Once
No one in this film is swept up by feeling and suddenly bursts into song. The songs are always ones someone is actually singing and playing, yet everything the dialogue cannot say, the songs say instead.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people who made it ⏳🌊
- ComposerGlen Hansard
Frontman of The Frames, he wrote most of the songs and played the male lead himself.
- ComposerMarkéta Irglová
A Czech-born pianist and singer, she co-wrote “Falling Slowly,” wrote “The Hill” and other songs on her own, and played the female lead.
- DirectorJohn Carney
A former bassist for The Frames, he wrote and directed the film and later made Begin Again and Sing Street.
- ComposerFergus O'Farrell
Singer of Interference, he wrote “Gold,” the only song on the soundtrack not written by the two leads.
- ProductionMartina Niland
The producer who brought this small film to completion on a slim budget and a short shooting schedule.
I. Two people from the street
(The film) “Once” is a low-budget film written and directed by the Irish director John Carney. It cost about €112,000, roughly three-quarters of which came from the Irish Film Board. The shoot was over in 17 days. The crew numbered only a handful, and they filmed under natural light in borrowed homes of friends. The Dublin street scenes are said to have been captured from a distance with a telephoto lens. (Connection) Glen Hansard, who took charge of the music, had played in a band with Carney. In the early 1990s Carney was the bassist in the Frames, the rock band Hansard led. Hansard left school at thirteen and began his musical life busking on the streets of Dublin. His acting experience amounted to little more than playing a guitarist in Alan Parker’s “The Commitments.” Cillian Murphy was at first mentioned for the male lead, but it came to nothing, and Carney gave the part to Hansard, who had written the songs himself. (Collaboration) Markéta Irglová is a Czech-born pianist and singer. The two first met at a music festival her parents ran in the Czech Republic, and afterward they wrote songs together and released records as a duo called the Swell Season. Carney is said to have built the screenplay on their songs. The film’s two characters have no names; even the credits list them only as Guy and Girl. (Method) Every song in the film is diegetic music, actually sung and played by the characters. Even so, in the way the songs drive the story forward, the film follows the old grammar of the musical. Carney would later place the making of songs at the very heart of the story in “Begin Again” and “Sing Street” as well, and this film was where it began.
II. Night on Grafton Street
(Day) The film opens on Grafton Street, Dublin’s busy shopping thoroughfare. By day the man sings familiar songs that passersby will recognize — songs sung to earn coins. A battered acoustic guitar, worn so thin a hole has opened in its body, is all he owns. (Night) Only at night, when the street empties, does he sing his own songs. “Say It to Me Now” bursts out into just such a deserted street. It begins as a low murmur but ends in a shout that seems to tear his throat, and in it the inner life of a man carrying the words he never managed to say to the one who left lies wholly exposed. (Meeting) When the song ends, someone applauds. It is a Czech immigrant woman who sells flowers on the street. She asks her questions without hesitation: whom the song was written for, why he doesn’t sing songs like this in the daytime. Then, hearing that his father runs a vacuum-cleaner repair shop, she asks him to fix her broken vacuum. (The vacuum) The next day she really does turn up dragging the vacuum cleaner, and the two board a bus together. When she asks him on the bus to sing for her again, the man makes up a short, comic song on the spot: “Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy.” Under a minute long, the song shows the man’s habit of covering his wounds with jokes, and it is also the moment laughter first passes between them. The cry in the night street and the joke on the bus — two songs set the two sides of this man side by side.
The scene on Grafton Street at night where the man sings his own song for the first time. As the song ends, applause is heard, and so the two meet.
- Unlike the other people’s songs he sings by day, this one is the man’s own story from beginning to end. Where the day songs and the night songs part ways, we see who this character is.
- The voice that began in a low murmur grows rougher and rougher until at last it turns into a shout. The gradual swell (crescendo) is achieved not through instrumentation but through a single voice.
- The only accompaniment is a worn acoustic guitar. The rough technique of raking hard down the strings pushes against the restrained images on screen and lays bare the man’s feelings.
- Some find it rather flat when heard on the soundtrack album alone. It comes into its own when heard with the scene in the film, where the camera slowly draws closer and the song ends in applause.
The two board a bus carrying the broken vacuum. When she asks for a song, the man improvises one, spinning his own plight into a joke.
