The pandemic has given us time to watch again movies that we hadn't seen for many years. In the process, we rediscovered two that, to our surprise, both were the work of Irish writer and director John Carney.
The first was "Once," the 2007 story of a Dublin street singer/guitarist who meets a recent immigrant from the Czech Republic who plays piano at a local music store and who gives him the courage to gather together a group of musicians, record a demo, and make his music his career.
The second was 2013's "Begin Again." Carney has moved the action to New York City, but the story line has echoes of "Once." Keira Knightley plays a songwriter who is invited on stage at a local bar by a musician friend to sing a new song she has written. In the audience is a drunken A&R man, played by a Mark Ruffalo, who has just lost his job, but who hears the beauty and potential of the song. Ruffalo is superb as the A&R guy looking to find a reason to live again. The music is great.
Carney wrote and directed a third musical--"Sing Street" (2016)--about a Dublin teenager who starts a band to impress a young girl. I've not seen it yet, but look forward to it.
More recently, Carney has been the creative force behind "Modern Love," a series of half-hour dramas based on a New York Times column that gives readers a chance to tell the story of their own loves. The first episode is about a young woman who finds that the doorman of her apartment building is quick to judge her boyfriends.
In the midst of a worsening pandemic, my thanks to John Carney for brightening our evenings.
