Begin Again

Begin Again.John Carney, 2013

Popland

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s film? No, please: don’t let me considering you as an entertainment piece for boring people, you are more lovely and more temperate… and forgetting all about Shakespeare’s sonnets, I can tell you this film is a serious thing. It worth.

Whenever I think about music and what do we need it in our lives, I conclude it is just something we add, like salt and pepper in the food or sugar in the coffee. Nothing important.

After watching Begin Again (John Carney, 2013) I felt almost the opposite, but not because I discovered anything new about composers, singers and writers, but because I realised we create music to keep on living and it makes us the way easier. As we read to collect our thoughts and better understand each other, we listen to music not to feel alone. A song is the best mate to a lonely walk by the city.

Luckily for those who create songs, the music can also communicate a feeling. Like a writer with a book, a composer tells the world how he or she feels by means other that speaking. Luckily… because everyone wins.

The main characters of Begin Again not only communicate themselves with music (they actually are composer and producer) but also theorize, discuss and explain their own ideas about it: why do we use headphones? Why do we need to listen to our favourite song sometimes? Why does it feel so good when we see the «common things» while we listen to a special song? We need to add a «soundtrack» to our daily routine. It feels better, specially when it is a pop music soundtrack.

If there is something that catches our attention in this film about music and musicians, is that it only deals with pop music, commercial-easy-positive-sensible music for the people. Popular music.

I guess we all agree: there is so much music out there that trying to summarize it on a single genre is ridiculous.

But let us pretending the world goes according to a pop sense and everything will fit. This film also. At least for a while.