SNAPSHOT
The latest film from writer-director John Carney (Once), Begin Again is a soul-stirring comedy about what happens when lost souls meet and make beautiful music together. Gretta (Keira Knightley) and her long-time boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine) are college sweethearts and songwriting partners who decamp for New York when he lands a deal with a major label. But the trappings of his new-found fame soon tempt Dave to stray, and a reeling, lovelorn Gretta is left on her own. Her world takes a turn for the better when Dan (Mark Ruffalo), a disgraced record-label exec, stumbles upon her performing on an East Village stage and is immediately captivated by her raw talent. From this chance encounter emerges an enchanting portrait of a mutually transformative collaboration, set to the soundtrack of a summer in New York City.
(synopsis via comingsoon.net)
The naming of films is a curious business.
Many films start off with interesting or quirky names only to have them neutered into relatively generic, focus group inoffensive, meaningless names by the time they reach a film festival or cinema.
Quite whether that happens because the producers or studio get cold feet, or the testing audiences didn’t get the original title, or a dog ate the front sheet of the script and the person in charge simply reached into Hollywood’s big box of anonymous, lowest common denominator names and stuck that on.
Who can really be sure what happens but it happens more than I like, leaving the film with a title that is nowhere as descriptive as the one it began creative life with, even if it somewhat more palatable to the general moviegoing public (or the studio’s conservative idea of what they’re like anyway).
Case in point is Begin Again, a name that is at least reasonably thematically consistent with the film it is attached to, a romantic comedy of sorts that is all about the chances we hopefully get to have another stab at this thing called life.
There’s nothing really wrong with it, of course, but I can’t help feeling that it’s original title Can a Song Change Your Life?, under which it screened and made quite an impression at the Toronto International Film Festival in September last year, possessed a little bit more of a sense of the poetic, the lyrical.
Begin Again, by contrast, seems just a little bland.
Still, the name aside, this does look like a film to watch out for.
Largely because it comes from the hand of writer/director John Carney, who gave the sublimely poignant musical romance of Once, a film rich with subtle drama and the messy business of human relationships set to song.
Once barely put a foot wrong, consistently and rewardingly beautifully wrought, and while Begin Again looks to have more of a lighter tone, it has at its core the melancholic-laced joy of being in love, and out of love, and wondering just where it is life is taking you.
Carney makes emotionally authentic movies that are moving and true to the human experience without being hopelessly sentimental or corny, and infuses them with songs that are so touching that the first thing you want t do after the movie is march right out and buy the soundtrack.
While I may not be in love with its fresh moniker, I have no doubt that Begin Again will be a film worth seeing, another masterpiece of the journey of the human soul from a gifted storyteller.
Begin Again opens 4 July, 2014 in USA (no date specified for Australia yet) after showing at the 13th annual Tribeca Film Festival (which runs 16-27 April).