Song One Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Song One Blu-ray Movie Review

Twice?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 23, 2015

A recent report verified what those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest, and specifically Portland, have long suspected: by far the largest segment of the population quizzed on their religious beliefs self-reported themselves as “unaffiliated,” which if not exactly denoting them as “nonbelievers,” at least puts them in that oft mentioned “spiritual but not religious” category. If one were to “keep Portland weird” (so to speak) by referencing a quasi-religious activity that fills the many (many) coffee houses and lounges in and around this burg, we might be able therefore to slightly morph the famous “Jesus saves” phrase to instead state “Indie music saves.” That obviously whimsical reformulation is part and parcel of the enjoyable if overly contrived Song One, a film that despite some manifest differences in subject and tone often plays like a sibling to the perhaps not so coincidentally similarly named Once. While Song One doesn’t exactly posit a music making duo, at least not in the way Once did, the lives of various buskers are featured prominently, albeit set against a tale of family dysfunction and a sister’s attempts to reconnect with a brother who is comatose after a devastating accident. When anthropologist (yes, anthropologist) Franny Ellis (Anne Hathaway, who also co-produced) is called back home from her outpost in Morocco, she is devastated to find out that her brother Henry (Ben Rosenfield), from whom she’s been estranged for initially unclear reasons, has been hit by a cab in New York City while walking home from a gig while perhaps unwisely wearing headphones, a choice which keeps him from hearing oncoming traffic. Franny is obviously highly distraught over this turn of events, something that plays out in some contentious back and forth between her and her equally troubled mother Karen (Mary Steenburgen). When Franny happens upon Henry’s journal, that opens a portal into his life as a burgeoning musician, and Franny sets out on a quest to “discover” more about her brother by following leads in the journal, a trek which quickly brings her into contact with James Forester (Johnny Flynn), an up and coming troubadour who, to purloin a certain 1970s chart hit phrasing, kills Franny softly with his song. Can true love be far behind? And will Henry awake from his coma? Unfortunately Song One gets to its own cinematic coda in a perhaps too predictable fashion, but it, like Once, offers some appealing music and geniune, heartfelt performances.

While London’s “tube” may offer a bit more (relatively) luxe environment for buskers trying to make a buck (pound?) or two plying their musical wares out in public, New York’s subway also offers a “stage” of sorts for enterprising young musicians, and that’s where Henry is seen as the film starts. Shortly thereafter, he dons some headphones and begins walking home, only to step in front of a taxi. Meanwhile, Franny is watching what looks like a tattooing ceremony in a tent in some exotic overseas locale. She returns to her apartment and begins typing up some notes, which is when she receives the devastating news about Henry’s accident in a phone call from her mother.

Back home in New York, it’s obvious that there are long simmering conflicts between Franny and her family. Her mother is distraught that her own writing career made her less cognizant of Henry’s comings and goings than she should have been, but there are also some unspoken (and frankly underdeveloped) tensions between Franny and Karen herself, as evidenced by Karen’s announcement that Franny will need to use Henry’s bedroom since Karen has given Franny’s to a boarder. That seeming inconvenience actually redounds to Franny’s benefit when she starts poking around the room, making Henry something of a new anthropology research project. Ultimately Franny uncovers a lot of data about Henry, including his ambitions for his music and, most importantly, his journal, which ultimately leads Franny to Henry’s musical idol, one hit wonder James Forester.

Writer-director Kate Barker-Froyland doesn’t do anything overly remarkable with these plot pieces once they’re in place, and in fact the film unfolds in a resolutely predictable fashion, developing a burgeoning romance between Franny and James as Henry's prognosis remains uncertain. What elevates the tone (no pun intended) are the “live performance” sequences, moments which capture the engaging Brooklyn based community of singer-songwriters strutting their typically self-absorbed, melancholic stuff in coffee houses and the like. The song score, by Johnathan Rice and indie darling Jenny Lewis, is enjoyable if (again, no pun intended) rather one note in ambience, dealing in angst filled issues of broken romances and deferred dreams.

Hathaway’s limpid, doleful eyes are frankly able to convey at least as much heartbreak as any of the crestfallen tunes that provide counterpoint to the film’s narrative arc. Her Franny is perhaps a bit too weepy, but the film isn’t really shy about exploiting rom-dram conventions in order to tug at the heartstrings fairly forcefully. A too convenient, and perhaps impossibly sanguine, wrap up tends to make much of the foregoing Weltschmerz seem needlessly drawn out, but as the decidedly un-indie Elton John once professed, “sad songs say so much.”

Song One Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Song One is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Digitally shot with the Arri Alexa, the film has a sometimes difficult task in establishing depth, looking rather flat at times, especially in the somewhat bluish fluorescent light of the hospital scenes which provide a lot of film's running time. As I've personally found to be the case with Arri Alexa shot films, some of Song One's darker scenes, notably the many performances caught in dimly lit venues, have issues with inadequate shadow detail and just slight murk masking general detail and fine detail. Things have not been overtly color graded, though the hospital scenes sometimes do have a blue tint courtesy of that aforementioned light. Close-ups reveal abundant fine detail. The palette is not overly vivid, and in fact even flesh tones are a bit on the anemic side. Sharpness and clarity are first rate for the most part. There are no issues with compression artifacts despite the many dark scenes in the film.

Song One Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Song One's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix comes fully alive in the many musical sequences scattered throughout the film. The busy cityscape in and around Brooklyn also provides good immersion in various scenes. Otherwise, though, this is a fairly unambitious mix that certainly provides more than adequate support for dialogue, if no really over the top sonic elements. Fidelity is top notch, with excellent prioritization. There are no issues of any kind to warrant concern on this problem free track.

Song One Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (1080p; 1:47)


• Behind the Scenes Recording of the Soundtrack (1080p; 16:02) has some enjoyable candid footage of several songs being recorded.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 4:17)

Song One Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Song One is resolutely formulaic, something that puts it at odds with the supposedly anachronistic indie music scene it's exploring. Hathaway makes an appealing heroine, but the film belongs more squarely to Flynn, who does a great job making James a kind of wistful puppy dog in search of a good home. Barker-Froyland's tendency toward hand held quasi-verité "stylings" may get on some curmudgeon's nerves, but to her credit, things never totally devolve into "jiggly cam" status. Ultimately slight but always enjoyable, Song One's Blu-ray release sports generally excellent technical merits and comes Recommended.