Once

I haven't talked about film in awhile and last night I rewatched 'Once' and I fell in love with it all over again, so here I go.

Once is the film that won Best Original Song at this year's Oscars, and it's an interesting film not only because it's a low-budget indie film that made it big, but also because the actors are not really actors at all: they are musicians who were hired not only to act, but also to write all the music. That's a pretty cool situation to be in because I've never heard of a film's actors winning the Oscar for Best Song.

The film features Glen Hansard (of Ireland's rock band The Frames) and Markéta Irglová, a Czech musician who sometimes collaborates with Hansard under the name The Swell Season. In the film, both are struggling musicians who happen upon each other on the street one day and spend the next few weeks getting to know each other while playing music, eventually collaborating with some other musicians to lay down some tracks for Hansard's character (nobody in the film has a name: Hansard is credited as "Guy" and Irglová as "Girl"). Although the film is only an hour and a half, it manages not only to give us insight into what it means to barely get by, but also allows us to realistically see how beautiful constructing music can be. The characters develop so fully and the plot is natural and realistic: if Once had been a blockbuster hit (it wasn't; the entire film was shot in seventeen days for $160,000) it would have involved the characters finding lucky breaks, making millions, and definatly would have featured some sort of sex scene. Thankfully, it isn't like that at all, and it's so much more satisfying by the time the credits roll.

I don't want to give much more away because it's such a pleasant suprise to sit down and turn it on. The soundtrack is also available now, and I definatly recommend it.

Also, here's the clip of Irglová's acceptance speech at the Oscars - she was cut off by the orchestra, but Jon Stewart brought her back out to finish her speech, which was one of the best of the night. http://youtube.com/watch?v=qx8yLvb0gZM