A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Move over Garden State, there's a new soundtrack in town

By Paige Thomas

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova know how to tug on my heartstrings, and probably yours, too.

In a world of overly produced, MTV-endorsed music about booty-shaking and money-making, some of us are looking for more honest music to connect to. The soundtrack to the movie Once, a bittersweet story about music and love, pushes itself into its listeners’ hearts through stirring emotional musicality.

The movie Once, an alternative to traditional musicals and labeled a “video album” by its director, tells the story of an Irish street musician (Hansard) who befriends a young foreign woman (Irglova) working to provide for her family in Dublin. As the plot develops, the two form a friendship based on their shared love of creating music.

The soundtrack of the film is woven into and performed by its co-stars as they begin to learn about each other, work together on songs and eventually go into a studio to create an album. The movie explores the touching relationship that the unlikely duo forms and the music that unfolds from it. 

The soundtrack for the movie is a collaboration between its two stars, Irishman Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from the Czech Republic. Hansard, who left school at the age of 13 to begin earning money on the street playing his guitar, is a well-versed music industry veteran. Lead singer for the band The Frames since 1990, Hansard has been on the musical scene for years. Irglova is the young newcomer, making both the movie and the music for it at the tender age of 17. While the two had previously worked together on another album before creating the soundtrack, this work has reached their widest audience.

The music itself is simple, created in the singer/songwriter tradition using acoustic guitars and pianos. Accompaniment from violins, drums and other instruments are used to delicately enhance the vocals and main melodies. Both Hansard and Irglova possess incredible vocal ability which leave notes that still seem to resonate even after the songs are over. 

While Hansard makes his presence on the album known with his passionate delivery and incredible range on songs like “Leave” and “When Your Mind’s Made Up”, it may be Irglova who actually steals the show on the record. Her solo songs, “The Hill” and “If You Want Me” prove the most emotional. Her voice is delicate and innocent, as her age suggests, yet she is able to exude a maturity way beyond her years.

I have always had difficulty articulating the way music I truly love makes me feel, and this is one of those times. The only way to understand it is to listen to it yourself. But, I’m not the only one falling under the spell—critics everywhere can’t stop gushing. Film critic Richard Roeper even confessed on TV to getting the songs on his iPod not long after seeing the movie. People are slowly catching on to the power this film and music are creating.

A friend of mine, on hearing one of the songs for the first time off-handedly said to me, “This kind of music makes you want to fall in love.” She was right. That is exactly how it makes you feel. It makes you joyful to listen to it. Hansard and Irglova have created a masterpiece that gets inside the hearts of its listeners, an album that possesses you and makes you want to listen to it again, and again and again.