One of the best indie movies of 2006, and recent years.  Two thumbs up.

By Roger Ebert (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071224/REVIEWS/237678516/1023)

I’m not at all surprised that my esteemed colleague Michael Phillips of the Tribune selected John Carney’s “Once” as the best film of 2007.

I gave it my Special Jury Prize, which is sort of an equal first; no movie was going to budge “Juno” off the top of my list. “Once” was shot for next to nothing in 17 days, doesn’t even give names to its characters, is mostly music with not a lot of dialog, and is magical from beginning to end. It’s one of those films where you hold your breath, hoping it knows how good it is, and doesn’t take a wrong turn.

It doesn’t. Even the ending is the right ending, the more you think about it.

The film is set in Dublin, where we see a street musician singing for donations. This is the Guy (Glen Hansard). He attracts an audience of the Girl (Marketa Irglova). She loves his music. She’s a pianist herself. He wants to hear her play. She doesn’t have a piano. She takes him to a music store where she knows the owner, and they use a display piano. She plays some Mendelssohn. We are in love with this movie. He is falling in love with her. He just sits there and listens. She is falling in love with him. She just sits there and plays. There is an unusual delay before we get the obligatory reaction shot of the store owner, because all the movie wants to do is sit there and listen, too.

This is working partly because of the deeply good natures we sense these two people have. They aren’t “picking each other up.” They aren’t flirting — or, well, technically they are, but in that way that means, “I’m not interested unless you’re too good to be true.”

They love music, and they’re not faking it. We sense to a rare degree the real feelings of the two of them; there’s no overlay of technique, effect or style.

They are just purely and simply themselves. Hansard is a professional musician, well known in Ireland as leader of a band named the Frames. Irglova is an immigrant from the Czech Republic, only 17 years old, who had not acted before. She has the kind of smile that makes a man want to be a better person, so he can deserve being smiled at.

The film develops their story largely in terms of song. In between, they confide their stories. His heart was broken because his girlfriend left him and moved to London. She takes him home to meet her mother, who speaks hardly any English, and to join three neighbors who file in every night to watch their TV.

And he meets her child, which comes as a surprise. Then he finds out she’s married. Another surprise, and we sense that in his mind he had already dumped the girl in London and was making romantic plans. He’s wounded, but brave. He takes her home to meet his dad, a vacuum cleaner repairman. She has a Hoover that needs fixing. It’s Kismet.

He wants to record a demo record, take it to London, and play it for music promoters. She helps him, and not just by playing piano. When it comes down to it, she turns out to be level-headed, decisive, take-charge. An ideal producer. They recruit other street musicians for a session band, and she negotiates a rock-bottom price for a recording studio. And so on. All with music. And all with their love, and our love for their love, only growing. At one point he asks if she still loves her husband, and she answers in Czech, and the movie doesn’t subtitle her answer, because if she’d wanted subtitles, she would have answered in English, which she speaks perfectly well.

“Once” is the kind of film I’ve been pestered about ever since I started reviewing again. People couldn’t quite describe it, but they said I had to see it. I had to. Well, I did. They were right.

