with Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levin, Yasiin Bey, Hailee Steinfeld
Finally made it down to Ye Olde Cineplex to take a gander at Begin Again, the new film by director John Carney, who helmed 2006's Once -- a film I haven't seen all of and which is apparently so charming that a Tony-winning Broadway musical of it was mounted.
My principle reasons for wanting to see it were 1) Its storyline has something to do with today's music industry, 2) Mark Ruffalo, 3) Mark Ruffalo, and 4) Mark Ruffalo.
Ruffalo had been acting for a decade by the time I really noticed him, in 2000's You Can Count On Me, where he played the sexy, rumpled, rebel ne'er do well brother to Laura Linney's uptight big sister. The role fits him well. He did a version of the sexy interloper in The Kid's All Right, and here he reprises that kind of character as Dan, the hard-drinking down-on-his-luck record label exec reeling from the break up of his marriage to Catherine Keener and being fired from the label he co-founded after a streak of bad signings.
Drunken Dan stumbles into an East Village open-mike night event -- where A&R men do occasionally discover great talent -- and hears the reluctant singer-songwriter stylings of Gretta, played by Keira Knightley. Gretta herself is mourning betrayal by her songwriting partner and longtime love Dave, a budding pop star (Maroon 5's Adam Levine in a smarmy turn) with whom she had traveled to New York on his label's dime to start ramping up his career. Morose Gretta is importuned by a busking friend to come to this show, so her half-hearted performance is a skidmark along her tucked-tail retreat home to London. While the audience at this NYC hip-pit is lukewarm to Gretta's skills, Dan has A Beautiful Mind-like power to hear all the fully-produced potential in Gretta's music and accosts her with the idea that they can make beautiful music together. The sequence of how he hears her music more fully produced is magical -- but also doesn't quite fit with the rest of the film's tone. Up to now Gretta has been a behind-the-scenes-kinda chick in Dave's universe, so she's is reluctant to alter her music or step out front, and certainly not with Dave, whose glory days as a Grammy-winning producer are significantly behind him. He admits that his clout to get anyone signed is severely diminished if not nonexistent.
Ruffalo's grizzled boy-charm comes into play and Gretta finds herself convinced to do something outrageous -- record an album of her songs live at various outdoor locales in New York City. It's an intriguing idea, though thoroughly impractical. The fun of the film is seeing how this improbability comes to life with a motley crew of musicians, a rigged traveling recording studio, an influx of cash from a Dan-friendly artist (Cee-Lo Green, in a picture-stealing cameo), some risky locations, and even a guest turn on guitar by Dan's precocious teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld of True Grit fame showing an unprecedented amount of thigh). The songs are pleasant and mildly thought-provoking, but not earth-shaking.
Knightley, dressed down here to represent your average bohemian girl singer, doesn't embarrass herself at the microphone but has little real star power as a performer in this role. (I was astonished to notice in the closeups how jacked up Knightley's teeth remain this far into her full-fledged movie-star trip -- but perhaps the small physical flaw is part of her appeal? She's so easy on the eyes I guess it doesn't matter that her teeth are triple-rowed up in there.) Knightley's Gretta stands up for the craft of music, just making songs for their own sake and not wanting to sell out for pop stardom. Cute, noble, even, but from my current window seat in the music biz, this looks exactly like that time-honored recipe for starvation that bedevils many a brilliant music creator.
Begin Again gets the finer details of the music industry wrong. For instance, one of the founding partners of a label -- here played by Mos Def (officially credited as Yasiin Bey) -- can't just "fire" his co-founding partner. And while the music industry of yore (1940s through the 1990s) is rife with music execs who boozed, drank, screwed, smoked, popped pills, flouted the rules and barely functioned in their jobs, today's trouble-beset industry has no room and no tolerance for money-sucks and fuck-ups like Dan. There is too much still at stake. And if you're going to go around the city recording live music in open-air venues -- already a nightmare for background and ambient noise -- make sure that the tech holding the microphone isn't simultaneously jumping up and down, stomping his feet, and screaming "Great!" before the track is over (as Dan does a few times).
What it gets right is the power of music itself to transform, to heal, to bond, and to uplift. The real golden threads of Begin Again, at least for me, begin with the recognition that for many creative folks, music is the lingua franca not only of artistic expression but of human communication. One's musical tastes do tell a lot about one. Trading lyrics and song titles is a form of language that many of my friends indulge in. Bonding over appreciation for certain artists or tracks can be an indelible connection. By listening to each other's iPods, Dan and Gretta draw even closer and forge a deeper understanding of the other's musicality. This is probably a spoiler: Some moviegoers may find it jarring or unrealistic that when Dave plays Gretta a new song he has written on his own during a solo trip to LA, she knows instantaneously that something is amiss in their relationship. I thought it was a great detail about their music and their communication style.
The movie also demonstrates the many ways in which music brings together people who might never have met or worked together in any other capacity. Looking at the performers that Dan and Gretta gather for her project is a perfect example. Another detail I like is that the film may take place in New York City, a classic setting for thousands of films and my home town. The director doesn't give us the glossy, high finance, fantasy corporate center New York, and neither do we get the gritty, dark, crime-ridden mysterious New York either. It's just everyday life here, the weird mix of funk, grunge, utility, surprise, art, retail, and workaday monotony that undergirds the soul of the city. It's brownstones and bodegas, cobblestones and fire escapes, fire hydrants and chain link fences, plate glass and cement. And of course people of all shapes and sizes who flock there to make music.
For about five minutes in the latter part of the film, we think that we're going to get a pat, Hollywood ending tied up with a Valentine red ribbon. That it doesn't happen feels far more real and true. The two main characters do begin again, and that new beginning could not have happened without their meeting. But their beginnings are facilitated by their connection, not the goal of it.
Like most fairy tales, Begin Again is a sweet film (despite all of Dan's cussing). If you're a music person like me it will restore or reaffirm your belief in music as a tonic to the soul.
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