- Under a minute long, this miniature is the shortest track on the soundtrack. It is the very place where laughter first breaks out in the film.
- Worth noticing is the way he sings his heartbreak by turning it into the comic predicament of a vacuum repairman. This man’s habit of covering sorrow with jokes is captured whole.
- It is sung by the same man on the same guitar as the earlier “Say It to Me Now,” yet the mood is the exact opposite. Heard back to back, the two songs bring the character’s two sides sharply into view.
III. The piano in the music shop
(Piano) She has no piano. So, with the shop owner’s permission, she often plays the one in a music store. After the vacuum is fixed, the man follows her to that shop. She plays a few bars for him first, and he recognizes her skill. (Lesson) The man teaches her one of his songs. He calls out the chords and tells her where to come in with him. That is how “Falling Slowly” is born within the film. The guitar sets the beat, the piano follows in cautiously, and at a certain moment her voice settles over his song. (Gaze) While the playing locks into place, the two do not look at each other for long. They look at the guitar strings, at the keys, now and then at each other’s hands. There is not a single line in which either opens their heart. Still, in those few minutes the audience grasps what has begun. In showing feeling through playing together rather than explaining it in words, this scene foreshadows how the whole film speaks. (Weight) The song goes on to become the film’s pillar. It is the very song that won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Original Song. But within the film it has nothing yet to do with awards. It is merely the first time two strangers have tried playing together, and that modesty is what the camera protects. That it unfolds not on a glossy, polished stage but in a corner of a shop with few customers makes the song sound all the closer.
The song the man teaches her in the music shop, the first they sing together. It is the film’s central song and returns at the ending.
- Listen to the order in which the guitar sets the beat and the piano follows in cautiously. The process of two strangers fitting their playing to each other survives intact in the arrangement.
- In the chorus the two voices overlap to form harmony. That they do not sing the same note but support each other on different ones sounds like the relationship of two people who draw close yet remain themselves.
- It won the 2008 Academy Award for Best Original Song. Because it had already appeared before the film’s release in the Czech film “Beauty in Trouble” and on the pair’s album, its eligibility was questioned, but the Academy upheld its judgment that the song had been written for this film.
- In the stage musical it was sung by Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti. The original cast recording that includes it won the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.
IV. Lyrics on the road at night
(Homework) The man records a song that has no lyrics yet and hands it to her, asking her to write words for it. She listens to it on her CD player late into the night, and when the batteries die she walks to a shop to buy new ones. On the way back through the night, earphones in, she softly sings the lyrics she has just written. That is how “If You Want Me” comes to be. (Voice) Irglová wrote this song on her own, and it is the passage in which her voice fills the screen alone for the first time. It is a song that cautiously offers her heart, saying she will be there if he wants her. She too has circumstances the man does not yet know of, and that hesitation suffuses the whole song. (Lingering) Meanwhile the man polishes “Lies” while flipping through photos of the former lover who left for London. Scenes from the past drift across a computer screen, and the song swings between resentment and longing. If her song reaches out cautiously toward what lies ahead, his is still looking back. (Gathering) The two also go to a small get-together at someone’s house, where people take turns singing. The song heard here, “Gold,” is the only track on the soundtrack that neither of them wrote or sang. It was written by Fergus O’Farrell of the Irish band Interference, a longtime friend of Hansard’s. Capturing without artifice an Irish living room where friends pass songs around, this scene shows where the film’s music comes from.
Walking down the road at night, she sets lyrics to the wordless song the man gave her and sings them. It is the passage in which her voice fills the screen alone for the first time.
- Irglová wrote this song on her own. That the making of a song is captured as it happens on screen is very much in this film’s character.
- Because she sings softly on the road at night while hearing the accompaniment through earphones, the song sounds like talking to herself. With no one listening, the feeling becomes, if anything, all the more honest.
- Listen to the manner of a conditional confession — that she will be there if he wants her. The wish to move forward and the hesitation live together in a single song.
- The soundtrack is said to carry a version with a different arrangement from the film scene. Heard against her solo singing in the film, the difference is clear.
The song the man polishes while looking at photos of the former lover who left for London. Scenes from the past drift across a computer screen.
- At the same time that she reaches out toward what lies ahead with “If You Want Me,” the man, with this song, is still looking back. Set the two songs side by side and you see that the two of them stand in different places.
