Power Ballad
A film about musical authorship may initially seem built around a rather small conflict: who wrote what, who deserves the credit and who ended up taking the success. Power Ballad manages something much harder: turning that dispute into a question of identity, dignity, memory and affection. It took me from irritation to anger, from anger to sadness and from there to enormous emotion. And when a film can move me like that, it matters little that some of the screenplay's machinery is visible.
John Carney returns to territory he knows perfectly: wounded people who find in music a way to say what they cannot express otherwise. Here, however, there is more anger than in some of his other films. Music does not only unite; it can also divide, become property, money, pride and an open wound when someone feels that part of their life has been taken away.
Paul Rudd is excellent because Rick is never reduced to the defeated musician we are simply expected to pity. There is pride, resentment, impulsiveness and a considerable ability to damage himself. But there is also something deeply recognizable in his need for someone to acknowledge that what he created mattered. He is not merely claiming a melody: he is defending the part of his personal history that became embedded in it.
Nick Jonas has the more thankless role because for much of the film it is difficult not to be angry with his character. And that works. Carney understands very well the huge imbalance of power between someone who has fame, money, an industry and a platform and someone who has little more than his word. That inequality turns any discussion about authorship from a purely artistic dispute into a moral one as well.
That was where the film really grabbed me. I had seen how the song came into being and, from that point on, I found it difficult to accept any attempt to reduce the conflict to a simple misunderstanding between two egos. The film deliberately plays with that indignation and manages to make one person's success feel like another person's humiliation. It is uncomfortable and, at times, genuinely frustrating.
I also like that Rick is not idealized. Feeling wronged does not automatically make someone flawless. Pain can turn into obsession, and an injustice can take up so much space that it begins to contaminate everything else. That dimension makes the film considerably more interesting than a simple story about a good man against a bad one.
Peter McDonald is terrific. His energy, physicality and slightly gangly quality reminded me a lot of a young Rhys Ifans. He brings humor and humanity without feeling as though he has been inserted merely to relieve tension. He is one of those supporting actors who makes the world around the protagonist feel alive.
And, as always with Carney, Dublin and music seem to breathe together. Anyone with a special relationship to Once will immediately recognize that way of treating songs as emotional memory. This is not about laying music over scenes, but about allowing a song to contain years of a life, a relationship, a frustration or something that was never properly said.
The film has flaws. Part of the conflict grows out of decisions that could have been avoided through a reasonable conversation, and at times the machinery needed to keep the characters apart and prolong the confrontation is too visible. Some developments are also easy to anticipate. Carney has never been especially interested in surprising us through tricks.
But emotional honesty matters much more here than surprise. The final stretch works because all the accumulated anger finds an emotional release that never felt cheap or false to me. I ended up crying first from sadness and frustration and later from pure emotion. That shift matters: the film does not merely provoke feeling, it transforms the kind of feeling it has been building.
Power Ballad delighted me because it understands something essential: a song can be worth far more than its price, its rights or its place on a chart. It can hold an entire life inside it. And when someone feels that something like that has been stolen, they are not fighting only for recognition; they are trying to prove that their own story existed. It can be sentimental, predictable and slightly manipulative, but it worked completely for me.
John Carney returns to territory he knows perfectly: wounded people who find in music a way to say what they cannot express otherwise. Here, however, there is more anger than in some of his other films. Music does not only unite; it can also divide, become property, money, pride and an open wound when someone feels that part of their life has been taken away.
Paul Rudd is excellent because Rick is never reduced to the defeated musician we are simply expected to pity. There is pride, resentment, impulsiveness and a considerable ability to damage himself. But there is also something deeply recognizable in his need for someone to acknowledge that what he created mattered. He is not merely claiming a melody: he is defending the part of his personal history that became embedded in it.
Nick Jonas has the more thankless role because for much of the film it is difficult not to be angry with his character. And that works. Carney understands very well the huge imbalance of power between someone who has fame, money, an industry and a platform and someone who has little more than his word. That inequality turns any discussion about authorship from a purely artistic dispute into a moral one as well.
That was where the film really grabbed me. I had seen how the song came into being and, from that point on, I found it difficult to accept any attempt to reduce the conflict to a simple misunderstanding between two egos. The film deliberately plays with that indignation and manages to make one person's success feel like another person's humiliation. It is uncomfortable and, at times, genuinely frustrating.
I also like that Rick is not idealized. Feeling wronged does not automatically make someone flawless. Pain can turn into obsession, and an injustice can take up so much space that it begins to contaminate everything else. That dimension makes the film considerably more interesting than a simple story about a good man against a bad one.
Peter McDonald is terrific. His energy, physicality and slightly gangly quality reminded me a lot of a young Rhys Ifans. He brings humor and humanity without feeling as though he has been inserted merely to relieve tension. He is one of those supporting actors who makes the world around the protagonist feel alive.
And, as always with Carney, Dublin and music seem to breathe together. Anyone with a special relationship to Once will immediately recognize that way of treating songs as emotional memory. This is not about laying music over scenes, but about allowing a song to contain years of a life, a relationship, a frustration or something that was never properly said.
The film has flaws. Part of the conflict grows out of decisions that could have been avoided through a reasonable conversation, and at times the machinery needed to keep the characters apart and prolong the confrontation is too visible. Some developments are also easy to anticipate. Carney has never been especially interested in surprising us through tricks.
But emotional honesty matters much more here than surprise. The final stretch works because all the accumulated anger finds an emotional release that never felt cheap or false to me. I ended up crying first from sadness and frustration and later from pure emotion. That shift matters: the film does not merely provoke feeling, it transforms the kind of feeling it has been building.
Power Ballad delighted me because it understands something essential: a song can be worth far more than its price, its rights or its place on a chart. It can hold an entire life inside it. And when someone feels that something like that has been stolen, they are not fighting only for recognition; they are trying to prove that their own story existed. It can be sentimental, predictable and slightly manipulative, but it worked completely for me.
Mini Review: A film about musical authorship may initially seem built around a rather small conflict: who wrote what, who deserves the credit and who ended up taking the success. Power Ballad manages something much harder: turning that dispute into a question of identity, dignity, memory and affection. It took me from irritation to anger, from anger to sadness and from there to enormous emotion. And when a film can move me like that, it matters little that...
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