Once

***SPOILERS***

How come you don't play during the daytime? I see you here everyday.

During the daytime people would want to hear songs that they know, just songs that they recognize. I play these songs at night or I wouldn't make any money. People wouldn't listen.

I listen.

It was like she knew it from the moment she saw him. He, a rather diligent busker, urgently strumming his guitar and crying out his wounded lyrics on the streets of Dublin. She approaches, offers her critiques. He seems bothered, tries to politely blow her off. She learns that his main source of income derives from tinkering in a vacuum store. She has a broken down Hoover. Maybe she can bring it by sometime.

She drags the Hoover through the city like a reluctant pet. She meets the musician's father, the owner of the vacuum shop. The musician follows her to a music store. There's a piano there, and the manager lets her play anytime she wants. She plays quite well, even if the instrument itself is a bit out of tune. Would he mind playing along on his guitar, she asks. Reluctantly, he plays. They play. A collaboration is born. She knew it from the first time she saw him.

We never learn the names of the guitarist (Glen Hansard, leader of the real-life band, The Frames) and the pianist (Marketa Irglova). They are just the "guy" and "girl." This is not some sort of existential conceit, however, like perhaps Walter Hill had attempted thirty years earlier in THE DRIVER. No, I think writer/director John Carney wanted to say something here. The "girl" is like a ghost, possibly an angel. She will pass in and out of the "guy"'s life quickly. Well, at least physically. I don't believe she will leave his thoughts any time soon.

But while she is around, she will be the muse, the catalyst for the guy to finally quit dreaming and begin acting. He's in a real rut, what with his nursing the wounds over a girlfriend who moved to London and all. He's lonely, still smitten. After the guy and girl spend the day together, she ends up in his bedroom. In a careless moment, he asks her to spend the night. The awkwardness is unbearable. She leaves, he beats himself up.

But he finds her the next day. The collaboration resumes. They decide to rent a recording studio after somehow getting a fairly significant loan. The "girl" turns out to have quite a savvy for business. What a perfect partner for a stalled artist! You want her in your corner.

They recruit some street musicians and after their initial doubts ("we only play 'Lizies'"), a fairly tight little unit cuts the guy's ambitious, heartrending tunes. Leading up to and during this eventful weekend, the guy and girl share lots of tender moments, many expressed through songs. They, fall in love? We're not sure. And there are problems. She has an estranged husband back in Czechleslavakia, and of course he's still pining for his old love.

 

But, there's a bond, a deep one. We see it form before our eyes. The way they look at each other. We see her excitement when he asks her to write lyrics to one of his instrumentals. She's so engrossed that she runs out in the middle of the night to get new batteries so she can continue to listen, and compose. In one of my favorite scenes, the girl walks home and sings her new lyrics out loud, imaging the guy singing a duet with her. That's how she hears it, and how we get to hear it. Even though the guy has yet to hear it! We're part of the process.

But the lyrics she produces are just as wounded as his. They are born from her own previous romantic disappointments. In another fabulous moment, the guy and girl sit at a piano in the studio while she plays one of her own compositions. She breaks down before she can finish. In a lesser film, we would see these two look longingly into each other's irises and kiss and fall into bed at this point. But ONCE is a special film. A film that allows the characters to actually separate at the end, to right the messes they had started with other partners. It is bittersweet, but it is just right.

 

In the end, we see the girl, staring out of her apartment window, perhaps thinking of the guy, who will always be part of her. The last we see of the guy, he is making his way through turnstiles in London, on his way to his love, but still beaming. The girl is in his thoughts, too. His inspiration. To move forward, and perhaps reclaim what he had lost. She cared enough to know what was best for him. An act of selflessness rarely seen. I wanted to hug this movie.