Pop Smart - On DVD: Once

(Amazon.com)

Rarely has a musical felt quite so organic, quite so natural, quite so appropriate as Once, which was (finally) released on DVD last week and offers audiences a second shot at one of the best films of 2007 (and which might have eluded Atlanta movie-goers this past summer). Its success shouldn’t be that surprising given how pitch-perfect 2007 was when it came to musicals, movies about musicians or both. I discussed a lot of the amazing movies featuring rockers and music last month, and noted how I’d missed out on Once. After viewing the DVD, it gets even easier to make the case that 2007 is the year that movies rocked the best.

Irish director John Carney reunited with Glen Hansard, his former bandmate in the band the Frames, casting Hansard as a Dublin busker who forms a musical partnership that borders on romance with a Czech emigre (Marketa Irglova). This casting is the key to the entire film, because Hansard, despite a role in 1991’s The Commitments, is more musician than actor. Carney, as noted in the DVD’s spare extra features, wanted to shoot a small film with a smaller budget but wanted the film to develop as deliberately as possible. Hansard and Irglova are friends in real life (and apparently, post-production, are lovers), and their scenes together could not feel more real as they use music to express their respective feelings of wounded love for their lost partners and, possibly, a love for each other.