Of separations and hang-ups, of good company and attractions, of potentialities and wrong timings, of creative collaborations and honesty even without words, of reconciliations and making choices…

I took out my favorite scene from this wonderful little movie I watched last night. It’s a film from Dublin called “Once” and tells of two people meeting at the point of their lives when they are the most stuck. Their week spent together becomes the most important transition in their own personal stories.

I’d like to take out and post the other scenes in the movie which I like but that would defeat the purpose of me wanting you to see the film chronologically in its entirety. I leave you instead with an excerpt from a movie review which I think is spot on:

"It seems silly and grandiose to lavish praise on a movie whose dramatic crux is the recording of a demo tape, and there is some danger that the critical love showered on “Once” will come to seem a bit disproportionate. It is not a film with any great ambitions to declare, or any knotty themes to articulate. It celebrates doggedness, good-humored discipline and desire — the desire not only to write a song or make a recording, but the deeper longing for communication that underlies any worthwhile artistic effort.

The special poignancy of the movie, the happy-sad feeling it leaves in its wake, comes from its acknowledgment that the satisfaction of these aspirations is usually transient, even as it can sometimes be transcendent."

-- from Some Love Stories Have a Better Ending Than the Altar By A. O. SCOTT, Published: May 16, 2007