Brandon's Buzz

Tracy Chapman — “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution”
(from Tracy Chapman) —

A and I finally dragged our bee-hinds to the movies last night to catch up with One Day, the languid and slightly laborious new romantic drama which, in spite of a superficial and underdeveloped script, is saved wholly by lovely lead performances from Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway (although, between this and last fall’s ridonk Love and Other Drugs, I am officially calling for a moratorium on Hathaway baring her breasts on the big screen, to last at least through the remainder of the decade). The film’s primary conceit is that it traces sixteen years in the lives of its lead characters (best friends Dexter and Emma), dropping in on them on the same day — July 15, for reasons that are made clear at the film’s outset and reinforced in the compelling coda — from 1988 through 2006 and charting their evolutions and varying levels of maturity as the years pass by. Beyond the ever-changing hairstyles and -lengths, the best method the film’s makers employ to convey the passage of time is their brilliant use of music, and the funny (and, at least for me, thrilling) way they chose a song to signify each year: Tears for Fears’ sonic marvel “Sowing the Seeds of Love” stands tall in the 1989 vignette, for example, and Del Amitri’s peppy pop gem “Roll to Me” immediately brings to mind that rough musical summer of 1995. (Even Robbie Williams’ 2000 smash “Angels” gets pulled into the mix, albeit in the form of a horrendously off-key karaoke performance at a wedding reception.) And this folky little ditty — a clarion call to arms that helped to herald the arrival of a forcefully fabulous new artistic talent that summer — is the first tune we hear as the action kicks into gear. A pitch-perfect marriage of the aural and the visual to help tell (and sell) a story, and a stark reminder that, of all the things those who put this film together got so wickedly wrong, there was also at least one thing they got rivetingly right.