A Slow Poignant Burn

Posted on January 5, 2008
Filed Under My Better Half, advice, praise, recommendations | 8 Comments

I just love a happy coincidence and, today, I learned of one that makes me inordinately glad. Last night My Better Half and I watched Once on our DVD player and both fell in love with this simple, sweet and beautiful story told almost entirely in song. This morning I received an e-mail from My Better Half’s uncle saying he had sent me the very same film for X-mas and, in the shuffle of the holidays, the gift had gone to the wrong address. It will be here soon. And though I can’t quite break it to him that we’ve already watched the film, just last night, because I know how much he wants to be the one who gives us the gift of this movie and its music, my heart still bounded just a little upon learning that I would soon own a copy. Placing the Netflix version in our mailbox this morning felt like a sorrowful parting. I will be overjoyed when it crosses our threshold again.

Without giving too much away, I need to mention that most of the film is a sort of music video. I guess one could call it a musical. But I loathe most musicals and found this one completely worthwhile, from start to finish. If your heart doesn’t just brim and over flow to the poignant strains of Falling Slowly as the two main leads play together for the first time in the back of an abandoned music shop then you are dead to me, someone I can share nothing with in the future.

I have already downloaded the MP3 version of the song released by The Frames, an Irish band whose lead-man Glen Hasard plays the main character in the film, and have been looping it non-stop all morning. Damn it makes me want to be a musician, to pick up the guitar and strum a sorrowful ballad. Fortunately, for my immediate family, we have no stringed instruments in near proximity. Otherwise I’d be fully engaged in making an complete asshole of myself right now.

Instead I urge you all to go get this movie or, at the very least, watch this clip of the two leads performing the song as part of the film’s promotional tour. Though story doesn’t end the way I really, really hoped it would, it’s the best thing I’ve seen in a few years. I shed a few tears at the end but that’s the way I like ‘em, with a slow poignant burn.

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