#99: Once [dir. John Carney, 2007]
The perfect song, the imperfect timing
Once is one of a few films on this list with memorable Academy Awards snafus, and that is frankly how the movie got on my radar. I and everyone else I knew had assumed that Enchanted was going to run away with the Best Original Song Oscar purely because it was nominated for three of the five possible spots, but when the award actually went to the quiet, lovely song that none of us had heard before it was both a surprise and a relief – songs like “Falling Slowly” didn’t win that award, particularly in 2007. And then the duo who performed, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, both elated, make their way to the stage to make their speeches. Glen is effusive and brief in his thanks, leaving space for Marketa to speak. She steps up to the microphone and… the music plays her off before she can utter a single word.
But the moment still resonated – I had to know more about Once, a movie that I hadn’t even heard of before the nomination announcements (I was only 18 at the time, I hadn’t learned how to pay attention to the broader independent slate yet). Luckily for me it was on one of the movie channels not long after, so the next time I was home from college I made a point to sit down and watch. I didn’t look up the plot, I didn’t listen to the rest of the soundtrack. I found myself wanting to go in cold for a movie I knew nothing about, an experience I now seek out but, at the time, was unusual for me.
In my late-teenage naïveté I desperately wanted to be a successful musician. I played my guitar in whatever free time I had that wasn’t spent watching movies or going out with friends. I played open mics, I tried (and failed) to form bands, I wrote song after song after song pouring my overwhelming and hormone-laced emotions into each one. Playing music was one of the best escapes I’ve ever found in my life, and to this day it is still my go-to stress relief when I truly need a release. But at that time, I both couldn’t imagine wanting to do anything else nor did I have any clue how to get off the ground.
So, when I started up Once and it opened with Glen playing solo acoustic guitar on the walking streets of Dublin to an audience of passing no ones I was struck – was this movie about me? My American ears hadn’t adjusted yet to the thick Irish accents, but I didn’t need to understand the conversation between him and the man trying to steal his beaten-up guitar to understand two people finding their own ways through struggle. I assumed at this point it was just a movie about a struggling musician trying to make it, I’ve seen this before but I’ll definitely enjoy it.
Then the opening credits start, and The Guy that the audience is all gone, he’s free to release all of his emotion and he plays “Say It to Me Now”, a song that still haunts me to this day. He isn’t singing so much as pleading, something I can instantly recognize as heartbreak. He gets louder, practically screaming, and the camera moves in until we can see his face, holding back tears just enough to get the words out. As he finishes, slowing and calming down, the camera moves away again, and we see that he is no longer alone, but has an audience of one – The Girl applauds and their friendship begins.
There’s an irony in the Academy orchestra playing off one of the two winners who wrote a beautiful song for a film about two people trying to find their musical voice, and one where The Guy is so caught up in his own story that he doesn’t fully hear The Girl for much of the duration. He is too hung up on his ex, now living in London and moving her own life forward. For much of this film he’s talking through her, and this miscommunication nearly derails their entire journey. In a sceneI still cringe at to this day, he tries to convince her to stay the night at his place after just one day together, even though it has been clear that she doesn’t want to.
It is only through music where the two can really communicate, and it’s clear in the most famous scene from the film and the song that won the Oscar. It’s mesmerizing watching these two strangers sitting at a piano in a shop, playing a song only one of them actually knows (“Falling Slowly”), and never missing a beat. She learns the words and begins to harmonize and by the end it’s like they were meant to be. The song is the man at his most intimate, as he’s made clear that he never plays his originals to anyone. We see the music store owner react positively to the music, something many others will do without either main character noticing.
From there the man shares some of his personal demos with the woman, and she offers to write lyrics to one he hasn’t been able to complete (“If You Want Me”). She can’t stop working on it to the point where the CD player runs out of batteries and she leaves in the middle of the night to get more. On her walk back home she puts the song back on and sings the words, and a new song is born. The next morning, the man looks at pictures of his ex and begins writing another intimate song (“Lies”) and we hear it in full as the montage of flashbacks plays both on the computer screen and on ours. In just twelve hours we’ve watched two people channel their emotions into music, but also write opposite ends of the same story.
Even as their attraction grows, the woman recognizes that the man still pines for his ex (and that, maybe, he was more at fault for the breakup than he’s willing to admit outside of his new song). We learn, too, that she is married to a man who has so far refused to move from the Czech Republic to help her raise their daughter in Dublin. Their musical relationships may be blossoming, but it is obvious that their real-world one is far too tangled up elsewhere.
My favorite stretch Once, the part where this became one of my all-time favorites, is when the two set out to record a full demo of the songs. The man has decided he’s going to finally go to London to try to win back his ex, and the woman believes the songs are what will do it. They get a loan, gather some street musicians, rehearse, and book their studio time – a full weekend of just recording. The engineer is nonplussed, especially as their warmups sound like complete garbage. But the power of the song they play shines through, one we’ve only heard snippets of to this point and the actual best song in the entire movie. “When Your Mind’s Made Up”.
Any musician watching will clock just how weird the song is when the man mentions it’ll be in 5/4 time – 5 beats for every measure is not common by any stretch of the imagination. Usually a song written with this time signature sounds awkward to the naked ear, something that is often intentional. But as soon as the song begins it feels more natural than anything else and the musicians build and build and build until the song explodes. The engineer, expecting a group of untalented weirdos, sits up and pays attention. He doesn’t need to hear more, he knows this is something special.
About nine months after watching this film I happened to be lucky enough to record some of my own songs in a studio with a close friend. We’d spent years writing songs together, some serious and some not, and this was our chance to put something together we were really proud of. The engineer was encouraging and made the process easy, and we continued working on these songs in the studio over the next few months. I never stopped thinking back to those scenes in Once – the magic of hearing your own work coming together and playing it back. In the studio you can discover new harmonies, different accents, and finally take the song in your head and make it a reality.
The magic of recording music is after it’s done, playing it for others. You’ve worked so hard on translating the weird notes in your brain and now someone else gets to enjoy them. When we see the man play his record for his father, who up until now has not indicated he really gets his son’s music, he’s on the verge of tears he won’t actually let fall. He just tells his son it’s fucking brilliant and asks him to play it again immediately.
As with many great films, the ending is bittersweet. The woman, inspired by the man’s courage to go to London, finally convinces her husband to move to Dublin. They both know that there will not be anything but a professional relationship between each other, even if both have fallen in love. The more important thing is that the music they created together helped them repair the other relationships in their lives (we can tell from a phone conversation that the man’s ex has wanted him to come to London for a while now). They’ll always have that time when they made beautiful music together, once.
Back at the Academy Awards, the snafu wasn’t quite over. Host Jon Stewart recognized, as the rest of us did, that Marketa had wanted to say something (even if it was just the solitary “thank you” that she claimed). In the manner of a true mensch, Jon interrupted the program in order to allow Marketa her chance to speak and, since she had nothing prepared and the spotlight was on her, she spoke as from the heart as any Oscar winner ever has. She talked about the importance of art, of music, and of dreams coming true. As an aspiring musician, I found it incredibly moving.
Throughout the movie, they touch more lives than they will ever know. The songs make everyone around them happier. They enjoy a night with a music collective and just jam until dawn. They made a jaded engineer believe that there was still great music being made in that small studio. And when they needed the money, it was the banker’s generosity that allowed them to get a loan with nothing but a dream for collateral. It wasn’t a kindness that came from nowhere, it was the banker’s failed dream of becoming a musician himself that made it possible. He heard the songs and knew it was something great, and he wanted to help someone else realize the dream he knew he’d never achieve. That’s the power of a great song.