Flick of The Day: Once

With the news earlier this week that the Broadway adaptation of John Carney's Once had been nominated for 11 Tony Awards, it felt like just the right time to revisit the original film which garnered such praise and a richly deserved Oscar win for Glen Hansard's music. Shot on a budget of €150,000 and financed by the Irish Film Board, it is a romantic tale of music and the bonds it forms between people and perhaps more than that a time capsule of Dublin at the height of the Celtic tiger boom.

Once

A Dublin busker player by Hansard splits his time between helping out in his father's vacuum repair shop and practising and playing his own songs on Grafton street. One day he meets a young immigrant played by Marketa Irglova who makes her living selling flowers and cleaning houses. She quizzes him about his songs and who he wrote them for and he offers to fix her broken vacuum cleaner. Before long we learn that our guy had his heart broken by his ex-girlfriend and has lived with his father since the death of his mother the previous year. The girl is separated from her Czech husband and lives with her young daughter and mother in a small flat in Mountjoy Square on the city's north side. They bond through their love of music and the girl urges the guy to take his music to a wider audience. A small simple tale of the once in a lifetime meeting between two people who catch each other at just the right time.

There is an almost fairytale quality to this film telling as it does the tale of off chance meeting between two unnamed people on the streets of Ireland's capital. John Carney's sparse script is a love story that doesn't rely on the usual tropes of the genre but rather builds itself around the song writing ability of Glen Hansard. This is an inspired decision for Hansard is one of the most talented and least appreciated Irish songwriters of the last 20 years. It is criminal that he has not had the critical success of his contemporaries and yet perhaps this is his just desserts. Once brought his work to a much wider audience, earned him an Academy Award with Marketa Irglova and opened up a world of opportunities including opening for Eddie Vedder on his current tour.

It is six years since the film was shot on a shoestring over the course of 19 days in Dublin and even in that limited timespan, this feels like a timepiece. Shot at the height of the boom years when the sight of new immigrants coming to Dublin was a common one, the direction of migration has very much reversed with the downturn. Despite the fact that neither Hansard and Irglova are trained actors, they deliver believable and measured performances throughout, inhabiting roles that are made for them.

This really is a gem of a movie. It is simple, sweet and and to the point and delivers a memorable tale of romance in modern times while the musicianship of Hansard and Irglova carry the film over the line. A musical for people who don't like musicals.