BEFORE: This is the day I've been dreading, as "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" represented the end of a chain - all those brothers and their wives, and NONE of them appeared in another movie on my list. But there's a reason I put that film last in the Howard Keel chain - it does link to tonight's film, only indirectly. (Hell, every movie links to every other movie indirectly...) It's not much, but it's something, at least - Ian Wolfe was also in "Dick Tracy" with Colm Meaney, who was also in "The Commitments" with Glen Hansard. Or, Ian Wolfe was in "Reds" with Ralph Morse, who was also in "The Commitments". Either way, my break in the chain has now been turned into indirect linking, I have to be OK with that.
The two films also have something else in common - both "Seven Brides" and "Once" used to be on that list of "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", and both are no longer on that list, not the latest version anyway. I understand that they need to clear some films off every year, in order to make some room for more current gems, but what's the implication here? These films used to be great, and they are no longer? Times change, but a great movie is always a great movie, it would be more fair if they added four or five slots each year to accommodate new films, but then they'd have to change the name of the list and the book that goes with it.
Here's the schedule for tomorrow, February 23, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", and it's last call for Best Actress nominees and winners:
6:45 am "Caged" (1950) - Eleanor Parker
8:45 am "Some Came Running" (1958) - Shirley MacLaine
11:15 am "Two Women" (1961) - Sophia Loren, winner
1:15 pm "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) - Vivien Leigh, winner
3:45 pm "I Want to Live!" (1958) - Susan Hayward, winner
6:00 pm "BUtterfield 8" (1960) - Elizabeth Taylor, winner
8:00 pm "Suspicion" (1941) - Joan Fontaine, winner
10:00 pm "Johnny Belinda" (1948) - Jane Wyman, winner
12:00 am "Dead Man Walking" (1995) - Susan Sarandon, winner
2:15 am "Klute" (1971) - Jane Fonda, winner
4:30 am "Women in Love" (1969) - Glenda Jackson, winner
I think I can only claim 5 out of 11 tonight, but still, that's better than half: "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Butterfield 8", "Suspicion", "Dead Man Walking", and "Klute". Another 5 out of 11 brings my total up to 89 seen out of 257. Up to 34.6%
THE PLOT: A modern-day musical about a busker and an immigrant and their eventful week in Dublin, as they write, rehearse and record songs that tell their love story.
AFTER: You can see why this film spent the better part of the last year stuck at the bottom of my list, right? It barely links to ANYTHING, so it was nearly impossible to put it between two films it might relate to. It was made with a very small cast, and no name actors - but in a way, it's the little independent movie that could. The total shooting budget was just $150,000 - an amount that other films might spend on catering for a couple of months' shooting time. And it grossed over $9 million dollars in the U.S. - against the initial budget, that's a 6,293% return on investment. (Not a record, though - apparently the most profitable movie of all time is "Paranormal Activity", which grossed $89 million against a budget of only $450,000 which is a 19,749% ROI)
I really hate to be the screen door in the submarine here, but I just didn't get this film, it didn't seem like a great love story to me, and I was left questioning whether it even deserved to be part of the February chain in the first place. How is this a great love story? The leads seem to enjoy spending time together, but I don't think it ever got physical. Not that every love needs to be sexual, obviously there are higher loves and all different kinds of love, mental and spiritual and unrequited, etc. But both the "guy" and "girl" here are different kinds of emotionally unavailable. Is it enough that they're able to harmonize and connect through music? I'm just not sure.
Maybe it's me - I snuck out earlier tonight to see "Black Panther" (a review will be posted just as soon as I can work it into the chain, but it might be a while) and that's an action-packed movie, to be sure. By comparison to THAT film, it seems like very little happens in "Once". Two people meet, they share a love for music, they record a few songs together, hang out and...well, that's about it. Did I miss something? Is there something romantic about a love that just can't be? How am I supposed to distinguish that from a love that isn't there at all, because those two things might appear very similar. Is their love supposed to be represented by "the path not taken" or something?
Here's my other problem - the lead actress. I understand she's from Eastern Europe, and I understand that English is probably not her first language. But the biggest part of acting is being able to say one's lines clearly and with conviction, and she failed on both of those. Look, I speak a little French and a little German, but since those aren't my native languages, I couldn't speak convincingly in either of them. A real French or German person will always be aware that I'm stumbling through the language, and I'm probably not adding the right tones to convey emotions or subtle meanings. This actress just left me cold, because not only was she hard to understand, because of this I was aware at all times that she was in fact an actress just saying her lines. I know some people from Latvia and Croatia, and while they speak English differently than Americans, I can still have conversations with them because they speak English in a natural way. There was nothing natural about this actress's performance, it all felt incredibly forced, and therefore not believable. (The best acting comes when people stop acting and start just being, does that make sense?)
Which is ironic, because I think that life sort of imitated art and the two leads here dated for a while when they were touring and promoting this picture, then they played music together as a duo called The Swell Season, but it seems that the relationship part didn't last. Fans of this movie (I'm assuming they're out there somewhere) are probably disappointed about that, but what can you do?
Personally I just don't think there's much to this film, outside of "Falling Slowly", which won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 2008. I just wish there were a more substantial story to go around that song.
Starring Glen Hansard (last seen in "The Commitments"), Marketa Irglova, Marcella Plunkett, Keith Byrne, Hugh Walsh, Gerard Hendrick, Bill Hodnett, Darren Healy (last seen in "Layer Cake"), Geoff Minogue, Mal Whyte, Niall Cleary, Alaistair Foley, Danuse Ktresova.
RATING: 4 out of 10 broken Hoovers
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