Chad Betz Reviews Once

Editor's Note: I will begin posting Chad Betz reviews whenever he feels like sending one in. Please take the time to look over his reviews. They are much more insightful and wonderfully written than anything I ever wrote.


Saturday, June 02, 2007

Once might be the finest musical ever, and that's because it's the first musical that really captures why music is important to the lives of those given to it. By making its actors of musicians and musicians of its characters, the film allows its musical scenarios to play out naturally. By making music the action to the characters' inner monologues in the moment, not outside of it, not big production numbers surrounded by birds and children's choirs and cute dance choreography, by doing this the film keeps us focused on the music and the people playing it. And this is music that is about real life situations and the real emotional reactions to those situations; as the songs play out so does the relationship between the film's main two characters, unceremoniously named "guy" and "girl."

That's what pop music is about, right? A "guy" and a "girl" and all that entails. In its brief span, Once manages to draw out these two archetypes with an understated balance of sadness and joy; all the while backstories limit their fleeting current story together, so their "once" happens in front of our eyes like a dream cut to factual tape, shaky handheld camera and rough editing making us feel like a friend watching a home video rather than a distanced observer in a cold theater. It's the anti-Chicago.

Musicals are often romanticism, and this is a musical about finding romanticism that's honest with how we live life from day to day. It's simultaneously morose and hopeful, and I can't think of a better film representation of how music can do what Paul Schrader suggests drama does: document the incremental movements of the human soul. Once is both music and movie while avoiding grand leaps and pompous gestures... it is nothing but beautiful, painstaking increments, which are as much a part of the soundtrack as the soundtrack's a part of them. The first time "guy" and "girl" make music together is a scene I don't think I'll ever forget, and that's because it captures a moment that so many of us have cherished or still long for, that instant where you see a reflection of the best parts of your own soul in someone else, and it quietly shakes you to the core. For now it's just you, her, and the God that made you both.

Those are the moments for which we live. That someone finally made a musical about such moments feels utterly right.