Once

“Once” is a film about language, loss, and the construction of memory through language. Through voiceovers and fragmented footage, the characters in “Once” tell how they have come to study language in an attempt to relocate themselves at particular junctures in their lives. They describe their desire to learn Yiddish, a language they have speculative connections to or memories of. Their distance from the language and its intrinsic power to link them to an identity seems to increase their appetites for this language lost. Yiddish, it appears, while providing the elements of language, also represents a loss for, and only draws them further from, notions of home. Using architectural footage to evoke the structural elements of language, the buildings also represent places we have all inhabited both in our imaginations and in our daily lives. Both the images and the words impress us at once as magical and defining yet melancholic. Echoed in the images with footage that at moments appear to be akin to aged home movies, and at other times contemporary or archival. “Once” functions visually and verbally to suggest both language and home are ephemeral. “Once” is a film that places language at the centre of images, at times allowing the spoken word to dominate while we are suffused with metaphoric imagery.