Tag: Movies

A while back, I watched Casablanca for the first time in several years. Why did I allow so long a time to elapse between viewings of this, a movie that’s been in my personal Top Ten ever since I first saw it? Who knows, really…time was when I wouldn’t go much more than a month without watching it, and in my sophomore year of college, I went through a six or seven week period when I watched it every single Sunday, after the early football game. Why so long this time? I genuinely can’t say. Hopefully I won’t wait until 2011 to watch it again.

A few random thoughts on the movie that occurred to me whilst viewing it:

:: Sam’s role isn’t as big as it seems. He’s all over the first half of the movie, but we only see him once or twice after the Paris flashback.

:: The actors are helped by a screenplay that’s full of some of the best dialog ever written, but they come to the aid of the script a couple of times. It takes great acting and directing to make a line like “Is that cannonfire, or my heart pounding?” come off as anything other than pure sap.

:: If there has ever been a better long closeup than Ingrid Bergman’s when she first listens to Sam singing “As Time Goes By”, I haven’t seen it. It’s an amazing closeup, that lasts for what feels like more than thirty seconds, and in that span, Bergman is able to convey a whole bunch of emotions, without changing her facial expression much at all: she shows resignation at being confronted with her past, fear that she’s going to have to face Rick again, rueful remembrance for the last days she was truly happy, regret for the way she had to hurt the great love of her life, all with no words and just a camera focused tight on her features as she listens to a song.

:: Something hit me about the movie’s timing – the timing of the story, that is. When does it take place? Well, Rick pegs it pretty specifically when he’s getting drunk by himself; he says, “It’s December 1941 in Casablanca. What are they doing in America? I’ll bet they’re asleep.” December 1941. But the rest of the movie seems to imply that the story is taking place before America enters the war, doesn’t it? Nothing is ever said specifically, but if a state of war existed between Germany and the United States, as it would beginning on December 8 of that year, surely Major Strasser’s attitude toward Rick and “blundering Americans” would be different than what he shows. If Germany and America were at war, Strasser would probably treat Rick Blaine as an enemy rather than as a potential annoyance.

That being the case, the question that comes up for me is this: What does Victor Laszlo plan to do once he gets to America, anyway? There’s no resistance effort to lead in America, so is he planning to try to raise money? Lick his wounds for a bit and rally some support before returning to Europe? Work for the Americans? I wonder, especially since, in light of what seems to be the fact that the movie takes place in the first week of December 1941, within a day or two of Victor and Ilsa’s arrival in America, that country will be entering the war.

(No, I don’t want the movie to have answered these questions, nor am I suggesting that the movie’s “failure” to answer them is a “failure” at all.)

:: It interests me that Rick’s Cafe has significantly higher ceilings than just about every other interior in the movie.

:: More love for Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart: there are times when they make hand gestures while talking in a very real way, the way people actually would while talking, even though the gestures in a couple of cases cause their lines to come out a bit muffled. (Not that you can’t understand them, though.) Bogart’s got an example when he meets Louis in his office after Victor’s arrest; he rubs his cheeks and mouth while saying something. And earlier, when Ilsa is with Rick in his room above the Cafe Americain, she runs her hands through her hair in that way that some women do when they’re talking about heavy stuff after having been awake for a long time. Tiny things, those, but it’s those tiny things that add up to convincing portrayals.

:: I never noticed before how much Ugarte is sweating in his scene with Rick early in the film. Rick’s not sweating at all, but Ugarte’s face glistens all over with sweat. I wonder if that was intentional, depicting Ugarte’s tension at trying to get away with murder, or if Peter Lorre was just a lot hotter than Bogart on the set.

:: I can’t remember where I saw it, but I read within the last year somewhere a suggestion that Louis is gay. Sorry, but I’m just not seeing it.

:: On some level I’m willing to grant the point to people who know more than I do, but I’m sorry, experts: I still hear Peter Lorre as saying “De Gaulle” instead of “Weygand”.

Well, that’s all for now. I’ll return to Casablanca sometime sooner than a few years, though.

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(UPDATED twice below.)

So asks a Muslim nobleman of Balian of Ibelin near the end of Ridley Scott’s movie Kingdom of Heaven. Balian, who has been seeking God’s will through the entire film, makes no real answer as he takes his leave of Jerusalem, yielding to the Muslims who, under the leadership of Saladin, have conquered the city. And yet, Balian leaves with the respect, shared mutually, of the Muslim nobles.

