Why I love the DIY film­mak­ing of Once

From its first shot, musi­cal roman­tic dra­ma Once announces its mod­est means of pro­duc­tion: a cam­era films a man (Glen Hansard) busk­ing on the oth­er side of a busy road, a shot laced with the tell­tale shakes from oper­at­ing a hand­held cam­corder. From the lossy DV cin­e­matog­ra­phy to the ordi­nary shot set­up, the microbud­get film­mak­ing on dis­play is instant­ly clear from this open­ing alone. Yet, by imme­di­ate­ly call­ing atten­tion to its DIY aes­thet­ic, Once primes its audi­ence for the ten­der­ly mut­ed nature of the romance at the film’s heart.

Like the means of its pro­duc­tion, John Carney’s break­through indie dar­ling Once – cel­e­brat­ing its 15^th anniver­sary – is qui­et­ly unas­sum­ing in its depic­tion of unact­ed-upon love amid musi­cal bonds. Its pro­tag­o­nists are unnamed (cred­it­ed only as Guy and Girl), por­trayed by non-actors (Hansard and Marké­ta Irglová, in her only nar­ra­tive film cred­it), and unevent­ful­ly part ways at the end of the movie rather than con­sum­mat­ing their mutu­al attrac­tion for one anoth­er. Despite being a cin­e­mat­ic musi­cal, the film con­tin­u­ous­ly side­steps the oft-height­ened nature of oth­er movies in its genre: its songs are all per­formed organ­i­cal­ly in the film’s die­ge­sis, its arrange­ments are most­ly spare and min­i­mal, and there’s often lit­tle to the onscreen action oth­er than the act of per­for­mance. Rather than visu­al­ly embell­ish its musi­cal num­bers, Once stead­fast­ly adheres to its down-to-earth style to reflect its music’s capac­i­ty for expres­sion on its own and how its char­ac­ters use that music to say what they’re oth­er­wise unable to tell each other.

Much of the plea­sure in watch­ing Once comes from Carney’s under­stand­ing that noth­ing does Hansard and Irglová’s songs jus­tice quite like pre­sent­ing them exact­ly as they are with­out dress­ing them up. The film’s sig­na­ture num­ber, the under­dog Oscar-win­ner ​“Falling Slow­ly,” is shot as plain­ly as can be, show­ing the two musi­cians expe­ri­enc­ing the inti­ma­cy in shar­ing a song togeth­er for the first time. This mind­set extends to the rest of the film as well, from the rudi­men­ta­ry track­ing shots of ​“If You Want Me” mir­ror­ing the musi­cal intro­spec­tion of a night­time walk, to the use of a faux home movie mon­tage embody­ing the lin­ger­ing mem­o­ries of an ex on ​“Lies.”

The movie’s unshowy nature extends right down to the very means of its film­ing – mak­ing opti­mal use of the rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive Sony HVR-Z1E dig­i­tal cam­era rather than indus­try-stan­dard film cam­eras. Car­ney and Hansard, agree­ing in pre-pro­duc­tion to keep the film as low-bud­get as pos­si­ble, chose to bring addi­tion­al verac­i­ty by shoot­ing in pub­lic spaces around Dublin, cap­tur­ing the busiest peri­ods at Grafton Street and the qui­et inti­ma­cy of a most­ly emp­ty mid­day bus as only film­ing on loca­tion could.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Tim Fleming’s use of long lens­es to stealth­ily shoot from afar amid crowds of peo­ple yield­ed an addi­tion­al lay­er of authen­tic­i­ty as well: allow­ing the non-actors at the core of the film to let down their guard and impro­vise, lend­ing their per­for­mances all the more nat­u­ral­ism. The charm in watch­ing Hansard and Irglová bond over the run­time with­out strict­ly adher­ing to a script is pal­pa­ble, the chem­istry between the two aching­ly present even if view­ers don’t know that they briefly became a cou­ple after filming.

It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly endear­ing to see the com­pound­ing effect of the film’s delib­er­ate tech­ni­cal lim­i­ta­tions in action. The com­bi­na­tion of the slight­ly unsteady hand­held cam­er­a­work with Car­ney and Fleming’s choice to only use nat­ur­al light – even in night scenes lit only by street and porch lights – gives every sequence the impres­sion of a small scrap­py team earnest­ly mak­ing the most out of what lit­tle they’re work­ing with. The film spends so much time accli­mat­ing the view­er to its style that its sin­gle cli­mac­tic break from that – imple­ment­ing crane shots in its final mon­tage – feels all the more earned for how the crew holds off on this sweep­ing ges­ture until the most oppor­tune time.

As a result, the pre­vail­ing allure of Once comes not from see­ing how the next musi­cal num­ber will be staged or shot, but in the com­pul­sion of see­ing how this brief encounter between the Guy and Girl fur­ther devel­ops with each song. By the time that the film arrives at its most spare num­ber – Irglová’s mourn­ful solo piano bal­lad ​“The Hill,” per­formed in the min­i­mal somber dim blue light­ing of an emp­ty rehearsal space – the pierc­ing impact of the songs-first approach reach­es its pin­na­cle. With unadorned cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the naked­ly emo­tion­al lyri­cism of the song becomes the pri­ma­ry focal point, one where the Girl can vent her torn roman­tic feel­ings that she nor­mal­ly keeps guard­ed. In the still­ness of this scene, the song’s abrupt end­ing, sud­den­ly cut short when the Girl chokes up while singing and breaks down in tears, becomes all the more haunting.

How­ev­er, if one had to pick only one moment that best encom­pass­es the strengths of Once’s ram­shackle pro­duc­tion, there’s no bet­ter choice than a mut­ed scene between Hansard and Irglová late in the film. The two take a trip out to the coun­try­side, where Guy asks Girl whether she loves her absent hus­band with whom she plans on rec­on­cil­ing. In an unscript­ed line of unsub­ti­tled Czech, Irglová responds that Hansard’s char­ac­ter is the one she loves, which pro­duces gen­uine con­fu­sion from Hansard – unaware of what Irglová says.

The moment is a per­fect bit of act­ing serendip­i­ty, not only because it’s an exchange that may not have been pro­duced under a big­ger pro­duc­tion, but because it proves how let­ting Irglová and Hansard live ful­ly with­in these roles elic­its snap­shots that feel espe­cial­ly real. Like the film itself and the unspo­ken romance at the cen­ter of it, Once’s DIY ethos cre­ates qui­et won­ders in the fleet­ing, show­ing how much can car­ry a film if the right spark is there and the pas­sion is present no mat­ter how small the bud­get. Noth­ing else could speak truer to the expres­sive pow­er of two musi­cians spilling their deep­est feel­ings into the songs they cre­ate together.