“Music can turn banalities
into beautiful, effervescent pearls,” Mark Ruffalo’s character tells Keira Knightley’s
as they perch on a park bench midway through Begin Again. An emotional choice of words, perhaps, but an accurate
representation of the sentiment that permeates every scene in the film, given
that its original title was Can a Song
Change Your Life? I wouldn’t say Begin
Again’s tunes are quite that powerful (I’m actually having trouble recalling
their melodies now); however they do have a transporting effect within the
story’s context, making it a lot easier to like the film while watching it than
when you’re thinking about it later.
I’ll admit up-front that I haven’t seen director John
Carney’s debut film Once*, which
apparently deals with similar subject matter. The comparisons ricocheting
around critics’ circles lamenting Begin
Again’s less innocent, more manufactured nature are therefore lost on me;
for better or worse, I watched this one with eyes un-tinted by the rosy shadow of its
predecessor.
Begin Again opens with Dan (a
pitch-perfect Ruffalo), a once-flourishing audio label executive turned
borderline alcoholic, deadbeat dad kicked out of the house by his wife
(Catherine Keener), and general sad case. Sick of sifting through starry-eyed
pop princesses and lame rock wannabes—“monosyllabic teenagers” as he refers to
them—he hasn’t signed anyone new in seven years, leading to his ousting from the
very indie record company he helped found.
Half a drink away
from a total meltdown and slumped at a local bar, he's suddenly roused from his
bourbon-induced haze by the acoustic strums of a guitar and a voice with the
heart he's been searching for.
It’s the voice of
Gretta (Knightley), a British singer-songwriter who’s in her own doldrums after
Dave (a surprisingly sensitive Adam Levine), the boyfriend she followed to New
York when he got a record deal, not only cheats on her, but—maybe an even
greater offense—mangles the wistful ballad she wrote into a pop-ified remix for
his own album.
As Dan and Gretta
bond over their downtrodden states and their shared chagrin at the decline of originality
in music, Dan convinces Gretta to take him up as her producer in what evolves into a platonic-with-room-for-interpretation relationship. When they can’t book
a venue to record a demo, they take matters into their own hands, using the five
boroughs as their studio in an ode to New York City as well as an unequivocal
refusal to serve as another cog in the industry machine.
Thus, Begin Again embarks on a journey to celebrate
the cathartic capabilities of songs unprocessed by commercial interests. From the local artists and neighborhood kids recruited as accompanists to the subway
platform soundstages and the iPhone duct-taped to a tripod as a makeshift
microphone, it's the music version of the organic movement. Doing all of her own singing, Knightley’s
voice has an unexpectedly unique timbre that’s sweet and simple; honest even as
the lyrics she’s singing try a bit too hard to hit that indie eccentricity.
At times during
its resolute mission to adhere to the authenticity theme, Begin Again ironically gets in its own way. Dan bemoans the
wittingly constructed persona of Bob Dylan while Gretta's sitting next to him in her own prototypical “starving artist” getup of grubby-chic cropped pants, an oversized
linen sweater and a scruffy ponytail. Despite their reputations as indie scene darlings,
names as prominent as Ruffalo and Keener somewhat deflate the film’s touting of
an art-house spirit. And what more apt—or overwrought—setting for a movie about
indie musicians than New York, one of the world's capitals when it comes to
street performers and bar crooners with nothing but pockets full of dreams intertwined
in their guitar strings? It’s an all-too familiar tune.
And yet, you can’t
help but want to hum along to this tribute to the city, whether it’s Gretta singing
her own material on a skyscraper's rooftop, Sinatra belting out “Luck Be a
Lady” as Gretta and Dan traipse through Times Square, or Dooley Wilson’s rendition
of "As Time Goes By” played against that glittering, inimitable Manhattan
skyline.** Corny as the scene is, it’s easy to get swept up in the songs that frame
it, lending truth to Dan’s notion that the right music can indeed brighten, transform,
and imbue meaning into mundane moments.
Begin Again’s intentions are earnest: a
call to put meaning back into music that seems to recently have strayed into
superficial stadium pop, and a reminder of how songs that avoid that fate can
make us feel. It’s a noble undertaking, not without a few beats that fall
flat here and there. But set aside your jaded filters for less than two hours;
you’ll see that the film does, more
often than not, hit the sweet spot between naive mawkishness and cynical
realism to achieve a lightly fairy-dusted, uplifting narrative. Begin Again may
not serenade you into submission, but it’s an easy listen nonetheless.
*I know, I know. I'll get to it.
**which really isn't
helpful for someone like me, for whom getting New York out of her system is a
daily struggle.
