newcritics

To celebrate the first anniversary of newcritics, Tom has invited contributors to identify their most important single piece of media from the previous year, or perhaps, more specifically as Tony Alva reminds me, “one bit of media that touched your life in the last year.” As usual, I’m somewhat late to the blog party and find myself going back to the wonderful range of choices that other bloggers have mentioned and discussed with such passion and enthusiasm. At the same time, Tom’s question poses a challenge for me on a couple of levels. Perhaps more than anything given my easily distracted sensibility, I find myself fighting the desire to identify a single “bit of media,” no matter how open-ended Tom’s language. But for reasons I’m not sure that I can articulate, I keep finding myself going back to John Carney’s amazing movie musical, Once, and, of course, the soundtrack that so powerfully evokes the story of a Dublin-based busker, The Guy (Glen Hansard), and the Czech immigrant, The Girl (Marketa Irglova), as they connect over their shared passion for making music. Back in December, on my own blog, I cited the soundtrack as one of my “21 Media Moments in 2007,” but of course, with Once, soundtrack and movie are inseparable.

As I mentioned in my original, somewhat rushed review, I was taken by the degree to which the songs seemed to arise organically out of the story itself, out of this shared passion for music and of the emotions it expresses. I didn’t say so at the time, but the grainy cinematography also serves the film beautifully, capturing the grubby Dublin streets where The Guy and The Girl meet, and where The Guy also works as a vacuum repairman in his father’s shop while massaging a broken heart after his girlfriend left for London. But, as Rebecca Weiss and others have pointed out, the soundtrack is what gives the film its life, and Hansard and Irglova’s music remind us “what it’s like to feel” without ever sounding whiny like so many other indie musicians. And even a throwaway song like Hansard’s playful “Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy,” fits perfectly within what she calls the soundtrack to The Guy’s life. But to talk about the movie in these terms might be to miss what A.O. Scott calls its “low-key affect and decidedly human scale.” It’s a modest film, beautifully told, with a soundtrack that continually reminds me, at least, of the power of music.

I realize that my contribution to this theme seems incredibly unfocused, but I’ve been circling around what I like so much about Once that I don’t think I’ll quite be able to get it right, which is probably a good indication that it is, in fact, the “bit of media” that mattered most to me over the last year. And now that David Carr has confirmed that the song’s nomination will stand, here’s hoping that Hansard and Irglova score a well-deserved victory in the best song category at this year’s Oscars.