Once director John Carney is back with a new film starring Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, and Adam Levine. This is how it compares to its similarly musician-centric predecessor.
Keira Knightley in Begin Again
Andrew Schwartz/Weinstein Company
John Carney's 2007 film Once was an honest-to-god indie sensation. Made for just $160,000 and starring real-life musicians Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, it charmed audiences everywhere, won an Academy Award for best song, and spawned a Broadway musical adaptation. It was an amazing feat: a small movie with a giant heart that earned global acclaim — which puts a lot of pressure on Carney's follow-up Begin Again, which opens in limited release this Friday and wider the week after.
Begin Again is another story about musicians and romantic yearning, only this time, it's set in New York instead of Dublin and features movie stars (Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo), along with whatever you want to call Adam Levine. It's a daring move to head right back into the territory of your breakout hit, and Begin Again does play like a remix of Once, slicker and brighter, shinier but less scrappy. In revisiting similar themes and characters, Carney also struggles with some baggage about working on a bigger canvas. Here's a look at how the two films are the same as much as they're different.
There's a man and a woman who make beautiful music together.
Andrew Schwartz/Weinstein Company
And unlike the characters in Once, they actually have names. There's Dan (Mark Ruffalo), the disgraced co-founder of a record label whose life has become an alcoholic haze since the fracturing of his marriage to Miriam (Catherine Keener) and his drifting away from daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld). Then, there's Greta (Keira Knightley), a songwriter who follows her budding rock star boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) to the U.S., where he promptly leaves her for someone else.
The pair's first encounter, which is presented from both perspectives, takes place at an open mic night where Greta's friend Steve (James Corden) bullies her into performing. Dan hears magic in the song, and cajoles a hesitant Greta into letting him produce an album with her, pulling on all the connections in his otherwise defunct professional career.
Dan and Greta fall in love a little, but they're more enchanted by what they're making together than with each other, in what's perhaps the best parallel to Once — life is too complicated for this to be a simple romance. Things happen far more easily for Dan and Greta, and the movie's startlingly low on conflict, but Ruffalo and Knightley (who shows off a strong singing voice) are endearingly aglow as they get their band together and record in various locations around the city (though why it would ever be a good idea to do so on a noisy subway platform is left unexplained).
No comments:
Post a Comment