Almost three years ago (as of this writing; more than that, as of this posting), I watched Kingdom of Heaven and was, as has been my typical experience with Ridley Scott’s movies, underwhelmed. I didn’t dislike the film, per se, but I found it curiously uninvolving and emotionally cool, despite the typical Scott production values. (The film is utterly gorgeous, one wonderful shot after another, but more on that later.)

I learned a while later that the film was a victim of the all-too-common movie malady, the dreaded Studio Cut, in which a director makes a movie the way the director wants, but when he screens it for the executives, they dislike it and mandate a whole bunch of cuts. In the case of Kingdom of Heaven, a three-hour epic that took its time telling its story was forced to become a two-hour pseudo-epic that felt overstuffed and, at the same time, underexplained. So, when it came time for the DVD release, Scott was allowed to restore the material he hadn’t wanted cut — almost an entire hour’s worth of material.

Now, not all movies are helped by indulging directors’ desires to stick stuff back into the films for DVD releases. But many are, with some movies – the Lord of the Rings films, for example – so benefit by their expansions that the “Extended editions” become the canonical versions. Really, who watches the theatrical cuts of LOTR anymore? Kingdom of Heaven benefits from Scott’s revisiting to a frankly amazing degree: the movie was a serviceable medieval war story, but now, in its Extended Director’s Cut, it’s a stunning epic. As I watched its story unfold, I kept thinking to myself, “Why didn’t I like this movie this much last time?” And I was often hard-pressed to come up with an answer. Even though it’s been three years since I saw the theatrical cut and thus can’t remember it well enough to definitively say what’s been added and what has not. (Upon further review, the entire subplot of King Baldwin IV’s nephew, who would become King when Baldwin IV dies, is new to this version.) This isn’t a movie with a few scenes added just to get you to buy the DVD. Nor is it an Extended version with lots of new scenes that enhance the movie you’ve already seen. So much has been restored for this version that it’s an entirely new movie.

The story is one of those “Poor stiff finds fame and glory in a far-away land” tales. Balian (Orlando Bloom) is the blacksmith in a French village; as the film opens, he is mourning his wife, who has committed suicide after losing her baby. Soon a band of Crusaders returns to the region, including a man (Liam Neeson) who is now a Baron in the Holy Land, and who turns out to be Balian’s father. After some nastiness, Balian has no choice but to leave his home and travel to the Holy Land himself, not so much as a Crusader but as a man seeking favor with God after committing sinful acts. On his way he makes friends and enemies, some of whom are Muslim and some of whom are fellow Christians; he becomes embroiled in all manner of political intrigue in the Holy Land at the time when the King of Jerusalem (Baldwin IV) is a leper who is nearing death and when the Muslims have found their greatest leader, Saladin, who is winning victory after victory. Balian finds himself involved with Sibylla, and toward the end of the film, he finds himself charged with the defense of Jerusalem itself.

Scott is, as ever, a visual genius, and there’s nary a shot in this entire film that doesn’t have something interesting going on. His Holy Land, hot and bright and dusty, contrasts with his Europe, which is cold and wind-swept and a place where snow is constantly fluttering down from gray skies. The sets are opulent and magnificent, and the long shots of medieval Jerusalem, created by computer, manage to look authentic. I’ve never questioned Ridley Scott’s skills as a visual director, but I’ve always found his movies somehow uninvolving on the human side – until this one, or at least, this version of this one. Watching Kingdom of Heaven now, in its longer version, I found my attention never wandering at all.

The film is full of fine performances. Orlando Bloom plays Balian, and it’s a good performance, if not especially wide-ranged. It seems to be accepted wisdom that Bloom is a bad actor and mainly a pretty face, but I don’t think that’s fair; he strikes me as a British version of Kevin Costner, a guy who may not have the wide range of quite a few better actors, but whose performances are better than typically seen and who, in the right role, can actually shine. Eva Green plays Sibylla, a woman caught between love and duty to her nation and her son, with lots of emotion that looks forward to her turn as James Bond’s first great lover in Casino Royale. The supporting cast is superb across the board, with not a single false note in the entire cast. Most notable is Edward Norton, who embodies King Baldwin IV; what’s amazing about him is that the King wears a silver mask in all of his scenes, owing to his disfigurement from leprosy. With no ability to call on facial expressions or even eye movements, Norton nevertheless conveys a wide range of feeling in his performance, so much so that this film is a good answer for anyone who has ever wondered how convincing Greek drama must have been, with all of those performers in their masks.

