Falling Slowly

This morning I woke up to the song “Falling Slowly” from the film Once.

I didn't know anything about Once when I went to see it in the summer of 2007. I'd just returned to Toronto from living in the countryside of Japan, where I hadn't watched a single film in the year and a half I was there. It was the first matinée that was playing at the Cumberland Cinema in Yorkville the week I got home.

I remember smiling through out the whole film, even through the painfully awkward and melancholic scenes. The effect was immediate and it was all because of the beautiful music that the main character plays on his guitar as a busker. He meets this lovely girl who plays piano, but because of economics practices in the showroom of a local music store.

He offers to play a song for her and they improvise on an unfinished song he has written. The resulting scene is this stunningly beautiful and haunting song.