Walk down Grafton Street in Dublin on any given evening and you'll hear it. The rasp. The buskers. The desperate, percussive thrum of an acoustic guitar being played like it’s a drum kit. Most of that energy can be traced back to one specific moment in 2007. When the Glen Hansard film Once premiered at Sundance, nobody expected a low-budget, shaky-cam musical shot on digital video to become a global phenomenon. It shouldn't have worked. The leads weren't professional actors. The director, John Carney, was a former bassist for Hansard's band, The Frames. They had a budget of about $150,000—peanuts in the film world—and shot the whole thing in 17 days.
Yet, it’s one of the few movies from that era that people still talk about with actual, unironic lumps in their throats.
The accident that became a masterpiece
Honestly, the Glen Hansard film Once was almost a completely different movie. Initially, the producers wanted Cillian Murphy to play the lead. Murphy is a brilliant actor, obviously, but he isn't a professional folk musician with decades of grit in his vocal cords. When Murphy passed, Carney turned to his old friend Glen. Hansard was hesitant. He was a musician, not a movie star. He worried he’d look "wooden" or ruin the songs he’d spent years writing.
Markéta Irglová, a Czech classically trained musician who was only 18 at the time, was cast alongside him. The age gap was there, but the chemistry was purely artistic. That’s the magic of the film. It isn’t a rom-com. It’s a "song-com." It’s about two people who speak to each other through chord progressions because their actual lives are a bit of a mess.
They used long lenses to film the busking scenes so the public wouldn't notice the cameras. People actually walked by and dropped coins in Glen’s guitar case while they were filming "Say It to Me Now." That’s not "method acting." That’s just Dublin. The raw, unpolished look of the film wasn't a stylistic choice so much as a financial necessity, but it’s exactly why it feels so human. You can see the condensation of their breath. You can see the scratches on the wood of Glen's Takamine guitar—a guitar he played so hard he actually wore a hole through the body.
Why the music worked where others failed
Most musicals feel staged. People burst into song in a grocery store and suddenly everyone knows the choreography. In the Glen Hansard film Once, music happens because it has to. When they go into the music shop and play "Falling Slowly" for the first time, it feels like a private conversation we’re trespassing on.
The song "Falling Slowly" eventually won an Academy Award, which is still one of the most "indie" moments in Oscar history. Remember the speech? They were cut off by the orchestra, and then Jon Stewart brought Markéta back out to finish her thanks. It was a moment of genuine grace in a room usually filled with ego.
The songwriting process was deeply collaborative. Hansard brought the folk-rock intensity of The Frames, while Irglová brought a melodic, melancholic stillness. Together, they formed The Swell Season. Their real-life relationship, which blossomed during and after the film, added a layer of bittersweet reality to the project. When they eventually broke up, the songs changed. The movie, however, remains frozen in that moment of "what if."
Dublin as a character, not a backdrop
The Glen Hansard film Once is a love letter to a version of Dublin that was caught between the "Celtic Tiger" economic boom and the gritty, working-class reality of the city's past. We see the vacuum cleaner repair shops. We see the cramped flats where families live on top of each other.
It’s a movie about being broke but having "it."
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- The Guy (Hansard) works in his dad’s shop but spends his nights screaming his heart out for spare change.
- The Girl (Irglová) sells flowers and cleans houses but plays piano on her lunch break in a shop where the owner lets her stay for an hour.
The film rejects the typical Hollywood ending. There’s no big kiss in the rain. There’s no "moving to London together" montage. They give each other what they need—a piano, a demo tape, a sense of self-worth—and then they go back to their lives. It’s devastating and perfect.
The legacy of the "once" effect
After the movie exploded, everything changed for Hansard. He went from a cult Irish musician to a guy who Steven Spielberg was calling a fan of. The film was adapted into a Broadway musical that won eight Tony Awards. But the stage version, while great, lacks the "shaky" vulnerability of the original.
There's a specific technical detail musicians always point out in the Glen Hansard film Once. It’s the way he plays. He uses a heavy plectrum and hits the strings with such violence that he often breaks them mid-song. In the opening scene, you see him snap a string and just keep going. That’s the metaphor for the whole film. Life is broken, the gear is cheap, and you’re probably going to fail, but you keep singing anyway.
People often ask if there will be a sequel. John Carney has basically said no, and honestly, we should be glad. The story is a circle. It starts with a song on a street corner and ends with a piano in a living room.
How to experience Once today
If you’re looking to revisit the world of the Glen Hansard film Once, don’t just watch the movie on a tiny laptop screen with bad speakers.
- Listen to the soundtrack on vinyl or high-quality audio. The nuances in Irglová’s harmonies on "The Hill" are lost in crappy compression.
- Watch the documentary "The Swell Season." It follows Glen and Markéta after the Oscars. It’s the "real" sequel—a raw look at what happens when a tiny indie movie turns your life upside down and then your relationship falls apart under the pressure.
- Visit Walton's Music in Dublin. Or rather, where it used to be. The specific shop where they filmed the "Falling Slowly" scene moved, but the spirit of that musical community still exists in spots like Whelan’s on Wexford Street.
What we get wrong about the ending
A lot of viewers find the ending of the Glen Hansard film Once frustrating. They want the Guy and the Girl to end up together. But that would ruin the point. The film is about the "once" in your life—the person you meet who changes your trajectory, even if they aren't meant to stay for the whole journey.
It’s about the brief intersection of two lives that produces something beautiful (the album) and then diverges. It’s more honest than 90% of the romances produced by major studios. He helps her find her voice; she helps him find his courage. That’s a successful relationship, even if it only lasted a week.
The film remains a masterclass in "limitations as a strength." Because they couldn't afford permits, they shot fast. Because they couldn't afford lighting, they used natural sun or streetlamps. Because they couldn't hire actors, they used people who actually knew how to feel the lyrics.
If you haven't seen it in a while, go back and look at the scene where Glen sings "Leave" in the recording studio. It’s one take. He’s sweating. His face is red. He’s basically howling at the ceiling. It’s one of the most visceral captures of musical performance ever put on celluloid. It wasn't "content." It was a guy purging his soul in front of a lens.
Next Steps for Fans and Newcomers
To truly appreciate the impact of the Glen Hansard film Once, start by listening to The Frames' album For the Birds. It sets the sonic stage for what Glen brought to the movie. Then, watch the film with a decent pair of headphones to catch the ambient street noise of Dublin—it's as much a part of the music as the guitar. Finally, check out the 2011 documentary The Swell Season to see the unvarnished reality of the fame that followed their Oscar win. It provides the necessary closure that the fictional story intentionally withholds.