But once was enough to become enchanted with a man whose greater enduring presence in my life was as the voice on the Once soundtrack, which I listened to repeatedly, and which he wrote with the woman who was briefly his romantic partner, was his on-screen partner in Once, and was his touring partner in a band they called The Swell Season, Marketa Irglova.
It was impossible not to be taken aback, in the best possible way, by the scene you see above, our first introduction to the character -- who was known only as Him in the credits. (She, predictably, was Her.)
When Hansard belts out "Say It to Me Now" to open Once -- a song so powerful and so melancholy that it's actually the last song featured on the soundtrack -- we're almost discomfited by how passionate he is, how much the lyrics mean to him, and how all that emotion pours out of him via his voice and his strumming of the guitar strings. It's like it should have been the finale of the film, yet they plopped it right out there at the beginning, to get the film's hooks in us and to never let go.
The character is called Him because the love story that continues to play out in Hansard and Irglova's songs -- never consummated, which makes it all the more powerful -- is a love story that could occur between any two people who connect with each other for a short time and then go their separate ways. Of course, any film purports to give us a universal experience, and you're meant to dream away your own life into it, especially into the connection between two people that's depicted in so many tens of thousands of movies. In those other movies, the characters all have names. That they don't in this one just makes it feel a bit more timeless, a bit more classic.
Although he more than held his own in the acting department, this was of course not Hansard's day job. For much of his career, the Irish singer-songwriter was the frontman for a band called The Frames, and surprisingly, I know very little of their work. That might change now in the wake of Hansard's death via motorcycle accident yesterday.
Once was my #2 movie of 2007, but it took an all-time classic behemoth like There Will Be Blood to eject it from the top spot. In most years, the experience given to us by Carney, Hansard and Irglova in this movie of music and opportunity and hope and wistfulness would have been easily my movie of the year.
Once has lived with me so much over the years that my wife and I went to see The Swell Season play the Hollywood Bowl in July of 2010, with the Zooey Deschanel fronted band She & Him opening. Quite the interesting name for an opening band, given the "names" of the characters played by Hansard and Irglova in Once. I wrote about that experience here if you want to read it.
Because of who he was -- a musician, not an actor -- Hansard should not cause me to wax poetic on a movie blog as much as a genuine cinematic luminary who leaves before his/her time, or even when that time comes. (It was definitely before Hansard's time. He was only 56.)
But let's just say my poetry is waxing as a way of keeping up with the poetry Hansard gave to me in one of my favorite films of the 21st century, which has occupied a place quite close to the surface of my heart and soul in the nearly 20 years since I first saw it.
Rest in peace.
