2. Once (2006)

Adam,

It’s fitting for this project that the first movie we chose is one about a couple taking pleasure in art through each other, and in each other through art.

Unlike you, I had never seen Once and knew nothing about its aesthetic going in.  It’s useful to start talking about the film then, as you did, by talking about that aesthetic, which in many ways does emphasize minimalism and authenticity.

But in spite of the realism that you point out, there is a powerful element of fantasy in the movie.  The scene where the jaded record producer perks up, moved by the protagonists’ performance, is every artist’s most fervently hoped-for reaction.  It’s a kind of wish fulfillment, one perhaps even more potent because it is framed as plausible within the naturalistic world of the film, and one that also extends to the romantic plot.

Now, this isn’t intended as a criticism so much as a contextualizing, but the film’s perspective is decidedly male.  Unlike the Guy, the Girl isn’t treated to a home video montage to illustrate her past.  The only real insight we get into her feelings about her former relationship is delivered in unsubtitled Czech.  Her role is to be nurturing, supportive—singing harmony in both her musical and dramatic scenes.  For a certain kind of sensitive, hard-luck, ever-so-slightly narcissistic guy, she’s just about perfect.

So maybe it’s even more extraordinary that while the movie flirts with the idea of a flirtation between these two, in the end it commits even more firmly to an honest execution of its premise.  The Guy and the Girl don’t get together.  While idealized in certain ways, the Girl is just as fragile and uncertain as her male counterpart.

Ultimately, I don’t mean to say that Once is any more an exercise in fantasy than an exercise in realism.  What’s special about the film, to me, is its uniting of the two.  Or perhaps more accurately, its recognition of how reality (what usually happens) and fantasy (what we hope will happen) can sometimes intersect.  And that the film accomplishes this in the context of genre—through its alternating adherence to and upending of those genre expectations—is especially interesting.

In the traditional musical, that most fantastical of genres, outbursts of song and dance seem miraculous because they are so far-fetched.  Once understands that every song ever written, even when not choreographed to within an inch of its life, really is a miracle, a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of the exact right people at the exact right moment.  The fantasy scenario of meeting your ideal partner, romantic or otherwise, is in fact not so unbelievable at all because it happens every day.  It really does.

Love,

Victoria