lirazel | Falling Slowly

If you haven’t seen the movie Once yet and it’s playing anywhere near you, drop what you’re doing and go see it immediately. I promise you your life will be better once you have.

This is one of the most beautiful, true, fragile movies I’ve seen in years. It's the least "Hollywood" of any film I've seen in a very long time--this film could never have been made in America. It was made for something like $100,000 in 17 days in Dublin, starring Glen Hansard of The Frames and Marketa Irglova, a Czech singer, and directed and written by John Carney.

We never learn the names of either of their characters—in the credits, they’re just called “Guy” and “Girl”—but the Guy is a busker on a street corner and the Girl stops by to talk about his music one day.

Basically, this movie is about them making beautiful music together. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a movie that wasn’t technically a musical that integrates music as beautifully as this one does—all the music is part of the plot and the characters and the mood, and it’s all gorgeous. The first thing I did when I got home from the theater was order the soundtrack.

I’d heard the film called “Before Sunrise with Music,” which is actually the reason that I decided to see it (that and the lovely review “Salon” gave it). And that isn’t a bad description, actually. Just like Linklater’s films, nothing technically happens and the focus of the movie is these two characters. But unlike Sunrise, there’s a harsher edge of reality about this film that arises from these characters’ social class. These people are what most of us in North America would most definitely call “poor,” and they often have to make sacrifices for the things they need, just like real people. But Carney doesn’t milk those moments and make them about poverty. This movie is about music and two people who make it together.

I love this movie. I love every single delicate moment of it. I love the way I felt as though if I breathed on it, it would shatter--but it never did. I love the music and the characters and the way it made me feel.

It reminded me why I love life.