No matter what your opinion is regarding last night’s Academy Awards – Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová deserve this Oscar. Beautiful little movie with touching music. Humble and honest. And a good indicator of what the art of music and the art of selling it could look like in the future. It took them 130.000 Euros to produce that film. Boxoffice USA: more than $9m. According to Wikipedia it’s more like $16m worldwide.
Honestly, who of you knew Hansard and Irglová before “Once”? I didn’t. And I never heard of The Frames either – Hansard’s Dublin band since 1990! While I keep on reading about it, I find out that The Frames’ bass player John Carney directed the movie. How much more DIY can it get? Amazing.
What I liked most about “Falling Slowly” winning the award (by beating these terrible musical songs from “Enchanted”) was Hansard’s and Irglová’s thank-yous and the way Irglová refused to be orchestra-ed off the stage to make way for commercials. She asked to be allowed back front stage to deliver her acceptance speech. And they let her. Fine move, Oscar producers. I have no idea what you have to do backstage at the Oscars to make that happen, but she certainly did. And at no point did she appear to steal airtime.
Glen & Markéta, I applaud you: For making the plea for struggling independent artists, for encouraging them to keep on working and to make art. I admit it: They had me on their side after 15 minutes into watching “Once”. But last night was the icing. I really felt happy for them. Even though the soundtrack to “Once” is on Columbia/Sony BMG and not all that independent. Just goes to show that artistic independence has nothing to do anymore with one’s affiliation to a “Major” or an “Indie”.
“Take this sinking boat / and point it home / We still got time”
