Oh, what a beautiful movie. It’s (according to my count) the second (the first being “Lost in Translation”) in a line of what seems to be a trend of films that deal honestly and intelligently with a really difficult concept: two people, both committed to other people (either by law or in their hearts), find themselves drawn to each other. They have an intense “romance” (although they are not sexually intimate), but choose not to pursue it in the end, and to return to their previous (perhaps “ever-present”) relationships. In both, you are moved in so many ways. On the one hand, you’re sort of rooting for them to get together, because they are so cute and good for each other, and because they are the romantic protagonists of the movie. On the other hand, aren’t the girls sort of cheating on their spouses by having this incredibly intimate relationship with another man? On the other hand, their relationship with that first man really is non-existent/he’s a creep/the folk singer with the scruffy beard is so cute!
At the end of the movie, you’re torn, because it’s probably “best” for everyone, but it just seems like their relationship was so, you know, cinematically wonderful.
At any rate, I am so glad their song beat out all those cookie-cutter crappy ones from “Enchanted”, especially because I’m guessing that the title “Once” is a post-modern re-imagining of the phrase “Once Upon A Time”, and the film actually succeeds in recouching the tropes of the fairy tale romance in a complicated and real world, and “Enchanted” was trying to be a post-modern, self-referential jab at Disney, but ended up just being more of the same.
Here’s Glen and Marketa at the Oscars. How sweet!
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