Many of the film’s events are drawn from true history; Baldwin IV really did die young of leprosy, and his successor, Baldwin V, did die at the age of nine. There was a Queen Sibylla who ruled alongside King Guy; there really was a Balian of Ibelin. Raymond of Chatillon really did suffer the fate depicted herein. It’s not strictly accurate history, obviously, but this movie treats its subject matter with respect. This isn’t a movie like the Pirates of the Caribbean films, which exist in a cheerfully-ahistorical timeline. And the film’s villains aren’t exclusively Muslims, nor are they exclusively Christians. There are honorable men and women on both sides, which is a pretty remarkable stance for this film to have taken given that it was made in the days following the 9-11-01 attacks.

The music for the film is by Harry Gregson Williams, a composer who has emerged over the last decade as a potentially exciting new voice (his most notable work is for the Narnia films). Here he writes a score that blends medieval European religious chant with soundscapes evocative of the Middle East, resulting in a score that is often captivating. The only down part of the score is the odd use, in a late scene in which Balian must give a rousing speech to the inadequate defenders of Jerusalem, of a cue from Jerry Goldsmith’s score to the movie The Thirteenth Warrior. I have no idea what possessed Ridley Scott to use this music here, when Gregson Williams has written an otherwise wonderful score for this fairly meditative epic, but Scott has a long history of making odd decisions with regard to the music for his films, so who knows. A regular viewer watching the movie probably wouldn’t even notice that there’s a melody heard in that scene that never occurs in any other part of the movie; they’d only notice that the music there is nicely rousing for a scene that’s rousing in nature. But a film music geek like me? That stands out like the proverbial sore thumb.

I’m glad Ridley Scott was afforded the opportunity to revisit this film. It really is a superior effort; it’s most certainly my favorite film by Ridley Scott. I can’t recommend it highly enough. (And now I’m actually looking forward to Scott’s announced project on the Robin Hood legend.)

UPDATE: My take on Orlando Bloom as an actor isn’t taken well at an Orlando Bloom message board, which strikes me as odd, since I openly state he’s not a bad actor. I actually think he’s pretty good. He’s not Olivier, or Ian McKellen, or Daniel Day-Lewis, but Bloom does perfectly well in the movies I’ve seen him in. He’s fine in Lord of the Rings, he’s fine in the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks, he’s good in Elizabethtown, and he’s good in Kingdom of Heaven. I’m not sure what their point of contention is, unless they’re of the view that I’m actually not being sufficiently effusive in my praise of Bloom as an actor. I’m not often taken to task for not being nice enough in my compliments, but there it is. I just know that most times I see Orlando Bloom mentioned, and people rip on him as being a bad actor, which I think is pretty wrong-headed.

I guess you can’t please everybody.

UPDATE II: Now that some more replies have popped up at the message board thread linked above, I see that the main point of contention seems to be my comparison of Orlando Bloom to Kevin Costner. I wasn’t making a one-to-one comparison of the men as actors, but I cited Costner as an example of another actor whose work I think tends to be unfairly maligned. No, Costner wasn’t a particularly great Robin Hood, but he’s really good a lot more often than a lot of stuffy cinema folks like to admit. (Bull Durham, Dances With Wolves, Tin Cup, Field of Dreams, A Perfect World, and JFK are all good examples, to my mind. And frankly, if I concede that Bloom would make a better Robin Hood than Costner did, surely one must also agree that Bloom could not play Crash Davis anywhere near as well as Costner did!) That’s all I meant with that comparison. So when I say that I see Orlando Bloom as a younger, British version of Costner, I do not mean that as an insult.

BTW, folks over there, you’re welcome to comment here too! I don’t bite. Not usually, anyway.

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I have no idea how to discuss Atonement without the extensive deployment of heavy amounts of spoilers, so be warned: I spoil the movie. Big time. You’re warned.

