We live in a society obsessed with romance, and honestly I am at a loss to explain why. I know I sympathize with this preoccupation. As a single, young man in his mid-twenties, I spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating my sometimes flourishing most often floundering love life. I seem to believe that I am owed amor. Where did that sense of entitlement come from?
Much to my charigne, the Bible is mute on the subject. Apparently the Biblical writers lived in a time much different than ours where romantic pursuits took on either a remarkably different character or existed as something else entirely. For the life of me, I cannot find the passage where Jesus tells me how to get a date, much less a wife. There is, of course, Song of Songs, but even then, the most strident exclamation arising from scripture's greatest love poem is, "Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires."
What's a boy to do? Society says romance is everything. The Bible doesn't say much to the contrary or in affirmation. I want to believe that everything works out in the end in every romantic endeavor, but experience has taught me that this just isn't so. Sometimes hearts break. Sometimes lovers split. Sometimes you end up alone on the streets of Dublin singing your heart out for a spare shilling hoping someone will stop to listen.
That is where we join the Guy's story in Once. He's brokenhearted and alone, unsure of what to do with his life, with dreams of doing this or that "once" he gets this or that straightened out.
And then someone stops to listen. The Girl hears the love behind his laments, and they form a friendship full of healing and new hope.
Once is a musical unlike any other. As a friend so astutely pointed out for me, the movie is a vehicle for the songs, as if the movie was made to give the songs a stage. Indeed, the film acts in many ways as an 83 minute long music video. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, the Guy and the Girl, have composed a beautiful collection of songs including the Academy Award winning "Falling Slowly," and the film does their songs great justice.
Linking the songs together and informing the songs and being informed by the songs is a delightful love story with more depth than most. Over the course of their two or so week long relationship, the Guy and the Girl fall in love with one another, but they are mature enough to know that the purpose of their love is not to be together forever. They love each other so they can separate, and though apart, live better lives and love other people better because of their love for one another.
Why do we fall in love? Some would say it is because we are hard wired to try to propagate the planet with more of our species. Romantic attraction facilitates progeny. Others would say that romantic love makes all our other problems go away. "All you need is love," these paramourian prophets proclaim.
The Bible seems to say both and neither. The Bible definitely says that God is good in all things, and I imagine that means no matter how desperate and desirous our hearts may be and no matter if our hearts find romantic satisfaction or not.
If only I could remember to believe that.
Once believes that we love, and that love is good even when things don't turn out like we think they should.
I believe that God loves us, and that God is good even when things don't turn out like we think they should.
(Once is rated R for language. This is an Irish film, and the Irish seem to use a certain four letter word like teenagers use the word "like." I don't think any ill-intent was, like, intended.)
-- Elijah Davidson
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