Begin Again
Director: John Carney
Starring: Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine
★★★★ (out of five)
“THIS is a song for anyone who’s ever been alone in the city,” announces heartfelt and heartbroken folk singer Gretta (Keira Knightley) to a bar full of indifferent New Yorkers in John Carney’s musical comedy Begin Again.
Despite this inauspicious beginning, somehow Gretta’s music slices through the fog of bar-room apathy to prick the attention of Dan (Mark Ruffalo), a failing record producer looking to boost his flagging fortunes.
“I was having a nervous breakdown and then I heard your song,” he enthuses. She’s been rejected by her boyfriend, he’s been rejected by his record company and his family, and thus begins a beautiful friendship.
Revisiting familiar ground covered with his minimalist and simple, but ultimately mega-successful, Once (2006), Dubliner Carney clearly recognises a winning formula. Once was a welcome shot of adrenaline for Irish film when it first appeared and what it lacks in complex plot it makes up for in brio, vivaciously marrying the rom-com and musical genres.
Begin Again bears similarities with its precursor, making a partnership of opposites and pitching together a scruffy, street-smart native with a beautiful but vulnerable migrant. The music resounds with rich intonation.
What’s dissimilar between the two movies is the status of the cast. Once features the two full-time musicians but part-time actors Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, while Begin Again stars the leading Hollywood figures Knightley and Ruffalo.
Heavyweights they might be, but Knightly hasn’t appeared in anything so light as Begin Again since Bend it Like Beckham (2002); and while Ruffalo’s body of work does contain a frivolous vein, he’s a long way here from Michel Gondry’s neurotic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
Another key difference of Begin Again is the story location. While Hansard and Irglova had to be content with schlepping round dreary, rain-drenched Dublin (they’re trying to get her broken hoover fixed), Knightley and Ruffalo enjoy bursting into song around the famed bohemian climes of Greenwich Village.
There are also strong support roles for Catherine Keener, James Corden, Mos Def and Adam Levine. Overall the sense is that Carney proved his worth with the modest forerunner Once and is rewarded with the chance to display his skills with this more prestigious follow-up.
The sexual chemistry between Knightley and Ruffalo is less effective than between Hansard and Irglova (they later became lovers), which has a ‘will they, won’t they?’ tension similar to that of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995).
Instead Gretta and Dan have more of a mentor-and-protege bond, both trying to reunite with estranged love ones, using music to mend broken hearts and to ease worried minds. Throughout the narrative there are actually traces of Michael Caine and Julie Walters in Willy Russell’s Educating Rita (1986). The teacher hopes for redemption through his pupil.
Oddly, Carney’s cinematic output has been slim since his success with Once. Since 2006 he’s offered up just three movies, including the underrated psychodrama The Rafters (2012) and the overpraised dog’s breakfast Zonad (2009).
His new film should bring him back into the spotlight and we can hope to see more of him. It’s sometimes wet but always warm and it’s sometimes saccharine but always sweet, and undoubtedly once again, with Begin Again, Carney hits the right note.
John Carney’s Begin Again is on cinema release from Friday
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