Once

This Indi film starring Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová recently won quite a few awards, including an Oscar for best original song in a motion picture. Once tells the story of a guy and a girl who meet on the streets of Dublin and develop a deep friendship as they write and sing songs together. This friendship embues each of them with courage to face aspects of their pasts and to courageously enter into uncertain futures. Hasard's friend produced the movie and they filmed it in a matter of a few weeks, so it definitely has that unpolished feel. Much of the movie features Hasard and Irglova actually singing the songs, which are heart-rending and original(Hasard, the lead singer of an Irish band called the Frames, wrote most of them).

The movie is not your typical guy-meets-girl-they-fall-in-love-and-live-happily-ever-after story. The raw camera angles and ad lib dialogue echoes the reality of the brokenness of the world, more specifically the ache to be known,the often-unrealised desire to create beauty, and the value of commitment. Honestly, though, I really cannot wrap it all up in a few paragraphs. It's one of those movies that bleeds of both sadness and hope, longing and satisfaction, pain and healing. If you are expecting a polished, hollywood chic flick, I guarantee you will be disappointed. But if you quiet your heart and settle in to simply watch a snapshot of two people who are not so very much different from us with their desires, responsibilities, disappointments, and dreams, you may just come away a little less distracted and a little more alive.