Once

Around lunchtime, I developed a yen for a movie. It’s a warm, slightly humid day; A/C would be nice; what shall I see? Maybe a bit of mindless fun with “Transformers”? I checked the reviews at RottenTomatoes: not promising. OK, if “Transformers” was at 56%, what was the top-rated film currently in the cinemas? I scanned the full listing, and although the animated film Ratatouille had an outstanding score of 96%, the outright winner was Once, with 97%. OnceI watched the trailer – and I was hooked. I finished lunch, hopped a bus up to Capitol Hill, and went to the Harvard Exit.
It was a superb film.
One reason that I think I liked it so much was that it was set in Dublin, and I was there so recently that it was particularly vivid. Just as Tokyo is “the third character” in “Lost in Translation”, so Dublin – especially the area around Temple Bar, Grafton Street, and St. Stephen’s Green – is a character in this film. And as in “Lost in Translation”, the film revolves around the way in which an unexpected and ephemeral relationship can offer the possibility of change. The romantic in me wonders if the relationship is going to be the outcome, rather than simply a catalyst. The film-lover relaxes and appreciates the economy of the art that brings these things to life, and makes us care so much.
Oh yes – I bought the soundtrack CD on the way out of the cinema. Because even though some of the dialogue (with heavy Irish and Czech accents) is hard to follow, the music is the true language of this film. And there are no surrogates here: the actors wrote and sang their own compositions.