Once Soundtrack

The summer movie season is typically one filled with overly-hyped blockbusters, A-list action heroes and last names like Bruckheimer and Spielberg. It is rarely the season where small films garner huge amounts of attention, and audience numbers, let alone offer up a quiet revolution in an oft-maligned genre. Irish writer/director John Carney's Once snatched up the audience award, and most of the buzz, at 2007's Sundance Film Festival. Subsequently, the film was released in the season that is normally a funeral for a small indie picture. Carney pegged the young -- and captivating -- Marketa Irglova to co-star with friend, and lead singer of beloved Irish band The Frames, Glen Hansard, and the resulting "anti" musical is one of the most transcendently engrossing movies about the communicative power of music to have ever graced the silver screen; even the notoriously cynical Peter Travers (of Rolling Stone) said that "it is a movie absolutely worth seeing"; high praise indeed.

The film, whose subtle emotional language is largely communicated in song rather than dialogue, chronicles the brief and stifled affair between a Dublin busker (Hansard) and a down-on-her-luck immigrant (newcomer Irglova). Himself the former bass player for The Frames, Carney understands too well that music is the most evocative human art form; as such, he uses the film's delicate folkie soundtrack to tell his story for him. Hansard penned most of the songs for the film, but it's the moments of collaboration between he and Irglova that explode with magic, passion and -- most importantly -- heart.

Carney and Hansard understand the power of grace and economy, and the film's songs are brilliantly understated. Hansard himself already has a reputation in his native Ireland as a powerful performer, but his co-star is the film's not-so-secret weapon. "Falling Slowly" chronicles just that, the terrifying and deliciously nerve-wracking experience that is love at first sight. One of the film's most paralyzing scenes is that of Irglova singing her character's freshly penned lyrics to "If You Want Me" as she walks alone down Dublin's deserted streets. Irglova's virtuoso piano playing is masterfully exploited in the album's, and the movie's, most triumphant song, "When Your Mind's Made Up." "Once" does what its lyrics promise and sweeps us into the kind of dizzying love that its film's characters find themselves in so quickly.

While Hansard is no stranger to the world music scene, and despite the fact that he and Irglova had already produced an album together (The Swell Season), she is the film's greatest revelation. (Her and her piano alone are something to behold on "The Hill.") Once reminds filmgoers that the greatest stories do not need a lot of money to be told. It has also reinforced the fact that the most important ingredient in any musical is not so much the glitter, the dance numbers, the ornate costumes or pre-ordained success on Broadway; rather, it's the music itself.