Begin Again

Eight years ago, writer-director John Carney made a wonderful little indie film about the music industry called Once.  The film went on to great acclaim, and even became the basis of a Tony-winning Broadway musical.  Carney returns to the music scene with his latest film, Begin Again.  This is a much sleeker, studio production, and while it doesn't have quite the same spark that his earlier film had, it still has plenty of heart and smart dialogue.

Begin Again is actually the story of two lost souls in New York City who happen to find each other, and come together through music, although not romantically as you might initially expect.  At the outset, we meet Dan (Mark Ruffalo), a strung out and constantly hungover co-owner of an independent music label.  Dan is disheveled and basically a mess of emotions when we first see him.  His wife (Catherine Keener) divorced him years ago, and whenever he tries to spend time with his teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld), she acts like she can barely hold back her contempt for him.  Things do not improve when he is fired from his job.  Drunk and contemplating suicide, Dan happens to stumble into a music bar where he hears a young woman named Gretta (Keira Knightley) perform.  Her song inspires hope and inspiration within him, and we sense it's the first time he's been excited about music in a long time.  He tries to sign her as an act, and while he doesn't make the best first impression, they start to spend time together and become friends.

Gretta, we learn, is also having a hard time lately.  She came to New York from England with her singer-songwriter boyfriend, Dave (Adam Levine).  They were a struggling songwriting team, and after one of Dave's songs happened to be used in a movie, the major music labels started calling.  They moved to the city together to start his career, and while things were great at first, Dave eventually ended up having an affair with someone at the music label.  She's been living with her friend (James Corden) since then, and is contemplating flying back home to England, as well as giving up her dreams of music.  It was Gretta's friend who happened to get her up on stage to perform that night, which strikes up the partnership between Dan and her.  He wants to help her make an album, and although both of them have little money, they find clever ways to track down talent through Dan's past connections in the music industry, and use the city itself as their recording studio.

The scene where Dan first hears Gretta sing is one of the best moments in the film.  As Gretta sings alone on the stage, Dan begins to hear the musical accompaniment in his head, and we get to see it for ourselves, as the abandoned instruments up on the stage start to play along to Gretta's song.  It's one of the few scenes in recent memory that truly captures the wonder of music, and how a great song can inspire our imaginations.  From there, the movie basically becomes one giant love letter to the city of New York, and how it can inspire art.  As the two tour different locations, they not only dream up new songs together, but also new ways to perform and record them.  Since they don't have the money for a proper studio, they record in different locations around the city, using their surroundings for inspiration and even musical accompaniment. 

Begin Again is light and frothy entertainment, but unlike the recent And So It Goes, this movie is actually about something, and has characters we can get invested in.  It has plenty of conventional elements, but it's smart in how it uses them.  Even though Dan has an angst-filled teenage daughter, she's not the walking teenage cliche that we expect her to be.  And even though Dan and Gretta become very close in their relationship, it does not build into a conventional romantic love story.  This spares us the misunderstandings when Gretta's ex-boyfriend re-enters the story halfway through, trying to get back into her life.  The movie is too smart for such cliches, and wisely avoids just about every one.  I also love how the screenplay uses the city of New York as not just a backdrop, but almost as a character in the story itself.  This is one of those films where the setting is integral to the plot at hand.

This being a film about the music industry, we can only hope that there be good original songs for the characters to sing, as well as some classics on the soundtrack.  Again, the movie impresses on both counts.  Much has been made of the fact that Keira Knightley sang all of her own songs in the film, and she certainly does a fine job here.  But what impressed me more is that the original songs that were written for the film are so good - good enough that I will likely hunt down the soundtrack eventually.  There's no one stand out number, like "Falling Slowly" from Once, but they are all of the highest quality.  There's nothing worse in a music-based movie when a character is supposed to be talented, yet she is saddled with terrible songs.  This never happens here.

Begin Again is simply a joyous movie, and one of the few films that will leave you humming as you exit the theater.  It doesn't break any new ground in its storytelling, and it doesn't have to.  It's a simple story, told wonderfully, and with strong performances all the way around.  It even manages to wrap itself up just about perfectly.  I don't think it gets much better than that.

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