I won't.

The narrative (or "story") of the movie isn't important, and it shouldn't be docked because of a perceived deficiency in it. The content of Once is found in the music and the camera. If you need a typical narrative structure to facilitate your enjoyment of a movie --- eek!.

I won't.

The narrative (or "story") of the movie isn't important, and it shouldn't be docked because of a perceived deficiency in it. The content of Once is found in the music and the camera. If you need a typical narrative structure to facilitate your enjoyment of a movie --- eek!.

.

Oh and Christian: apparently, 3 weeks ago they both came to the landmark and performed in that wine lounge.

WHAT?!!?

I'd disagree with that, but if Once can get equally big fans for its style as well as its meat, it might just be unstoppable. Both corners covered!

B+


Well, I went in with pretty high expectations and while I didn't come out disappointed, I also wasn't nearly as blown away as some people were here (my girlfriend really loved it, though).

irst of all, while I knew that this movie would be primarily about the songs and the music, I didn't actually expect it to have THAT many songs in it. Basically the song-to-dialogue ration seemed to be 4:1 or so. Thank God the songs all ranged from decent to great, so I didn't mind as much, but it was still something I had to get used to. As for the storyline, I thought it was really well-done. Someone mentioned the word "real" here and that's exactly how it felt to me. It was a very real romance with a sadly real ending to. Very often it verged on clichéd and fantasy, but it never actually crossed the line. There's no happy ending in a typical sense of the word, but it is not very sad either (Guy goes to London finally, Girl gets her piano and husband back). The romance is real (doesn't end happily for the two), yet some bits are clichéd (how often would it happen this way and get this far anyway after a coincidental talk in the streets). I thought the movie did a very fine job walking this fine line between harsh reality and romantic fantasy.

That said, unlike many others here for most of the time I just failed to connect with the characters. The relationshi is well-built and all, yet for most of the film I felt no chemistry between the leads. You know what, though? As the ending arrived and Guy has to leave Dublin and can't even say a proper goodbye to girl...that's when it hit me hard and made me realize how much chemistry they've had throughout. It was just such a gradual development that I didn't noice until the very end which left me feeling a bit sad, yet happy at the same time.

The performances by our leads are good, but I just say that Markéta Irglová outshined Glen hansard in al of the scenes there were in together. There's some kind of an innocent charm to her, I'm not sure I can put it into words. (by the way, I was very surprised to find out that she was just 18 when shooting this film! She came across as somewhat older and I'd have never realized that the age difference between her and Hansard is actually 18 years). Hansard's performance was quite standard.

As for the songs, "Falling Slowly" is the CLEAR stand-out. The scene when they were play/sing it together is just so beautiful. I'm very happy it won the Oscar, what a well-deserving win! Loved it. The other songs in the film are, well, some are good, othersjust okay. I think there were too many of them in the film, but some here will probably disagree. I wish the thing had more dialogue, but I guess that was the point of the film, to not have much of it and convey all the feelings through music. It's an interesting approach, but also one I justdon't fully agree with.

Overall, it looks like my review almost sounds a bit better than my grade, so I definitely need to revisit this movie at some later point before I can settle on my final grade.