Once

4/4 stars

Note: I found it quite impossible to discuss one of the primary reasons that I was impressed with this movie without revealing the ending. If you haven’t seen Once and value not knowing what happens, do not proceed.

Although it is impressive from an academic standpoint, Once can be a difficult movie to talk about in this way. Though the movie employs a very practiced and difficult cinematography, one that expresses an unbroken illusion of reality with the steady gaze of a documentarian, the effect is not to dazzle the audience with technical achievement. Rather, Once simply allows its characters’ charms to pull the viewer into its representation of their lives.

One would be remiss not to mention the music, of course. The music critic side of me feels the need to point out that it’s not earth-shattering stuff, but it has an honest, unpolished feeling that would likely draw me to it even without the benefit of the film. The way it works with the story though, is truly brilliant. As the two main characters come to know each other through music, that music communicates their love story. The music is integrated seamlessly into this film, it doesn’t appear to be shown off, we simply experience it the way the characters do. One scene in particular, in which Markéta Irglová walks through the night to get batteries for her walkman, then listens to it all the way back home is almost completely, perfectly engrossing.

Of course, like the brilliant and heartbreaking film Before Sunrise, which is a favorite of mine, Once ends with our movie couple separated by the circumstances of the world. Their moment is over, and unlike in the other film, it remains unfulfilled. I like happy endings as much as anyone else, but they do leave you with less to think about, and less to feel as well. This is a story that exists in the spaces of hope and curiosity and enchantment that are closed far too quickly in life. While some fortunate relationships manage to gel within that time, we’ve all experienced ones that did not. Once (and I do feel that the title is appropriate only if we’re viewing the film this way) is a memory of those occasions.