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It doesn't take long for the Irish film Once to cast its vivid spell. It's a simple tale of a hoover repairman by day and musician by night who encounters an immigrant woman on the streets. It's clear rather quickly that they're kindred spirits. Their passion for music (they both write, sing and play instruments) bonds them together and sets in motion big changes in their lives though the movie is only with them for a short period of time. It's easy to see why this naturalistic musical won many hearts and the audience world cinema award at Sundance at the start of this film year. Watching it doesn't feel like sitting through a movie so much as attending a startling concert in an intimate venue. Once owes this specificity of feeling, this genuine immediacy, to the blessed decision to capture its musicians in the flush of actual performance as opposed to the imitation of the same. The latter is what you usually get in filmed musicals as the singers lip-synch along with their own prerecorded work. In movie parlance this prerecorded media is referred to as playback. Musical sequences are essentially fancy karaoke sessions.

In the underappreciated sci-fi drama Strange Days (1995) playback is the name for an insidious program that captures memories and feelings for reuse and profit. The ability to vicariously live through someone else's experiences or to relive your own becomes like a drug to the users. It's easy to imagine Hollywood as playback junkies in both definitions of the word. The studios love to repeat themselves for ease of profit and marketability in the one sense and in the other, well... they're overly reliant on mimicry when they could be using more live performance in their musicals. To be fair, the use of playback is undoubtedly a budget-dictated condition. It saves money and effort if you don't have to worry about capturing one take that functions on all levels perfectly. With playback you can start with a perfect musical track and then concentrate on the acting, choreography, and technical components as you film.

It's a good enduring system but it's not without drawbacks. Films like Once immediately throw playbacks shadow side into bold relief. This film and its music feel so lived in and spontaneous, that big studio musicals like Dreamgirls can feel empty or airless in comparison. To cite a recent example: Jennifer Hudson's famed rendition of "And I Am Telling You" is a showstopper for sure but the electricity generated is coming from multiple sources: lighting, editing, costuming, performance. It has considerable power but it's still a manufactured thing, a battery. Once's energy is closer to lightning. More movie musicals should follow its lead.

"This is your life, right here, right now! It's real-time, you hear me, real time! Time to get real, not playback. You understand me?"

Mace -Strange Days