I remember seeing ads for Atonement last winter and thinking, “That looks up my alley.” Those ads portrayed the film as a sweeping epic romance set in the World War II era, and for at least part of the movie, it’s definitely that. But for only part. The rest of the time, it’s a psychological character study in the fairly intimate setting of an English country estate.

It’s 1935, and there are two sisters: the younger, Briony, and the elder, Cecilia. And there’s the housekeeper’s son, Robby. Robby’s in love with Cecilia, who gradually comes to love him. Problem is – and we don’t learn this until quite some way into the film, more than halfway, actually – Briony is in love with him too, in her own schoolgirl way. Various things happen that lead Briony to telling a lie about Robby, a lie which gets him thrown in prison and later offered parole on the condition that he join the British army. Of course, he’s sent to the front lines in France (it’s 1940, after all), while Cecilia works as a nurse in a London hospital. Will Robby make it back to her at war’s end?

OK, there’s the basic plot summary. After this, the spoilers. I’ll put it a few line breaks here, just in case:

OK. Here we go.

If you’ve seen the film, you know that Robby does not make it back; instead he dies in Dunkirk, before the evacuation, when his festering chest wound becomes a full-fledged infection. Cecilia too dies, in one of the London bomb raids. So where is the “atonement” of the title? In the actions of Briony. But does it? Is there any atonement at all in Atonement?

This movie uses a device that I’m generally not terribly fond of, the “unreliable narrator”. I’m not terribly fond of this device because in general I prefer to lose myself in the actual story and not think too much about metaconcerns such as whether the story is happening or not. (That’s not to say that I never like the “unreliable narrator”; it just tends to open up cans of worms that aren’t to my liking at a times.) Here, in Atonement, the POV shifts often. We see events from Briony’s point of view, and then the film will double back and show us the same events from an “Omniscient” POV, so we end up seeing that Briony has things wrong, but not maliciously so. As the film’s opening act leads up to Briony’s lie, the film carefully leads us to understand her lie, and, in fact, not even see it as a lie at all.

Here’s what happens. Briony witnesses a kind-of-erotic moment between Robby and Cecilia, in which Cecilia strips to her slip and jumps into the family estate’s giant Victorian fountain. From her vantage point, it seems that Cecilia is showing off her figure for Robby, and she’s shocked. A few minutes later the film shows us the same scene, for what really happened: Robby inadvertently causes something valuable to fall into the fountain, and Cecilia goes in to retrieve it. We know this, but Briony doesn’t. Strike one.

Later on Robby is writing a love letter to Cecilia, and after writing one very naughty version (using that one word that every woman loathes), he writes a much nicer version that’s polite and gentlemanly, just before going to join Cecilia’s family for a formal dinner. On the way he comes across Briony playing in the fields, and he asks her to deliver the letter, and only as she’s scampering away, out of earshot, does he realize that he’s put the naughty version of the letter into the envelope instead of the gentlemanly one he’d meant to give her. Of course, Briony reads the letter and is horrified. Strike two.

Still later, Briony walks into the family library and finds Robby and Briony up against the bookshelves in the throes of passion. Strike three. After talking over these matters with a visiting cousin, Briony decides that Robby is a sexual maniac, a predator against women, when in fact he’s merely in love with Cecilia.

That night, after the dinner, two younger cousins, twin boys, run away, and everyone disperses into the countryside around the estate to look for them. Briony comes across two people copulating, and the man gets up and runs away, without Briony getting a good look at him; the woman is not, as we might have expected, Cecilia but rather the cousin she’d earlier talked to about Robby being a sexual predator. The cousin appears to have been raped, and Briony tells everyone that Robby did it. He’s taken into custody by the police, and we think that Briony’s made a mistake, albeit a terrible one.

Later on, after some very emotional stuff in the war, in which we see Robby’s harrowing trek to Dunkirk contrasted with Cecilia’s life as a London nurse, our POV returns to Briony, and we eventually learn that she had a crush on Robby in her youth but he rebuffed her advances, leaving her angry; and we learn that on the night she told the police he’d been the rapist she had, in fact, seen the man’s face quite clearly, and knew perfectly well that it wasn’t Robby at all – and yet told her lie anyway. Now we know her for a liar.

