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The Movie "Once"

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Aloysius J. Gleek:



http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/10/the-swell-season-doc-revisits-couple-from-once.html



                         24 Frames
Movies: Past, present and future
'The Swell Season':
Documentary revisits couple from 'Once'
October 7, 2011 |  5:52pm





Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova ascended from little-known musicians to beloved pop culture couple in the briefest of moments at the 2007 Academy Awards. Hansard, guitarist and vocalist of the Irish rock band the Frames, and Irglova, a Czech singer-songwriter, won the Oscar for best song for “Falling Slowly,” a ballad from their indie musical “Once.” Their heartfelt acceptance speeches — and blossoming offscreen romance — immediately won over audiences.
 
A new documentary, “The Swell Season,” which opens in Los Angeles today, picks up where the Oscar ceremony left off, as filmmakers Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis follow Hansard and Irglova on tour with their band, the Swell Season. Shot in black and white over a period of three years, the documentary includes performance footage and intimate moments of the duo grappling with their newfound fame and evolving relationship.
 
August-Perna, Dapkins and Mirabella-Davis spoke with 24 Frames  writer Rebecca Keegan.
 

Question: How did this movie come about?

Mirabella-Davis: I was teaching a class at the New York Film Academy just after the Oscar win and Glen was one of my students. He was learning how to direct short films, and we became friends over the course of the class. After it was over, he approached me and described how he and the rest of the Swell Season were about to embark on this epic tour across America and the rest of the world and he expressed his conflicted feelings, his elation at the journey they were about to embark on but also his fears of being suddenly in the limelight and being under the scrutiny. We got together, Chris, Nick and I, and talked about the possibility of there being a really interesting documentary there, and Glen invited us to go on tour and that’s how it started.

 
Q: Did Glen and Marketa have oversight over what went in?
 
August-Perna: They were fairly hands off. We reached a point where we had respectful boundaries with each other when we were shooting. They saw a cut six months into the edit and had some feedback that was mostly about doing some more interviews and trying to capture this quickly evolving perspective that they had on this very intense period of their life.

 
Q: Why did you shoot it in black and white?
 
Dapkins: Glen felt black and white would be exciting. It was one more step toward a more narrative, fiction language, contrasted with “Once,” which was a fiction film shot like a documentary. This was the complete opposite.

 
Q: Was there anything that surprised you about these two people?
 
Mirabella-Davis: It was interesting to spend time with Glen, someone who had really managed to fulfill the dreams he had when he was a 14-year-old busker on the streets of Ireland and then struggling with the idea that it hadn’t brought him the happiness or the enlightenment that he hoped it would. That was interesting for us as aspiring filmmakers because sometimes we lose sight of that.
 

Q: You shot a lot of footage of Glen and Marketa interacting with some very avid fans. What did you notice about their relationship to their fans?
 
August-Perna: When Glen and Marketa fell in love, it was as if the world had watched it happen. In “Once,” people felt like they had watched it come about. There was a sense that they were old friends and people knew them.
 
Mirabella-Davis: As the touring went on, we saw Marketa become more anxious about being cast in a certain light. It was a struggle for her about finding her place as a private person and a private artist. The trappings of celebrity were a philosophical conflict for her.
 
August-Perna: She really needed to find her own experience of this time period. Some of that anxiety had to do with wanting to experience that time period differently, not as a couple that went everywhere together.
 

Q: This movie follows Glen and Marketa as they fall out of love, and some of their songs about lost love turn out to be eerily prescient.
 
Dapkins: We became quickly aware of the fact that they were working out certain unconscious undercurrents through their art form. So we started shooting the concerts in this intimate way where you couldn’t get a sense of where the venue was, which helped to bring out the commentary that they’re almost unwittingly providing.
 

Q: After showing them perform together throughout the film, the movie ends with a scene of Marketa watching Glen perform, and over the credits a scene of Marketa watching Glen. Why did you end that way?
 
August-Perna: It solidified the idea that two people can fall out of love personally and still love watching each other do what they do best. They have that musical relationship that will live on quite possibly forever and that’s what we were trying to capture.

