbreaking and every shot is gorgeous. It served as the perfect antidote to Once. I think by their very nature, musicals can’t be amateurish, bleak, and minimalist. Even a macabre and starkly original musical like Sweeney Todd is still lavish, meticulous, and righteously over-the-top. Hell, even Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz, a movie musical about slow death from heart disease, has more life than Once.

Why does this movie not need to exist? Because its only redeeming quality is the music. So go download the soundtrack and don’t bother with the accompanying imagery.

Julie can be reached at jsesnovich@megazinemedia.com