Reliving Oscar's Best Moment: Falling Slowly For Once

By Josh Tyler: 2008-02-26 00:49:57

For those of you who weren’t with us in CB’s Oscar Chat Sunday night to hear us slobbering all over it, for a lot of us the only moment of importance during this year’s Academy Awards ceremony was the performance of Oscar winning best song from Once, “Falling Slowly”. Even people who haven’t seen the movie seem to agree, it was just about the only Best Song performance worth watching.

On the other hand, if you have seen Once then you know that the Academy Awards somehow managed to screw it up. The beauty of “Falling Slowly” is its simplicity, and in the film it’s performed by Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová. There’s no backing band or musical score, just Glen strumming his battered guitar and Markéta working magic on her piano in the back of a dusty music store. It’s a brilliant moment, which could have easily been duplicated on the Oscar stage. Instead though, they chose to trick it up by adding in the orchestra, and while the song is still good, it loses a lot of the poignancy it had in the film.

Still, Once’s win for Best Song was one of the night’s best moments. It’s the little film that everyone was rooting for, and that Best Song win means more to Glen and Marketa than another statue for the Coens does, at least to them. If you missed their moment last night, take a second, find a quiet place at home, and watch it via the embed below:

And here’s Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová winning and making their speeches. Credit to Jon Stewart for saving the day by bringing Marketa back out on his time to give the thank you speech the Academy’s bumbling producers so rudely cut off:

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allan white
February 27, 2008 at 12:46

hey

just wanted to say that i agree with your opinion that the academy really fucked up here, the performance on the night was really ruined by the over production, there was no need for the strings and orchestra.

i too was really hoping they would reproduce the simple performance from the film. it would have been much more touching, also the sound engineer was awful. the piano was inaudible and the guitar was raspy, still the song shone through and it was still by far the best performance of the night, and the acceptance speeches were special too,

i was lucky enough to busk with glen one night on the very street he plays in in the film and he really is a gem of a guy, really down to earth. im delighted for both of them.

proud irish man

go on lads

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