Once Upon a Time

I wanted to take a minute while I had one and give a little shout out to The Doctor. A little while back you may recall a discussion about Netflix and the "correct" way to use the queue. The Doctor is a self described "pusher-upper", while I am more of a play it as it lies kind of movie goer. So in response to his assertions, I gave him the chance to "push-up" any five movies on my queue to the top. So I did, and now you're up to date.

One of the movies that he suggested I see immediately was "Once". This tiny little movie, written and directed by John Carney clocks in at just over 80 minutes. That doesn't seem like a lot of time to tell much of a story, but come to find out, it's plenty. This movie is genuine, heartfelt, and in the end beautiful. It's effects will be felt days and months down the road.

I could launch into the typical critical analysis of the movie, siting actors and locations as well as plot devices and production value. Instead, I would like to talk about something far more universal that came up watching this movie over the weekend, the idea of a love story.

I had a couple people over for dinner and a movie this weekend, and instead of giving them an option of what we watch, I just popped "Once" into the DVD player. The question immediately came, "What are we watching?" So the task now fell to me to condense an entire movie, which I haven't seen either, into a couple of sentences. So based on what I know about the movie and what I had read, I replied. It's "Once". Kind of a love story, with music." Satisfied with my description, we all settled in to give it a go.

So as the movie unfolded, I could tell that my companions were watching with varying degrees of interest. At one point I even caught one of them snoring a bit. But the nap was short lived and by the end I believe we all had a pretty good grasp of "Once" and what it had to offer as a movie. When it finished and we began talking, the first question I fielded was, "I thought you said that was a love story?" So right off the bat I was thrust into defending not only my statement from before the movie, but also my belief that I was correct. As we got further into the discussion, it became clear that my adversary was of the belief that it couldn't be a love story because the two principals didn't end up together. So it got me thinking. Can it really be called a love story if the main actors don't end up together in the end? Now before we get too far off base I want to clarify. I'm talking about traditional love story here. I don't want any conversation about a man and his dog, or a man's love affair with the game of baseball. I'm talking actual relationship here. Can it be called a love story if the participants don't end up together? Or better yet, is it as satisfying.

I've got some opinions on the subject, but duty calls, so I won't go into them now, but put your mind to work and let me hear what you think. I'll check in shortly with my 2 cents worth.