Art Review Numero Uno--Once

I love art: music, books, movies, paintings . . . It's amazing to me how influential and inspiring and emotional words on a page, or images on a screen, or some musical notes can be. So I decided I wanted to write about some of the amazing things that I love. I would love to make this a series--a weekly review of some work of art that has amazed me recently. So here's the first of hopefully many.

Once is the story of two musicians who meet coincidentally. It stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. It's an independent film that was shot over 15 days with $150,000. It really is a touching story of how these two people touch each others' lives through collaborating on their music.

I feel like this movie is very much about love, though not in the typical love-story sense. I think it is about how two people can love each other enough to do what's right by the other person and what is right for themselves. It took me a little bit to get into the movie, but the realism with which it was filmed intrigued me. Eventually I felt like I was spying on someone else's life, like I was watching them live without them knowing I was there. The fact that I never found out what the characters' names were made me feel even more like I was watching a little piece of two strangers' lives. The dialogue was natural, like it wasn't scripted or outlined at all. They were simply talking like any normal people having normal conversations. It was so simple and so ordinary, yet so poignant and so significant.

A lot of the movie is dedicated to the amazing music they create. I watched this movie last Sunday. On Monday I got the soundtrack, and I haven't been able to get enough of it. The music is absolutely brilliant. I love it. Glen Hansard is a very famous musician in Ireland who fronted the band The Frames. He sings with such passion and such emotion, and as I listen to his songs, I can't help but feel what he must have felt as he wrote them. Marketa Irglova's soft harmonies add depth to Hansard's emotion.

Here's a little sneak peek of the music. I think it's best if you experience the music through the movie with all the emotions of the situation attached, but this is the song that is most well known. It's called "Falling Slowly" and it won the Oscar for best original song in 2008. It is definitely one of my favorites on the soundtrack.



The movie is set in Ireland (in Dublin, I think) and is rated R because they say the f-word a few times. But there's no sex and no violence.