Once (2006)

This movie is not about relationships. This movie is not about love. This movie is about music. Everything else comes second to that. We are not looking at how music influences their lives, we're looking at how their lives influence their music. When the girl hears one of the boy's songs that he's written himself, her first question is: "Who is she? The girl who you wrote the song for?" She knows there's a story. Behind every good piece of music there's a story. Later, as the girl plays a song she wrote about her husband, we hear all the pain and despair flowing out of her. Her past has made her music what it is now, for better or worse. (spoiler) When the two reunite with their exes at the end, it leaves us asking the question: Where will their musical journey go next, now that there are different challenges, different steps to climb, different pains to deal with? (/spoilers)

As it must be for this film to work, the music in the movie is superb. I am not a fan of the genre at all, but both musicians play with such passion and such conviction that I wanted to know their story, wanted to know what could have caused this music to pour out of them. And it made me want to write a few songs of my own as well. A must-see for any aspiring songwriter or musician, or even for those, like me, who find it so easy to become immersed in the emotion and stories found in music. 4 stars.