Spango Dips

Once ★★★★

Wondrously beautiful film about a musical kinship between an Irish busker (Hansard) and a struggling young pianist from the Czech Republic (Irglová), which develops over the course of a magical weekend in Dublin. To directly call it a love story would be misleading, but in the way they communicate as collaborators, and the way they interact as they perform, the two reveal a connection as deep and tender as between any two characters in recent film. In another masterstroke, the way the songs advance the story could, it might be argued, be enough to qualify the film as a “musical” by genre, however unconventional its presentation; given its almost Dogme-level naturalism, it’s perhaps the sort of musical that Mike Leigh would dream up. But with less anger. Hansard and Irglová composed all the music themselves, and won a richly deserved Oscar for the film’s central song, “Falling Slowly.”

(2007-Ireland) C-86m. D: John Carney. W: John Carney. DP: Tim Fleming. GLEN HANSARD, MARKÉTA IRGLOVÁ. [R]

Atonement ★★

Overwrought and rushed film of Ian McEwan’s celebrated novel, which depicts a miscarriage of justice carried out at an English country estate in the 1930s, and its grievous, family-destroying fallout. Full of strength and life in its finest moments, most memorably a love scene of a fulgurant intensity too seldom seen in this decade’s films; its weaknesses, sadly, are more numerous, and not all of them trace directly from the novel’s own unfortunate shortcomings (though the book’s many irritating plot contrivances and hamfisted exposition certainly are rendered faithfully). I won’t belabor the point, but the film’s greatest offense is Dario Marianelli’s score, one of the most obtrusively loathsome ever composed. Won an Oscar for Best Original Score.

(2007-Great Britain-France) C-130m. D: Joe Wright. W: Christopher Hampton. DP: Seamus McGarvey. JAMES MCAVOY, KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, ROMOLA GARAI, SAOIRSE RONAN, VANESSA REDGRAVE, BRENDA BLETHYN, JUNO TEMPLE, BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH, PATRICK KENNEDY, HARRIET WALTER, PETER WIGHT, DANIEL MAYS, NONSO ANOZIE, GINA MCKEE, JÉRÉMIE RÉNIER, MICHELLE DUNCAN. [R]

Character A has repressed feelings of some sort or another toward Character B.  They have a dialogue in which much, if not everything, is said.  The dialogue ends.  Character B begins to exit.  As he reaches the doorway, Character A calls his name, as a postscript: “B?”  Character B responds, “yes?”  Character A, after a pause: “nothing.”  And scene.