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How to Write a Song

Power Ballad is one of those movies where you really know what you are getting and are happy to get it. It is the latest film from John Carney, a filmmaker who specializes in his own niche of movies about people who make music, who love music, or both -and there are few people better at it than him. Maybe his films can be cheesy or saccharine but they can also be tremendously warm and earnest. They will generally follow everyday characters  -amateur musicians or music admirers- who find something personally enriching in musical expression. And of course they will feature or perhaps even centre around a standout song, like the Oscar-winning “Falling Slowly” from Once, “Lost Stars” from Begin Again, and “Drive it Like You Stole It” from Sing Street (I was personally also quite fond of the less-celebrated “Meet in the Middle” from Flora and Son).
As much as those other films, these qualities are true of Power Ballad, which attaches them to a premise that is deceptively simple in its contrast of two musical worlds and their tenuous collision. Yet it never feels cheap or derivative for this, or cynical, though it has reason to be. What Carney depicts here as it relates to the world of music stardom is biting and severe. Yet here is a movie that reveals itself as less about the price of stealing art as the inherent value in that art itself.
In a very silly nod to the film’s title, Paul Rudd plays a guy called Rick Power -a former indie rocker who abandoned his dreams of music stardom when he fell in love with a girl at a concert in Ireland. Fifteen years later he is an expat in Dublin with his wife and teenage daughter, working as the lead singer of a wedding band. At one gig, a former boy band idol Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas) -a friend of the groom- plays with the band on stage and later jams through the night with Rick, the pair bonding over songwriting, musical sentiment, and admiration for each other’s talent. When Danny goes back to Los Angeles and finds himself again in a creative rut, he resorts in his desperate ambition to stealing a song Rick had been developing for years. As it becomes a global hit, Rick struggles to grasp the betrayal and prove that he is the song’s original author.
A premise like this, wherein a fictitious piece of art becomes a major sensation, can have a hard time working if that art isn't either good or believable as something that would be highly successful. Thankfully the song at the heart of this movie "How to Write a Song (Without You)" is suitably both. It is catchy and sweet to listen to -especially in its acoustic form as performed by Rudd (and even with his perhaps less than ideal singing voice), and though its structure and production couldn't compete with the biggest songs out there right now, it still fits the mold of a basic modern hit, though perhaps more for the country than pop crowd. It is a tender piece about the connection between inspiration and a loved one, and the fear of losing that -it evokes something very personal.
And that is why the theft of it matters so much to Rick. The immense success of the song and overwhelming residuals certainly stings, but the bit of his heart taken by it hurts a lot more. That and the lack of credit. Rick holds out as long as he can his good faith in Danny after their night together but that denial has a breaking point. And Rudd is great at articulating that slow-burn heartbreak and depression. For the early stretches of the movie and even intermittently through this troubled period, he's playing the character in his very usual fashion -cordial, funny, sincere, and intensely likeable (and this is another movie that allows him to be a very cute dad). But the shades of sadness, bitterness, and obsession that he goes through here are really quite stark, making more impactful his choices and ultimate emotional arc -the fullest Rudd has gotten in a movie in quite some time. And while the film isn’t as sympathetic towards Danny, Jonas gets to play some depth as well, particularly in his anxious desperation to prove himself as well as a bit of insidiousness towards his purported convictions -he has a girlfriend played by Havana Rose Liu, but isn’t as invested in her as he claims. Still, there is some genuine sadness to his situation. Danny’s career trajectory has some undeniable mirrors to Jonas’s own, something the movie makes very clear -and there is a degree of vulnerability in his performance here as some of Danny’s issues and insecurities might hit close to home. The cast also includes nice turns from Marcella Plunkett and Beth Fallon as Rick’s wife and daughter respectively, Carney regular Jack Reynor as a tough music executive, and a pretty fun Peter McDonald as Rick’s supportive but impulsive friend Sandy.
McDonald co-wrote the film with Carney, and it is a pretty good script, with a comedic tone that vacillates organically between gentle and outrageous. Certainly by the last act, wherein Rick resolves to track Danny down personally and confront him, the circumstances bloat in tandem with the stakes. The confrontation is emotionally involved enough though it warrants something big and a little stupid -something that isn’t quite equivalent in lesser comedies. And yet there is a softness in Carney’s approach when it ultimately congeals, of an unexpected pity towards Danny in lieu of sympathy or vehemence. The film is very humble in its attitude towards the music industry and its young stars -in that its critiques don’t resort to  targeting the style and vibe of the music itself. But there is a notable condolence towards youth. Danny, it’s revealed, misunderstands his hit song in a very sharp way, and one that by his style of delivery even diminishes its true sentiments a tad. Not that Rick is bothered by this -he even fantasizes in his good nature of Danny bringing him on stage to give him credit and then they both play his version as a duet. But Danny is still spiritually wounded by this -something that Carney illustrates with tremendous effectiveness via a dichotomy between both singers performing the song, one superficial, one vividly from the heart. That it is the latter doing it as the ‘cover’ is a travesty. Yet he also is the one wise enough not to be content.
That is the beautiful sentiment ultimately at the heart of this film. That what a song means, on an instinctual, personal level, is somewhat more important than who wrote it and why. Others don’t interpret “How to Write a Song” like Rick, but they at least connect with it in a real way. And that is what Carney appears to encourage here. Power Ballad (which the song certainly is not) is inconspicuously Carney’s best film in a while. It is a lovely movie that puts the artificiality of the music industry through the ringer to express something sweet about the personal essence of music -which might be co-opted by an unforgiving machine but can never actually be stolen.

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