- It is a song that swings between resentment and longing. So the voice rises sharply, only to sink again moments later.
- Both of their names appear in the songwriting credits. It means that even a song carrying the man’s own story bears her touch.
V. One night in the studio
(Preparation) Before he tries his luck with music in London, the man wants to make a proper demo. The two of them gather buskers from the street into a band, take out a bank loan, and rent a recording studio for the weekend. The story now leaves the room the two have shared and moves to a place where many people make sound together. (Persuasion) At first the studio engineer greets these amateurs with indifference. The mood shifts when the band plays “When Your Mind's Made Up.” The song begins quietly, steadily gathers weight, and at the end surges up as if bursting, and on the other side of the glass the engineer's attitude changes. It is a scene in which music, not words, wins someone over. Street musicians who took coins by day are, for the first time, treated with real respect. (Dawn) During a break in the all-night session, she sits alone at the piano and sings “The Hill.” If most of the songs so far have been the man's story, this one is hers. Made of nothing but piano and voice, with no other instruments, it is one of the quietest moments in the film. (Test) When the recording is done, they take the finished demo, get into a car, and head for the seaside. They want to see whether it still sounds good not through the studio's fine speakers but through ordinary car speakers. This brief passage reminds us that small songs are, in the end, made for the ears of ordinary people in their everyday lives.
When the band plays this song in the studio, the indifferent engineer's attitude changes. It is a scene in which music, not words, wins someone over.
- Beginning quietly, the song adds instruments and voices one by one, gathering weight until it bursts at the end. The gradual swell of the crescendo matches the shift in the scene's mood exactly.
- This is the first song in the film to feature a full band sound, drums and bass included. A story that began with a single guitar widens into the sound of many people.
- Hansard wrote this song. It lets us hear the moment when street buskers are, for the first time, treated with real respect.
A song she sings alone at the piano during a break in the all-night session. It is one of the quietest moments in the film.
- The only accompaniment is a piano. Against the scene just before, packed with band sound, the stillness feels all the greater.
- A broken chord (arpeggio), which unravels the harmony one note at a time and lets it flow, gently supports the song from beneath. It is an accompaniment that holds the voice up from behind without covering it.
- Irglová wrote this song on her own. Having mostly listened to the man's story until now, the audience here lends an ear to hers for the first time.
- Because it is sung at dawn, with almost no one listening, it sounds less like a confession to someone than like talking to oneself.
VI. The song flows again
(Ending) How the film ends will not be revealed here. But what the music does at the end can be told. Once the demo is finished, the story turns to what each of the two will choose, and over the final scene and the end credits “Falling Slowly,” which they first sang together in the music shop, plays once more. (Reprise) It is the same song, yet its meaning has changed. The first time we heard it, it was a song in which something was beginning. Heard again, it becomes a song that looks back on what the two gave each other through music over those few days. The melody is unchanged, but the listener's ear is not. A reprise, which brings back an earlier song later on, has its greatest power when used this way. (Afterglow) The film does not tie everything up neatly. Instead, it entrusts its last few minutes to a song. What the audience remembers as they leave the theater is not the dialogue but that song. This, too, is why a small film is remembered for so long. (Afterward) The film made its name by winning the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and in 2011 it was adapted as a stage musical in New York. Adapted by Enda Walsh and directed by John Tiffany, the stage version kept the film's approach of having the actors play their instruments live on stage, and at the 2012 Tony Awards it won in eight categories, including Best Musical. And so a song that began on Grafton Street made its way to Broadway.
