In late August, after its initial theatrical run, Begin Again was re-released by the Weinstein company, presumably as an attempt to garner awards recognition. Though the script, acting, and directing are uniformly excellent, the move seems to be geared towards giving the maximum amount of exposure to the music of the film, the element most likely to score nominations, and deservedly so.
Writer-director John Carney has managed to make the rarest of musicals: that in which the music plays a pivotal role in the shaping of the story. Begin Again opens with the serendipitous encounter of Gretta (Keira Knightley), a down on her luck musician, and Dan (Mark Ruffalo), an unsuccessful producer, who decide, on a whim, to record an album together. The movie that follows is not only populated with several original songs, but it also contains a multitude of character musicians, producers, professional and amateur instrumentalists, and music critics.
For the main characters, however, music transcends their professions. With two of his features (this and Once), Carney has demonstrated a keen understanding of how music moves and influences people.Take, for example, the scene in which Greta prepares to have dinner with her rockstar boyfriend, Dave, on his first night back from a trip. The mood is quiet and romantic, that is until he decides to share with her a song that he composed on the road. Quickly, a tension invades the scene; Carney holds on a lengthy shot of Greta as she listens to the song, slowly realizing that the love interest Dave so ardently sings about is not her. Carney neither shows nor explains Dave’s infidelity, but he doesn’t have to. The lyrics of the song and Keira Knightley’s pained expression are enough.
In another pivotal scene, a suicidal Dan walks into a bar. There, he sees a young woman with a beat up guitar singing a song about that irrevocable “step you can’t take back,” a step Dan was all too ready to take until that beautiful melody stopped him in his tracks. During the song, every extraneous sound drifts away on the soundtrack. That simple act of letting the background noise subside lends an incredible weight to the song. Dan, who was ready to kill himself, literally drowns out everything else; he begins to live for the music.
Originally, the film had the captivating title, “Can a Song Save Your Life?” a question Carney enthusiastically answers in the affirmative. Carney, a musician, carefully crafted the film’s soundtrack, writing two critical songs, including “A Step You Can’t Take Back,” the catalyst for the film. His personal involvement with, and dedication to, Begin Again reminded me of two other recent films from directors who went beyond what is traditionally called for in a director to faithfully bring their visions to the screen, and who have proven, through the success
of their films that there is a place for small-scaled personal films amidst the wasteland of impersonal blockbusters (read Trans4mers) that populate Hollywood today.
In Chef, director Jon Favreau set out to make an independent, low-stakes film to take a break from the massive superhero movies that had consumed his career. Instead of music, however, Favreau focused on the ways food can bring people closer together. Favreau, who both wrote and directed, plays a chef who leaves a high end restaurant to open up a Cuban cuisine food truck, a project that helps him reunite with his estranged son. As can be seen in a mid-credits scene, Favreau learned to cook for the film. He was so inspired by the culture he was representing that he took the extra effort to bring it to the screen in the most authentic way possible. The result is some of the most delicious food I’ve ever seen onscreen.
Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic comedy about love and betrayal, Much Ado About Nothing, also has the spark that made Chef and Begin Again so special. Although mostly keeping close to the original play, Whedon made a few key changes that reveal his modern, more cynical sensibilities. The film, though not explicit, is more sexually open, externalizing subtext that is hidden in the play. In one of his shrewdest departures from the original, Whedon shows that before the events of the film, the infamous couple, Benedick and Beatrice, had had an affair that ended painfully, a fascinating bit of exposition that complicates their relationship afterwards. It’s dark and painful, and provides one more obstacle they have to overcome before choosing to commit to a romantic relationship, but it makes the film’s ending much more satisfying. Whedon also financed the film and shot it at his home, a testament to his dedication to the project.
Begin Again, Chef, and Much Ado, may be about universal subjects — music, food, and romantic love respectively — but the directors of each finds a particular way of demonstrating what they find so attractive about each, giving audiences one of the great gifts a movie can give: a glimpse into the mind of its maker.