Toward the end of the film, there’s a sudden cut to the present day, and an old woman is sitting for a television interview. This is Briony, and she’s just written a novel about this whole affair; but she’s written a happy ending for Robby and Cecilia, in which he comes back from the war and they have some kind of time together. She’s written this ending, sparing her own character in the book nothing of the guilt, as her act of atonement for her lie, even though the ending was false: Robby and Cecilia died in separate wartime events, never to meet again after they were parted. All Briony can give them is fictional atonement.

The revelation that Robby and Cecilia died rather than ever see each other again hit me between the eyes. I’d been prepared for some kind of sad ending, but not one like this, where we’re shown a happy ending and then had it snatched back. The initial question is, how much of an act of atonement is Briony’s creation of a fictional Robby and Cecilia who got to live the life that was denied them in real life?

But on further consideration, it’s not at all clear that Briony has given them any happy ending at all. When she goes to Robby and Cecilia to confess her wrongdoing those years before, in that scene that is soon revealed to be fiction, it’s established that Briony’s recanting of her story is unlikely to have any legal effect whatsoever as far as Robby’s status as a convict goes, and he’s not out of danger anyway, as he is going back to war in a day or two. The happy ending Briony gives the people she wronged is unreal on more than one level.

Seen in the light of learning that what we’ve seen throughout the film is Briony’s novelization of the events, everything is called into question; not only Briony’s actions and motivations, but nearly everything that happened in the movie at all. If Briony never got to speak to her sister again shortly after she told her lie, she can’t really know that the moment by the fountain was as chaste as we were shown. Likewise with Robby’s letters; Briony couldn’t have known that Robby had written any letter other than the one she delivered. Has she made up all that, in an effort to further illustrate her own faults as a narrator? Or worse, has she made all that up in an attempt to partially justify her lie, odious as it may have been? It’s possible to understand, if not condone, the poor behavior of an immature adolescent girl the object of whose affections is instead in love with her older sister.

The fact that we’ve watched not the real events that transpired but Briony’s interpretations and impressions of them also color the oddly surreal sequence that unfolds when Robby arrives at Dunkirk to find an almost incomprehensibly vast panorama of wartime suffering as the Allied armies await their evacuation. This sequence is a pretty amazing one, seemingly shot as one long take (I don’t see how it could have been), in which the camera slides past horror after horror: soldiers behaving insanely, soldiers drunk and dying, soldiers killing beautiful horses for no apparent reason, soldiers riding children’s rides. Was there really a Ferris Wheel in full operation at Dunkirk as the soldiers awaited the evacuation? The whole sequence seems to stand at some odds with the rest of the film’s intimate nature, but that’s the point, and it takes on a whole new light when we realize that we’ve seen not a depiction of Dunkirk as it was but merely Dunkirk as Briony has imagined it.

In terms of production, Atonement is very well done. At times, especially in the first act, the tone is almost like one of those staid old Masterpiece Theater dramas, but this mood is often shifted by the use of awkward closeups, odd closeups, and washed out colors. Many times the film almost feels claustrophobic, suggesting that the characters are closed in even as they stand out in the open.

The music score is impressive as well. Dario Marianelli wrote it, and it’s a score of great psychological tension; the music churns and creates nervousness with unresolved chords, snatches of melody, repeated rhythms, and the clever use of sounds from with the film, most notably Briony’s typewriter. It’s a very impressionistic score, at one point even using Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”.

I wasn’t sure, when I was done watching it, if I’d liked Atonement or not; but for a long while after, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. That must mean something.

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SamuraiFrog opines on the Trilogy Meter, and I shall do the same! Because that’s what I do. The same as everybody else. First, here’s the meter, denoting the level of quality for each film in the trilogy in question:

Star Wars

A disagreement, first off! I know I go against mainstream orthodoxy on this point, but I still personally rank A New Hope ahead of The Empire Strikes Back. But just barely. I couldn’t live without a single Star Wars film; I even think Return of the Jedi is unfairly maligned much of the time.

Of course, my ongoing adoration of the Prequel Trilogy continues, even as I fix them.

Indiana Jones

I do think Raiders is the best. I think that Temple of Doom is better
than Last Crusade, however.

(I have a forthcoming post on Crystal Skull.)

The Matrix

I liked The Matrix when I first saw it. I liked it a bit less each time I saw it thereafter, and I haven’t watched it in a long time. I tried watching Reloaded a single time and fell asleep in the first half hour.

