DVD reviews: Once – 70

You can just imagine the initial production meeting for Once: “We’ve got a hundred grand, handheld cameras, no sets, no shooting plan, hardly any dialogue and the actors are amateurs. Oh, and it’s a musical. Let’s go make a movie!” Yet somehow, magically, beautifully, they have made a movie.

The Guy (Glen Hansard) has musical talent but lacks drive, his dream of making it in the music industry smothered by the banality of everyday life. While busking in Dublin he meets The Girl (Markéta Irglovà¡), a Czech immigrant who has her own problems but who possesses the motivation The Guy lacks. What follows is a love story; not between The Guy and The Girl, but a bond formed through a shared love for music. It is the film’s greatest strength that this connection is somehow made to seem more heartfelt and tender than any physical attachment the two could possibly experience. Another strength is that while Once is a musical, the songs emerge organically: busking on the streets, jamming in a music store, recording in a studio – whenever the actors break into song they do so in a wholly natural way.

The picture quality’s okay for a zero budget movie filmed on handheld cameras, and the stereo sound is slightly better than you’d expect. The extras are nothing to write home about – just commentaries and a couple of ‘making of’ docos. That’s rather perfunctory but to complain somehow misses the point, because this tale of redemption, hope and possibilities is that rare sort of movie that makes you feel better about being alive. And surely that’s a greater gift than any tacked-on featurette.

From: Icon/Ireland
Genre: Musical drama
Rating: M

Sound: 3/5
Vision: 2.5/5
Overall: 5/5

Richard Betts