Isaac Richter- Once

Once

Released in 2007

Directed by John Carney

On the streets of Dublin, a hoover-repairman plays his guitar and sings his songs to the people who pass by. He plays known songs during the day, and songs that he wrote during the night when "nobody listens". But somebody does listen. A Czech girl selling a Big Issue magazine on the streets listens to one of this humble repairman's songs one night, and thus begins a week that will change both of their lives forever. It will drive him to finally go to London in search of his record deal, and her to try and patch things up with her husband.

The reason I haven't mentioned the names of these two characters is because the filmmaker chose not to give them any. We only know them as the Guy and the Girl. This narrative choice, however, doesn't hinder the power of the narrative. We first meet the Guy on the streets during the day singing a popular song, but with no soul to it. We later hear him sing one of his own songs, and we recognize the energy and love he puts into his song and we wonder why he's not playing this song in a crowded auditorium with millions of fans cheering him on. We meet the Girl, and she shares the same opinion that we do. From this first scene, we want the Guy to get a record deal and become famous, and we want the Guy and the Girl to end up together, because we recognize the instant connection between the two.

One thing that strikes me about this film is the fact that it uses almost no extra-diegetic elements. It doesn't stray from the diegesis. Even music, which is usually an extra-diegetic in films, is put into the narrative here, because our two main characters are songwriters and these songs say more about the characters than any of the dialogue said in the film. The only time they use songs as extra-diegetic elements is when they play them a second time over time passing by. This includes "When You Mind's Made Up" playing over the band's trip to the beach, and a second rendition of the Academy-Award-winning song Falling Slowly (which we first hear when our two character play it together in a music store) over the conclusion of the story and over the closing credits. This movie is categorized as a musical, and that genre is famous for using extra-diegetic elements (such as dancers in the street, or a character imagining he's singing on a stage) to contrive musical numbers, but this film keeps the songs grounded. They are played and sung by the characters in a music store, or in a recording studio, or at home alone with a guitar. There is one scene where the Girl is walking home, listening to a song without lyrics in a portable CD player, and as she hears it, she sings lyrics that she wrote to it. This is as close as any song comes to turning into a musical number.

There are scenes in this film that are spoken in Czech and the director decided not to subtitle this (another extra-diegetic element, commonly used for languages that are not the movie's common language). There are scenes where the girl talks to her other in Czech, and the Guy is standing right there, not understanding a word they're saying. We're right there with him. There's a scene in which the Girl talks about her husband, and the Guy asks how to say "Do you love him?" in Czech, and when she tells, she asks hi the question in Czech. The Girl answers in Czech. The Guy doesn't know what she said, and neither do audience members who don't speak Czech (after some research, I found out she said "I love you").

Looking back at this film, I realize that all the narrative choices made by the director in this film were intended to make the audience relate to these characters. The Guy and the Girl are unique characters, but they could be any one of us, and therefore, we can relate to them as people going through different stages in life. We all have a dream, and we all have responsibilities that hold us back from these dreams, and this story is about a Guy who meets a Girl and realizes he has postponed his dream for far too long, so now it's time to leave and try to make his dream real. The Guy exists in everybody, and we all have the Girl trying to push us to our dream.

Isaac Richter