Aloysius J. Gleek:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/movies/swell-season-about-duo-in-musical-once-review.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1326045767-Yjk3Bvdk7DtYCiCTul1bYg



Movie Review/NYT Critics' Pick
The Swell Season (2011)
How Fame Divided Bandmates in Love
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
October 20, 2011




“The Swell Season” is less a musical documentary than the story of a breakup, even if its makers seem at times frustratingly determined to smother their film’s most valuable emotional hook. Named for the band formed by the Irish-Czech duo Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, whose starring roles in the tiny 2007 musical “Once” and subsequent Academy Award for the beautiful song “Falling Slowly” hoisted them to international stardom, the film glances back at the two-year tour that followed those events.

What emerges is a poignant commentary on the uneasy commingling of love and fame. The couple have always existed in a muddle of art and life, the one feeding off the other, and their songs echo a musical and romantic collaboration that began many years earlier, when Ms. Irglova was barely out of high school.

Taking these songs on the road in the middle of a post-Oscar feeding frenzy, however, exposes personality differences that threaten to disrupt their bond. While Ms. Irglova is increasingly uncomfortable with the fans’ post-show attention (“I’m not a celebrity”), Mr. Hansard laps it up.

“It’s a great life we have, isn’t it?” he asks her brightly at the beginning of the movie, and it’s a beat or two before we hear her whispered “Yeah.”

Just as they did in “Once,” the pair’s lyrics chart their shifting emotions (“And I’m letting myself down by satisfying you”), and from time to time there are glimpses of the earlier film’s fragile charm. Shot in shimmering black and white, the images swaddle the story in a retro glamour as wistful as Ms. Irglova’s voice, making the footage of the tour’s daily grind unfortunately jarring.

Onstage, however, the directors (Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis) shine, their sidling approach to close-ups of Ms. Irglova’s vulnerable vocals contrasting with Mr. Hansard’s dramatic, center-stage solos. As he delivers his trademark blend of whispered phrases swelling to angry yelps, we can see both the former street busker and the present-day star.

We can also see where the anger comes from, as Mr. Hansard struggles to understand his hilariously fame-obsessed mother and the alcoholic father who died before the film was completed but not before leaving his son with the burden of unfulfilled dreams.

“Glen is tough as nails,” a colleague insists, but his songs suggest otherwise, as do his reactions to his partner’s perceptions about the darker corners of his personality. This makes the film’s stinginess with intimate conversations — either uncaptured or unused — especially disappointing.

Lovely but directionless, “The Swell Season” is a time capsule of scattered impressions and isolated moments. More interested in tour-bus parties than in Ms. Irglova’s need to forge her own musical identity, the filmmakers miss an opportunity to document the birth of a butterfly. As her just-released solo album and the band’s continuing European tour attest, fame and Ms. Irglova have at last formed a truce.


THE SWELL SEASON

Opens on Friday in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Directed by Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis; director of photography, Mr. Dapkins; edited by Mr. August-Perna; music by the Swell Season and Iron and Wine; produced by Mr. Mirabella-Davis; released by Seventh Art Releasing. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. This film is not rated.

Aloysius J. Gleek:




Video October 18, 2011
A Clip From ‘The Swell Season’
A scene from "The Swell Season," a documentary about the musicians Markéta Irglová and Glen Hansard, opening Friday.


Click on:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/10/18/movies/100000001119053/exclusive-clip-the-swell-season.html

Aloysius J. Gleek:


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/swell-season-film-review-181519


The Swell Season:
Film Review
Documentary does right by fans of
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova,
whose success has outlasted their
relationship
by John DeFore
8:00 PM PDT 4/22/2011 


The Bottom Line: Sensitive doc manages to show "Once"
duo as both blissed-out lovers and post-romance partners
without overdramatizing the transition.
 

NEW YORK — Tenderly dismantling the romantic mythology surrounding 2006's indie smash Once,  The Swell Season chronicles the surprise musical success of that movie's stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová and presents a couple that, however deep their bonds, can't live a storybook life for long. An easy sell with viewers who fell for the original film (and the albums it spawned), the doc by Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis does right by both fans and subjects and could make a profitable arthouse run.