After that, I’m done with The Matrix.

Star Trek

Hmmmm. See my Star Trek Redux posts, linked in the sidebar, for more. I like TMO; I enjoy Wrath of Khan but think it’s overrated; I think Search for Spock is actually underrated. As for the rest of the movies, look for those older posts of mine.

Superman

I’ve never understood why so many people think Superman II is better than the original. It’s good, but the first is iconic. Superman III has some actual good stuff in it, but it’s buried under some seriously bad stuff. Superman IV is crap, of course, and I actually liked Superman Returns.

Jurassic Park

I love the first one, to this day, even with all the annoying kid stuff. The second has some fun moments, particularly when they get to San Diego; and I could look at Julianne Moore all day. But it’s not a very good movie (thirteen year old kid defeats a velociraptor with her mad gymnastics skills — was this Jurassic Park II: Gymkata?). Never saw the third one.

X-Men

The first one feels to me like they took a terrific movie and cut out forty minutes of stuff that made it terrific. I loved the second one. Never saw the third, after being told by numerous people that it was awful.

Spider-Man

Liked the first, with reservations; loved the second; liked the third, with more of the same reservations. Basically I hate the way the movies have handled Gwen Stacy: if you’re gonna have her, then she has to (a) be Peter Parker’s first love, not Mary Jane, and (b) she has to die. It drives me crazy that neither of these are the case in these movies.

The Lord of the Rings

It’s not a trilogy. It’s one story in three movies. That said, I’ve never found that Two Towers suffers from the “middle act” syndrome; I thought that Jackson and company figured out an elegant way around that.

Mad Max

I haven’t seen these. (I know, I know….)

Jaws

The first is, of course, a great movie, one of the greats of all time. The second isn’t as bad as many think. The third is pretty bad. And the fourth? One of the worst movies ever.

Back to the Future

Love the first. I like the next two as curiosities, and I even think they’re a bit underrated. The first is the real business, though.

Die Hard

I love all of these. The first one is definitely the best, but the next two aren’t bad by any stretch; this may be the most successful trilogy I can think of, in terms of overall quality of the movies. I liked how the each one did something different — i.e., they didn’t just reframe the “hostages in a claustrophobic setting” bit from the first movie — and I loved the perverse riddles in the third one, as well as some very strong acting from supporting players like Graham Greene and a guy (whose name I don’t recall and am not looking up right now) whose main claim to acting fame is having been on As the World Turns for years and years.

I haven’t seen the fourth one.

Blade

Didn’t see any of these.

Planet of the Apes

First one’s good. I have no idea what I’ve seen of the rest of this series.

The Godfather

I’ve never seen any of these all the way through. I know I should, but mob tales don’t interest me much. Someday I’ll get around to them, but I just don’t make it a high priority.

Rocky

First one’s great. Second, OK. Third, meh. Fourth, crap. Didn’t see fifth. Or sixth. (That’s where they stopped, right?)

The Terminator

The first two are equals, and they’re classics. Didn’t see the third.

Rambo

I hate these. They suck. Sorry. I’m not even that big a fan of the Jerry Goldsmith scores for these.

Batman

I didn’t care much for the first one. Everybody talked about how “dark” it was, but it wasn’t! It played everything for laughs. The second one, though? I liked that. It was really dark and grim. I also really liked Val Kilmer’s turn as Batman in…whatever that one was called.

And you know what? I didn’t hate Batman and Robin. It wasn’t very good, but I didn’t hate it.

Batman Begins is a terrific movie. I haven’t watched The Dark Knight yet.

Alien

I don’t like any of the Alien movies. The first one is splatter and gore; the second is just one expected plot twist after another. The third and fourth ones are shite. Did they make a fifth one? Did I care? Not really. I think this is the most overrated movie franchise in existence.

What trilogies didn’t get depicted here? SamuraiFrog mentions the Lethal Weapon films. I have a lot of fond memories of those movies; they were our standard fall-back movies in college. Bored night on Friday? Get some beer and some pizza and watch Lethal Weapon. I love each one. My personal favorite, really, is the third one; I love a lot of the second one, but parts of the third act get really too depressing, especially the death of that poor girl. And the first is terrific stuff. I only saw the fourth one once. It was OK.