Lesser-known stories
(The song came first) The first film to feature “Falling Slowly” was not Once. The song was first used as the theme for Czech director Jan Hřebejk's 2006 film Beauty in Trouble, and that same year it also appeared on the duo album The Swell Season by the two and on The Frames' album The Cost. As a result, questions about its eligibility arose after it was nominated for an Academy Award. The Academy accepted the explanation that the song had been written during the making of Once and had been almost unknown before, and it kept its nomination. Because people remember only that it won an Oscar, this earlier history is little known. (Two speeches) At the ceremony, Hansard gave his speech first, but just as Irglová was about to speak, the play-off music began, and she had to withdraw after barely a word of thanks. When the commercial break ended, host Jon Stewart called her back to the stage. Irglová said the song had been written from a perspective of hope, and spoke about what the award meant to independent musicians working in difficult circumstances. She was nineteen at the time. (Whose “Gold”) Fergus O'Farrell, who wrote “Gold,” the song heard in the party scene, was from Cork in the west of Ireland and led a band called Interference. He kept writing songs and singing even after muscular dystrophy put him in a wheelchair, and he died in 2016. Hansard appears often as a friend in Breaking Out, a documentary that followed O'Farrell over ten years, and the film won the award for feature documentary from the Irish Film and Television Academy in 2021. This is the story behind a song from Once that many people think of as Hansard's. (A film shot at home) The shoot lasted 17 days, and the party scene was filmed in the house where Hansard actually lived. Carney is said to have put in some of his own money and to have passed his directing fee on to the two leads. After the film's release, Steven Spielberg told the American daily USA Today in an interview that this little film had given him enough inspiration to last the rest of the year.
Glossary 📚🔎
Source music (diegetic music)
(Meaning) Diegesis is Greek for telling, or narration. Diegetic music, then, is music that actually exists within the world of the story. (In film and musical theater music) It is music that characters on screen sing, play, or hear on the radio — in other words, music the characters themselves can hear. By contrast, background music that only the audience hears is called non-diegetic music. In a school festival scene, the song the band plays on stage is source music, while the soft piano that plays as the protagonist agonizes over something is background music. In Once, nearly every song is source music.
Busking
(Meaning) The English verb busk means to earn money by performing in the street, and a person who performs this way is called a busker. (In film and musical theater music) It refers to performances in which someone sings or plays for passersby in a street or square and collects coins in something like a guitar case. Because the performer must catch the steps of people who happen to be walking by, rather than an audience that bought tickets in advance, they often sing songs everyone knows. Picture friends putting on a talent show in a park, until strangers stop and begin to watch.
Demo
(Meaning) Short for the English demonstration, meaning showing, or a trial presentation. (In film and musical theater music) A simple recording made before an official release to let people hear what a song is like. Musicians send demos to record labels or concert promoters to get their music known. It is much like setting out a plate for the judges to taste before entering the finals of a cooking contest. This demo is what the man in Once wants to take to London. (Elsewhere) In games, a trial version released so players can try the opening before buying the full game is called a demo.
Harmony
(Meaning) Hwaeum (和音) means sounds (音) that go together (和). The English harmony comes from the Greek harmonia, which originally meant to fit together, to join. (In film and musical theater music) It refers to the blended sound of several notes of different pitches ringing at once. When two people sing the same notes, it is unison; when one sings the melody while the other supports it with notes higher or lower, it becomes harmony. When the sopranos and altos at a choir competition sing different notes yet blend into one, that is harmony. (Elsewhere) In everyday speech, harmony is also used to mean concord or cooperation among people.
Broken chord (arpeggio)
(Meaning) Arpeggio comes from the Italian arpa, the harp. It means to play as if plucking a harp. (In film and musical theater music) A way of playing in which the notes of a chord are not pressed all at once but flow one by one, from bottom to top or top to bottom. Struck together, they ring with a heavy thud; spread out, they ripple gently like a wave. That is why arpeggios are often used in piano accompaniment that quietly supports a song. It is like climbing stairs one step at a time instead of leaping up in a single bound.
Crescendo
(Meaning) Crescendo is Italian for growing, swelling. It comes from the Latin crescere, which shares a root with the English word increase, meaning growth. (In film and musical theater music) It means gradually making the sound louder. In a score it is marked with an angle bracket that opens out sideways. When a song that began quietly bursts out loudly at the end, listeners feel as if their emotions are welling up. At a field-day relay, the cheering that grows louder and louder as the final runner nears the finish line is exactly like a crescendo. (Elsewhere) In everyday English, crescendo is also used figuratively for the moment when something steadily builds to a peak.
Reprise
(Meaning) Reprise comes from the French reprendre: to take up again, to regain. (In film and musical theater music) It means bringing back a song or melody heard earlier in a later part of the story. Even the same song, because of what has happened in between, comes to sound entirely different to the audience. It is like singing your school song again at graduation after singing it on your first day: the words are the same, but your heart is completely different. When “Falling Slowly” plays again at the end of Once, that is exactly such a case.