Movie Review: Once (2007)

You know what? This is exactly why I love to watch non-mainstream movies: small independent production and foreign movies that don’t really get much exposure on the US market. All of this so I can find little GEMS like the Irish modern day musical Once, directed and written by John Carney. The movie was shot for only about $160K which makes the overall effort even more remarkable!

The film stars Glen Hansard (as unnamed hero), and Marketa Irglova (unnamed girl). Both are professional musicians in real life and composed and sang all the songs in the movie. Although they aren’t professional actors, they did a solid job acting and their chemistry felt real and was convincing. The movie was shot with hand-held cameras in the streets of Dublin and it gives the movie a very particular documentary-raw feel to it.

Once is at heart a simple romantic movie inside a musical: a man meets a woman in the street and they make music together to heal the pain inside them. The refreshing thing about Once is that it is completely Hollywood cheese-free! The music and rendition of the songs are amazingly moving and did I tell you they made the movie on a nearly inexistant budget??!! The ending of the movie was perfect, completely the opposite of what you would find in a Hollywood movie. Thank you Cinema Gods for Once!