Shot in the three years following Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova’s Oscar-winning performance in the internationally acclaimed Once, it was Hansard’s idea to make The Swell Season. While taking film classes at NYU, Hansard approached lecturer and filmmaker Carlo Mirabella-Davis with a view to documenting the duo’s rise to fame. Hansard was also set to feature in Conor Masterson’s documentary In The Deep Shade – a lot of exposure and personal invasion for a man who claims to have an ambivalent relationship with fame.
But then, none of those involved can have realised that The Swell Season would be an intimate chronicling of the rise and fall of a relationship: co-directors Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis were originally pitched a straight-forward tour documentary.
“We saw Glen as a guy who really bares his heart if he trusts you,” says Nick August-Perna. “He gets into very intimate, emotionally complex conversations easily, which is one of his best qualities. And there was a real sense that, on top of all this career development, there was an anxiety, almost a cognitive dissonance. There was a real idea that, on the one hand he was elated and really excited about the future, and on the other, there was a fear that the old Glen was withering away. He had been a guy who played to 40 people and thanked them for coming. He was suddenly headlining arenas and entering that odd realm of celebrity. We knew there would be an interesting personal journey that would play almost like an opera – the music would act almost as a soliloquy accompanying the narrative.”
Hansard and Irglova begin the film aged 37 and 19 respectively and are at very different stages of their lives.
“When we met Marketa, all of us realised that, though she’s adult and an old soul, she is very young, and we were all aware of the struggles that would face a young person thrust into the limelight. And how that would affect her – and their relationship, because though they’re having this intense, shared experience, they’re living it in a very different way. Marketa is more timid, and wary of attention and of revealing so much of herself. Whereas Glen has had decades of experience of connecting with audiences and the crowd. And when you’re intimate with someone but experiencing life so differently, it can be alienating. It created tension, because you want a partner. They were experiencing life so differently. It can produce a feeling of loneliness, and the film tracks that disconnect.”
The directors evoke both the deep connection shared by the singers, and the complexities of their relationship. Given the lengthy shooting schedule, Hansard and Irglova obviously become accustomed to the camera, allowing their increasingly fraught interactions to be captured with disarming vulnerability. As well as emotive revelations about Hansard’s relationship with his alcoholic father, the central tale becomes even more moving when you consider Hansard and Irglova were not romantically reconciled. Perna says the première was tense – who wants to watch a film charting your heart-wrenching break-up?
“We initially had three different screenings. The first was hugely uncomfortable. We rented this firehouse in New York and everyone was very cordial but nervous. There was just silence. And Marketa and Glen said it captured the time and what they were going through very accurately. So there was deep respect for the film, but of course it’s also difficult. Glen was concerned about his parents and how they’re portrayed because he discusses them. I think these scenes function beautifully because they get at his psychological workings. Marketa has a more complicated relationship with the film – at times she felt it was a little dark. There’s a wish that it was a brighter time.”
“Relationships,” the director sighs. “They’re complicated.”