Knightley, Levine show the healing power of music in 'Begin Again'.

AuthorRooney, David
PositionLiving

Byline: David Rooney

'Begin Again'

Unstarred Review

A Weinstein release

Rating: R for language

Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes

LOS ANGELES -- "Begin Again'' sees Irish writer-director John Carney on a larger canvas, revisiting themes from his lo-fi 2006 indie hit "Once'' -- chief among them the emotional connectivity of music. Swapping Dublin for New York, and trading a single couple for a group of people all trying to mend broken bonds or forge new ones, the touching film again trades in uncynical heart-on-its-sleeve sentiment, and deploys a series of gentle ballads, a number of them performed by star Keira Knightley.

With "Once,'' Carney tapped into every shoestring-budget filmmaker's dream. Shot in 17 days for $160,000, the micro-movie musical became a sleeper hit, grossing $9.5 million domestically, winning an Oscar for "Falling Slowly'' and becoming a Broadway show.

With "Begin Again,'' Carney demonstrates that the disarming emotional candor and intimacy of the earlier film were no fluke. He is a wholesale believer in the healing power of music.

Knightley plays Greta, a Brit hauled up onstage in a bar to do one of her songs at an open mic night by her busker friend from home, Steve (James Corden). The melancholy number doesn't exactly wow the crowd, with the exception of enraptured drunk music industry A&R veteran Dan Mulligan (Mark Ruffalo). The film then rewinds twice to approach the same scene from different perspectives, revealing the day from hell that pushed Dan to drown his sorrows and the series of events that left Greta miserable in Manhattan.

Separated from his music journo wife Miriam (Catherine Keener), Dan struggles to maintain a rapport with their petulant teenage daughter, Violet (Hailee Steinfeld). He's out of touch with how the music biz works in the digital age, and hasn't brought in a bankable new act in years, causing him to be kicked to the curb by Saul (Yasiin Bey, aka Mos Def), the money side of the indie record label he founded.

Greta came to New York a few months back with her songwriting partner and boyfriend of five years, Dave Kohl (Adam Levine). As his success spiraled after one of his songs was featured in a hit movie, Greta was cheated on and left...

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