How about The Karate Kid? The first one of those is great; and I like the second one a bit. The third is crud, and I never saw the one with Hilary Swank.

Three great Jerry Goldsmith scores can’t save the Omen trilogy. I haven’t seen the Mummy flicks.

They made three Scream movies, didn’t they? The first one is crap, so I didn’t see the others.

What trilogies are we missing, folks?

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“Take this sinking boat
and point it home.
We’ve still got time….”

-“Falling Slowly”, song from Once

A vacuum-cleaner repairman in Dublin works on the side as a street musician, playing his guitar and singing his songs on the streetcorners for whatever change he can get from passers-by. Occasionally he does well, other times he does less well. He has to contend with the occasional thief who tries to run off with his guitar case and the money inside it, and he has to refrain from singing his own songs for night-time when foot traffic is lower, since most people are more rewarding of a musician playing songs they know, this even though his performances of his own songs are searingly emotional. There’s something eating away at this guy, though; we can see it, although we don’t know what. He looks young but weary, idealistic and cynical at the same time; his guitar is so old that it has a second hole worn through its face and the strings are not neatly trimmed but have lengths that dangle off the ends of the frets. He wears a black overcoat and a scarf tied around his neck, even oftentimes when he is inside.

Along comes a young Czech woman who also works the streets of Dublin, selling her own wares: magazines, individual flowers. She hears one of his songs at night, and compliments him; he is trying to end the conversation when he lets slip that he’s a vacuum cleaner repairman, and her face lights up because she has a broken vacuum cleaner! She vows to bring her broken cleaner to him tomorrow, and she does. They then begin a brief friendship that deepens quickly into love as they walk the streets together, him carrying his guitar and her pulling the vacuum behind her like a dog. She seems more open, more willing to smile, more idealistic than cynical, but it soon becomes clear that she is masking her own series of hurts as well; there’s a sadness in her eye that she hides except for when she thinks no one is looking, she has a two year old daughter with no father in sight, she buys her clothes at a cheap mens’ store, and she too spends much time wearing a heavy overcoat with a scarf round her neck.

It turns out that she is a piano player too, although she keeps that part of her life carefully secret, only playing an hour a day in the studio of a music shop while the owner closes for lunch. She offers to play for him there, and he goes to hear; after she plays him some Mendelssohn, she asks him to play, and he does, to her accompaniment, teaching her one of his songs. He seems slightly skeptical of this whole thing, until she begins to sing along with the lyrics he’s placed in front of her, harmonizing his own vocals. He smiles in pleasant surprise; he’s made a connection with this woman, a musical connection, the kind that comes when we discover entirely by accident that someone we’ve just met is, on at least one level, completely in tune with ourselves.

Is that when they fall in love? I’m not sure. But it starts there, with that smile of surprise and delight. It happens early in the movie Once, about twelve minutes in, and the rest of the film follows the guitarist and the pianist through the next few days as they get to know each other and to love each other and to make music together. (The scene is helped by the fact that the song, “Falling Slowly”, is a wonderful song that would eventually win an Oscar for Best Original Song.)

The feel of Once is very similar to Before Sunrise, another great romance film about two people in similar circumstances who find each other and get to know each other over a fairly short period of time. Here it’s a few days, but it’s still fairly brief. There is a girl in his past, and a husband in hers; both lean on the other in efforts to deal with their respective pain and find their ways to their respective next steps. Those steps make sense, in the end, and if I found myself hoping for a different outcome, the one the film depicts is still moving and satisfying and right.

A movie like this can’t possibly succeed unless its performances are good, and there’s not a false note of performance in the entire movie, from the leads (who are never named; the credits list them as “Guy” and “Girl”) all the way to the jaded soundbooth operator who first thinks he’s recording a bunch of yahoos but soon realizes different once he’s heard the songs. The leads are played by Glen Hansard and Markita Irglova, who have paired as a singer-songwriting duo, penning some of the songs used in the film. And the film’s songs, by the way, are really very good, with one, “Falling Slowly”, being a truly excellent song indeed, the best movie song I’ve heard in years. This song won the Oscar last year for original song, and this was richly deserved. (And I cited it as my song of 2008.)

Once is a beautiful, beautiful movie. This is what movies are for.

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