Singin Through It

“It seems to elevate the banal into these majestic moments,” muses John Carney, writer and director of Begin Again, an alternative kind of rom com about an English girl at a crossroads and an American man in a mire of misery. Hope comes from the music they make together, recording an album around New York.

“Ever since I had a walkman, or any sort of portable music,” Carney continues, “suddenly, you start looking at something that you took for granted for so long, and that chord change just makes it achingly sad... [Or] something that’s sad can become happy.”

“So, with Once, I wanted to make a musical, but I didn’t want anybody to know it was a musical. And it was hilarious, it worked.”

This is Carney’s second foray into what’s been heralded as the modern musical. His first, the popular indie film Once (2007), starring his former Frames band mate, Glenn Hansard, also focused on two lost souls and the redemptive power of music. “I think that I have definitively put a lot of thought into the notion of the stealth musical. Like, how do you quietly get into the room and then make love to everybody once you’re in there, with music? How do you get kids who are saying ‘I aint going to go and see no people singing to each other, that’s totally lame’?

“So, with Once, I wanted to make a musical, but I didn’t want anybody to know it was a musical. And it was hilarious, it worked.”

If Once could be described as an indie-folk song, Begin Again is a well manufactured pop track with an all-star cast including Catherine Keener, CeeLo Green, Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) and Maroon 5 frontman, Adam Levine. And, through Dan’s failing A&R career and Greta’s reluctance to compromise anything for fame and fortune, the film pokes a few sticks at the nature of the music industry as well.

When asked whether she believes in music’s influential power, Knightley looks sheepish. Smiling as though she’s afraid someone might hit her, she admits she’s “not into music at all”, going on to explain that she doesn’t seem to hear it, to be able to “click into it” when it’s playing around her. “I am an absolute fake. I really never listen to it... I’m married to a musician, all of my best friends are obsessed by it, I mean the whole fucking family is filled with it and I’m the only one who can’t actually hear it.”

The songs Knightley sings in the film were mostly written by New Radicals’ Gregg Alexander. The singing was an aspect of the role she found challenging given she rarely sings anywhere but in the shower, something she has in common with her character, who is reluctant to perform music for anyone other than the cat.

What Knightley found surprisingly difficult was being able to play and sing at the same time. Her husband, Klaxons’ James Righton, gave her guitar lessons – “I nearly killed him,” she states. “He won’t be giving me guitar lessons again.”

That Greta’s outcome didn’t lie in the arms of a man is something Knightley enjoyed about playing the character. Roles like this, she claims, are “virtually not out there unless it’s romance where the [couple] end up together, or [the woman] ends up dead, or neurotic.”

“I nearly killed him,” she states. “He won’t be giving me guitar lessons again.”

That’s not to say there isn’t any romance – it’s just delivered in a Lost In Translation style. And given Carney’s views on the difference between real life and the clichéd romance, that’s not surprising – “Do you think we’re all going to die peacefully looking into each other’s eyes? One’s going to die in the other’s arms if you’re lucky, probably screaming.”

While Knightley’s views may not be as comically bleak, that she and Carney somewhat agree is evident when she narrows her eyes incredulously and says, “What do you mean “happy ending”? I think it does have a happy ending. For her and for him.”

Begin Again is not a love story or a musical in the conventional sense; it’s a story about resilience, hope and the sense of optimism that can come from hearing the right chord.

“Like,” Carney pauses. “You’re walking down the street thinking, ‘I don’t know whether to take that job’, and you hear the right song or a lyric that speaks to you and you go, ‘Fuck, I’m gonna take it!’... Music is somebody communicating with you... If I sang to you I could tell you more of what I’m thinking than all this dialogue. Sometimes you need a break from the dialogue.”