◎简　　介

我们可能经常会在地铁站、天桥上看到弹着吉他卖唱的艺人，也许是现代城市的生活步伐过于快节奏了，我们大多数时候只是轻轻一瞥然后继续行色匆匆，甚至没有时间琢磨一下自己刚刚听到的是什么歌……这个故事中的男主人公就是一名在街头卖艺的小伙子，地点则切换成了爱尔兰的首府都柏林。他是与众不同的，不会弹奏那些脍炙人口的流行歌曲以赚观众缘，反而沉浸在自己的音乐世界中无法自拔，丝毫不会受到身边环境的打扰，几乎要与城市一角的黑暗与晦涩融为了一体。
然而这一切，都在一个傍晚发生了变化。当男孩猛然发现一个女孩站在自己面前、瞪着大眼睛好奇地打量自己时，他并不知道她站在这里有多久了……当时他正在弹奏一首特别好听的歌曲，那是他自己创作的，为了纪念一段伤心的往事。女孩发现了男孩询问的眼神，突然发问：你是不是曾经心碎过，所以为她写了这首悲伤的歌？卖艺的男孩吓了一跳，他从没见过这么大胆的女孩，但是他自己也承认，这个女孩看透了他的心。随着交谈的深入，女孩得知男孩白天的工作是吸尘器的修理工，她兴奋地大叫了一声–她正好有一台坏掉的吸尘器需要维修。
两天以后，她将吸尘器拿到男孩父亲开的修理店中，女孩告诉男孩，自己是来自于捷克的移民，虽然平时以卖花女的形象示人，其实她一直没有放弃古典钢琴的演奏。可是她太穷了，根本就买不起钢琴，于是有一位好心的乐器行老板，允许她每天在午饭时间去他的店里弹奏一个小时的钢琴……女孩将男孩领到她妈妈的家里，男孩惊讶的发现，女孩还有一个两岁的女儿，是一个单亲妈妈。
在女孩每天都要消磨一小时的乐器行里，她和男孩第一次有了共同演奏的机会，他是主弹，而她是伴奏。男孩发现女孩在伴奏方面的天分极高，当德国作曲家门德尔森的音乐从她指尖流淌出来时，再配以那柔软、脆弱的嗓音，竟然一下子变成了一首伟大的伴奏曲–男孩在女孩的启发下，创作灵感如泉水般涌出，而爱情，也随之萌芽，男孩知道，自己找到了灵魂的另一半。后来，一名贝斯手和一名鼓手分别加入到男孩和女孩的行列中，他们组成了一个乐团，可惜由于成员的默默无闻以及低下的社会地位，他们无故受到一位知名音乐制作人的嘲讽。然而，仅仅过了几个小时，这个以男孩为中心组建的乐团就改变了那位音乐制作人的态度，最终获得了相应的尊重。

一句话评论：
《曾经》并非一部完美的影片，尤其是开头的部分，是整部作品中最薄弱的一个环节，处理得不够稳妥，但在华丽的音乐的衬托下，故事随即进入了一段美丽的爱情中，很容易就让观众忽略了那么一点小瑕疵。

——电影手册

这是一部成熟饱满的音乐电影，内容与歌曲的衔接严丝合缝，一点都不突兀。

——综艺

用一双电影人的眼睛、一颗诗人的心，创作出这个动人的爱尔兰故事，影片中更是包罗了多首经典的歌曲。

——纽约时报

约翰?卡尼的执导方式谦逊、不装腔作势，能够看得出来，影片的原始剧本肯定短的要命，剩下的，就用音乐来说话吧。

——电影威胁

影片通过音乐制造了一个独特的故事环境，这里有一对通过歌声来表达情感的情侣，他们之间的爱情，是不求回报的，就像音乐本身一样，有时候安静舒缓，有时候荡气回肠。

——噪音评论

花絮：
·在拍摄影片的开头部分时，因为这组场景需要拿长镜头拍摄，所以工作人员都离得远远的，而且没有通知过往的行人他们正在拍戏……这时候，突然从人群中冲出了一个想当英雄的围观群众，在不知情的情况下打伤了影片中扮演小偷的人。

·在拍摄期间，因为最开始为影片投资的“南方公园”电影公司的破产，而使得演员和导演都受到了显而易见的连带影响，因此有一组被称为“蒂米”的音乐家，离开了剧组。

·影片中关于都柏林的镜像，包含了导演约翰·卡尼和主演格伦·汉萨德在影片拍摄之前差不多10-15年对于都柏林所有记忆的总结——那不仅仅是一个属于工人阶层的城市。

·约翰·卡尼曾经是格伦·汉萨德组建的乐队“The Frames”的成员之一。

·这个故事其中的一个部分是根据约翰·卡尼的真实经历改编的：生活在都柏林的卡尼，曾经与生活在伦敦的女友维持了一段非常长时间的远距离恋爱。

·影片中有关那个男孩的女友的闪回胶片……其实里面的女孩就是导演约翰·卡尼现实生活中的女友。

·格伦·汉萨德的母亲友情客串了一位宴会上的歌手。