Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 11:00 am Posts: 16093 Location: dublin Gender: Male
Yeah, they had cameras follwoing them for about 2 years? some production company wanted to make a film about them..I narrowly avoided them a few times. It looks like a fun but awkward watch..
_________________ At the end of the day, it's night.
Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 11:00 am Posts: 16093 Location: dublin Gender: Male
For fans of Once, The Swell Season serves as a bittersweet epilogue to the adored Irish indie. Those who saw more than just onscreen romance blossom between a ragged but dashing Dublin busker and a sweet-faced piano-playing Czech, will be drawn to this documentary that chronicles the three years following Once stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová meteoric rise to fame following their Oscar win for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly.” As that film found fans worldwide, so did its stars — affectionately known as Glen and Mar — as their real-life romance drew notice. Fans flocked to their concerts not only to revel in their beautiful music but also to see the love forged onscreen made manifest on stage. It was a charming story that swept the world, and helped make its lovers famous. However, The Swell Season documentary reveals what happens to this love and the work it inspires when the whole world is watching.
Named for Glen and Mar’s band, The Swell Season follows the spotlighted couple over a tumultuous period of tours and recording sessions, presenting an up close and personal look at them and their process. And it’s not always pretty. Gritty backstage footage is juxtaposed with unguarded interviews with Glen and Mar, breath-taking stage performances, and illuminating looks at their families. What begins as a peak behind the curtain soon evolves into a portrait of the end of their world-recognized romance. Telling footage of squabbles reveal a mounting tension that culminates in a fight that is heart-wrenchingly relatable and unquestionably final. These scenes are deftly interwoven with the band’s own raw live performances, making for a poignant viewing experience.
Notably, the filmmakers never overplay their hand by demanding band members to divulge dirty details or forcing Glen and Mar to put their heartache on display. Instead, they wisely let the music speak for them. Glen remarks on how a song can prove prophetic before playing a blistering song about romance turned rotten. Mar extols how love can outlive romance before the pair performs a melodic but melancholy song onstage. Art reflects life reflects art. For fans of Once, it’s a provocative re-appropriation of the film’s soundtrack as the songs parallel the onscreen love to its source and reality. With the added context of their relationship perils, each featured song is displayed as a vivid and vulnerable insight into the minds and hearts of Glen and Mar. To that end, The Swell Season is clearly intended for fans only, unrepentantly racing through the backstory of the first film and its Oscar attention so as to better focus on the doc’s story of love and loss.
While the film’s musical performances are incredible, aptly capturing the whimsy, joy and pain The Swell Season has been known to bring to the stage, what really stands out here is the filmmaker’s ardent attempt at balance. They hadn’t set out to tell a tale of broken hearts. Rather, as their camera rolled they realized they were witness to two people slowly but steadily growing apart. As middle-aged Glen looks to prove he’s more than an Oscar win anecdote, twentysomething Mar is discovering the world and herself. The tides of life are mercilessly pulling them away from each other. What’s truly remarkable in The Swell Season is that filmmakers (Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins, and Carlo Mirabella-Davis) never choose sides, but rather present enough of each player that their break-up makes a villain out of neither. This is fair play as the pair, who is no longer a couple, still works/tours together. Myself, I saw them perform well after news of their break up had hit, and their affection and respect for each other was as apparent on stage as it is in this documentary. And that’s why The Swell Season succeeds. People were drawn to Once because of its intimacy. Audiences felt they knew these people, and so we felt invested in their real-life love story for better or worse. To that end, this documentary can be a bitter pill, watching this fairy-tale love fall victim to the everyday relationship strains. However, The Swell Season, like Once, ends on a solemn but hopeful note that proudly declares love lives beyond lovers parting, even if it changes form.
Joined: Fri Sep 15, 2006 11:00 am Posts: 16093 Location: dublin Gender: Male
DOCUMENTARY, MUSICAL, TRIBECA 2011, UK, IRELAND, AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND
Overall, I must say that I was struck by the similarity of The Swell Season to Hobo with a Shotgun.
Well, wait, hold on a sec and I'll explain: both films know what their target audiences expect as they enter the theater, and then do their best to make sure that they leave with their needs met. It's that simple.
And in this case, the "best" of writing-directing team Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins, and Carlo Mirabella-Davis is very good indeed.
After all, what's the most you could hope for in a doc that chronicles the artistic collaboration, public romance, and slow-dissolve breakup of Oscar-winners Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová? Would it be a bracingly personal, smart, and bittersweet (but not cloying) film with impassioned musical performances thrown in every few minutes? If so, get thee to Tribeca, because your hopes have just become reality.
With its standard formula of front-seat vantage point and backstage access, the pop music doc is arguably the most enduring and popular brand of documentary, especially for those audiences that don't normally flock to the genre. So since there would seem to be little new territory to explore here, and since the bar is not always set too high--the fanbase for any particular artist can go home happy as long as there's solid on-stage footage--filmmakers who wish to distinguish themselves in this context would appear to be facing quite a challenge.
But just as Once seemed to invent its own grownup language to reinvigorate the movie musical, The Swell Season shakes up the pop music doc in a way that suggests new possibilities for the form. Its beautiful black-and-white cinematography (the shots of Ireland are often breathtaking) and terrific editing go a long way toward explaining why The Swell Season works, but one can't help but suspect that it's the off-camera relationships that were the special ingredient. And "relationships" in this case doesn't refer to those between Hansard, Irglová, and their bandmates, but rather between the entire group of musicians and the filmmakers themselves. Over time a deep sense of trust apparently developed so that subjects became less guarded, and the ensuing spirit of direct and disarming honesty is compounded by the innately down-to-earth personalities of the performers.
At first the candid interludes that are captured as a result can come across as something other than the product of trust--maybe naïveté or even exploitation, or a combination of the two. For example, an early scene of Hansard and Irglová skinny-dipping seems too awkwardly intimate: we're not sure why the filmmakers, and thus ourselves, are privileged with this (literally revealing) glimpse into the private lives of others. It seems that The Swell Season hasn't yet earned this moment.
However, as the film progresses it earns it again and again. The portrait we get of Hansard's family in particular is unforgettable--his Mom effusive about her son receiving an Oscar from no less a figure than John Travolta while his Dad determinedly drinks himself into the grave. Interesting, we see Irglová's acceptance speech only via a small TV screen, and it's her upbeat--to many, inspiring--words that echo dimly, sadly, and ironically throughout the rest of the film. Sure, we can have anything we want... but at what price?
That The Swell Season manages to avoid falling into an abyss of showbiz clichés--fame ain't what it's cracked up to be, doncha know?--is a testament to how it keeps its focus on the specific flesh-and-blood people involved rather than treating them like generic celebrities. In this way, Irglová's growing unease with notoriety doesn't serve to set up some whiny message about being true to oneself, but rather illustrates the potential long-term cost of differing expectations about life that can beset any couple.
And it's that sense of universality despite the aura of celebrity that makes The Swell Season so quietly powerful. These days, when so many indie films believe that the only pathway to things dark is through things heavy, and when Reality TV bombards us with countless shrill couples fighting over non-issues, it's almost a radical act to depict a genuine breakup in all its subtlety. You can see things from both the principals' points of view, as a mutual friend might, and this only adds to the melancholic wisdom conveyed by the film. As someone like Cole Porter might have written, it was certainly a swell time--but all seasons eventually pass.
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