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Saturday, October 31, 2009

Once again.

About a year ago I happened to catch a lovely little Irish film called Once and I fell head over heels in love with it. I wrote about it here; go read it, it's a review I stand by and will not reiterate here save for the following: I gave the film top marks and postulated that this film might very well have bluffed itself into the upper regions of my list of best films ever. I wasn't sure. I needed a second viewing.


Today was that second viewing.

Once is the very best film I have seen in my life. The very best. And in my little bubble, in my list-making, film-loving world, that is quite something; it is only the second time I've declared a film my absolute favourite. This tiny little film, this speck of celluloid that I more or less stumbled upon by accident more than anything else, in its flat out refusal to conform to any of the established Hollywood (or any) norms, has plucked my heart out of my chest and it ran, ran, ran with it.

I see no sense in piling superlative upon superlative in my praise for this film, so I won't; the only superlative that matters, that dreams of coming close to capturing the essence of this film is 'flawless', so I will stick to that: this is flawless perfection (in this case, and this case only, the pleonasm is forgiven) in both the broadest and smallest sense of the word.

Besides, I dare anyone to listen to Marketa Irglova saying 'three thousand' (or anything, for that matter) in her lovely three quarter Czech, one quarter Irish accent without falling instantly, desperately in love with her.

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