Once in Dublin's fair city

"I do not look like that prat from Coldplay!" -- Glen Hansard

I went to see Once this weekend, as I threatened last week, and liked it a lot. For me, the film started off with one strike against it, because the lead actor (Glen Hansard of the Frames) looks and sounds a lot like Chris Martin from Coldplay. See side by side photos of both of them above.

After I determined that it really wasn't Chris Martin in the lead role, I was able to get over my "Oh no, it's that dude from Coldplay!" prejudices and follow the film with a clean head. I actually saw the Frames live many years ago (opening for the New Pornographers, I think) and recall that they did not rock very much, but they don't deserve Coldplay comparisons, because they've been around a lot longer.

In Once, Hansard plays a street musician and vacuum cleaner repairman who meets a young Czech immigrant (played by Marketa Irglova) selling roses on the same Dublin street where he's playing. She (their characters are unnamed) likes his songs and happens to be a musician, so they end up ... making music together. In real life, Hansard and Irglova are partners (musical partners), who collaborated on a project called The Swell Season, making an album that contains many of the songs featured in Once. Their album is on emusic, so if you're having trouble getting "Falling Slowly" or "When Your Mind's Made Up" unstuck from your head after seeing Once (like I did) the songs are easy to grab as cheap digital downloads.

Hansard played the guitarist in The Commitments, so Once was only his second movie role and Marketa Irglova's debut. They are both musicians and not actors, so the musical scenes are more realising then they'd be with actors playing musicians. Once actually reminded me of The Commitments, with a smaller budget and less of a "Hollywood" storyline. It's the movie making equivalent of a four track demo, shot with a single camera and a lots of rough cuts which gives it the look of a fly-on-the-wall rockumentary. Apparently director John Carney didn't get a permit to film in Dublin, so all the shooting in the city had to be done incognito.

Once has been getting great reviews, both from professional reviewers and my own friends, so I was pretty sure I'd enjoy it, and I did. Now I'm down to just three free Cinemark passes, and don't know if I want to use one one up on Michael Moore.