Fans will know in advance that Hansard and Irglová, still partnered in music, didn't survive as a couple. But the film begins with them very much in love -- her giving him a haircut in a modest room while he marvels, "It's a great life we have, isn't it?" We soon watch the pair at the seaside, running naked into the surf like kids getting away with something.
 
But from the start, the filmmakers offer Q&A sessions with each singer individually. Though at first we're hearing childhood anecdotes and musings on fame (success came overnight in her case but was hard-earned in his), the solo interviews set the stage psychologically for the breakup to come.
 
The two spend a satisfying chunk of time recalling the musical spark that led to the Oscar-winning song "Falling Slowly" and resulting success with descriptions of that chemistry are borne out with present-day tour footage. Too successful, in one respect: The youthful vulnerability that makes Irglová so endearing behind a microphone hobbles her at the backstage door, where she can't get comfortable taking photos with fans. Hansard, who gladly accepts any interaction with his new admirers, tires of his partner's reluctance.
 
Hansard, in turn, suffers more philosophical difficulties with fame — a "what's it worth?" ennui that not only creates friction with his partner but makes for poignant dinner-table scenes with the family he clearly adores. His working-class mother can't stop talking about being the only woman in town whose son has an Oscar, and instead of accepting the pleasure he has given her, Hansard frets over this abstraction of achievement.
 
If the handsome black-and-white film sensitively captures frictions between characters who continue to love and respect each other, it isn't obsessed with this discomfort zone. The filmmakers are happy for diversions, like a tour-bus dance party and a post-gig song-swapping session where the group's Irish crew go ballad-for-ballad with the stars.
 
Performance footage may be briefer than some in the audience expect, but what there is is choice, capturing the contrasting kinds of vulnerability -- hers shy but gutsy, his eloquently raw -- that make the pair distinctive. A closing image, with Hansard in the spotlight while Irglová watches contently, can be read as either a newfound equilibrium or a suggestion that the duo will eventually follow different musical paths. Either way, Swell Season  makes a bruised-but-sweet flip side to Once 's dreamy love song.
 
Venue: Tribeca Film Festival (Viewpoints)
Production Company: Elkcreek Cinema
Directors-screenwriters: Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins, Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Producer: Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Director of photography: Chris Dapkins
Editor: Nick August-Perna
Sales: Demetri Makoulis, Elephant Eye Films
No rating, 89 minutes

Aloysius J. Gleek:


http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/10/the-swell-season.html


The Swell Season
By Elliot V. Kotek
Published at 12:54 AM on October 4, 2011


Anyone who was knocked backwards by the movie/musical Once  will once again be torn apart emotionally by The Swell Season,  a documentary finding its way into U.S. theaters this October.

The Swell Season  has that same soul-burning effect that fans of the original Sundance hit will recognize and appreciate. Filmed over three years and mostly post Oscar glory, the documentary follows Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová on tour, providing backstory to the album and film that made them famous. At the same time, it chronicles the couple’s struggles with the concept of fame, as well as the intensifying-then-cooling ardor of their own personal relationship.
 
With a deft hand that’s as much a blessing as a potential weakness, the documentary follows the twosome as they come into and out of the camera’s eye. While this offers the viewer unique insight into the claustrophobic effect of a success that locked the duo together from the moment their music struck a chord with viewers through the requisite touring for an acclaimed album, the closeness with which they’re viewed creates a disconnect between the audience and the greater context of the world at large. The Swell Season  is therefore somewhat removed from the happenings of their peers, separated from the news of the world, and bare of commentary from outside the life, love and lyrics of these two musicians in their goldfish bowl.
 
Ultimately, the documentary is as intimate a portrait of a duo that’s both band and couple as any top-notch biopic. With apt clarity, the film’s three directors celebrate their subjects’ story in crisp black and white, rendering the piece as somehow timeless and somewhat classic, a fitting choice with which to pay tribute to the deeply sincere storytelling of Hansard and Irglová’s music.

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