Begin Again

Film (2013)
Written and directed by John Carney

With Keira Knightley (Greta), Mark Ruffalo (Dan), Hailee Steinfeld (Violet), Adam Levine (Dave), James Corden (Steve), Cee Lo Green (Troublegum), Mos Def (Saul), Catherine Keener (Miriam)

Dan (Mark Ruffalo) is not doing well in the record company he founded, he’s divorced, and he drinks too much. His relationship with his teenage daughter is in shambles. At a bad moment, he hears Greta (Keira Knightley) singing in a club and is immediately taken with her talent. She has also had difficulties – brought on by the more than musical ramblings of her rock star boyfriend – and together they embark on a wild project of recording her original songs on location all over the city.

Mark Ruffalo has a general tendency to mash words with sultry suggestiveness, so here, playing an alcoholic record company executive in eclipse, he more than mashes them, he turns them into a kind of gooey pulp, making, at the outset, an uncomfortable oleaginous pool. Gradually, as things progress, the ooze subsides and, thankfully, like any primordial reptile or record executive responding to Darwinian impulses, he clambers his way out of it.

Fortunately, his partner in music is played by Keira Knightley, whose articulation remains sharp and pointed throughout. He’s seemingly older by a decade or more and they hover on the edge of romance, but, as in the remarkably similar though grittier cinematic antecedent Once (2006) also directed by Carney, the relationship gains most of its heat from hovering rather than landing.

Knightley actually sings a bunch of songs here and is quite good for someone who claims she doesn’t sing. She also really looks the part while at the microphone, making a lot of engaging facial gestures with a captivating but non-prima-donna folk-rock singer vibe.

Catherine Keener (Miriam) plays Dan’s ex-wife in an amiably hippyish way and Hailee Steinfeld (Violet) is their sharp teenage daughter who manages to keep the edge her parents have lost. The brief scene between Steinfeld’s Violet and Knightley’s Greta is an edge-fest for the two significant characters whose sharpness has not yet given way.

James Corden (Steve) is the unthreatening music pal who provides support and sustenance to Greta; he plays the role with a rugbyesque earnestness.

Adam Levine (Dave), as Greta’s boyfriend, is cool and removed even though he tries hard to be forceful and present. His singing voice is very high and his beard is very thick and bushy; the script judiciously makes good fun of the beard.

Once had a rough charm that made its principals shine, particularly when they sang together. Here, amid recording sessions, the principals share an earbud and sheepishly reveal their love of show tunes, a distinct sign of deep trust for those in the rock and roll business. These are vaguer emblems of lurking romance, not as spicily direct as the impassioned crooning of its Platonic forbears in Once, but charming enough in their own close echoes of the earlier stealth hit.

– BADMan