While De Helaasheid de Dingen (The Misfortunates) was more a coming of age story, one focused on loss, adolescence and redemption, Felix van Groeningen's follow-up has a deeper and more tragic message.
In the film we follow in non-linear fashion the lives of Didier and Elise as they meet, fall in love, perform together, have a baby and grapple with their daughter's cancer. Didier is in love with America and American bluegrass and he speaks tenderly of the music. Once a punk rocker he now plays the banjo in a bluegrass band. Elise is a tattoo-artist, free-spirited in her own way, and by mid-way through the film we see as her more religious than her husband. She becomes a member of Didier's band.
What I like best about this film is the seamless way in which the past and present are woven together. Though the film jumps back and forth, the viewer is never lost. Felix van Groeningen has sculpted a movie so intuitively that the audience feels as if they are travelling back and forth, experiencing the highs with the lows and knowing they are part and parcel of life and love. How a moment in the present woefully contrasts a tender episode in the distant past belong to this film's masterful sweep and handling of events.
Moreover, both Johann Heldenbergh (also of The Misfortunates) and Veerle Baetens (Loft) are intoxicating in their performances. Every time I found the film harder to watch, I couldn't stop watching them. We feel grounded in their lives, their passion for each other despite the eventual pain of burying their daughter. We also feel the relationship splintering and understand how Didier and Elise react. While Elise consoles herself with religion, Didier directs his anger at the country of America.
Also, having grown up in a household of Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt and classic country, I loved the music. The performances invoke joy and feet-stomping happiness that too is intoxicating.
I suppose my only criticism and it is both major and minor is that the film seems to lose itself in the maudlin after the midway point. I kept comparing the film to The Misfortunates in its ability to balance the tragic with the light-hearted. I also found myself thinking of the Irish film, Once by writer/director John Carney which also featured a musician couple. Though the latter film dealt more with love frustrated by time and circumstance and not tragedy, I felt it was resolved with a realist touch. It is difficult to both love a movie and see its flaws and herein lies my main qualm with The Broken Circle Breakdown: it gets caught up in the pain and loses the balance and ultimately the realism. The audience has already succumbed to the death of Didier and Elise's charismatic daughter (played by newcomer Nell Cattrysse)and towards the end must then accept Elise's overdose.
I can even pinpoint the scene where the film roughly goes off course. Following a performance of 'If I needed You', Didier rants to his audience about God and religion and the banality of belief, especially when it stands in the way of stem-cell research. It is in this moment he loses Elise (having at this point re-christened herself Alabama). I know the director based his film on the play written by his lead and Miekke Dobbels but it's at this point where nuance and subtlety is suddenly exchanged for a hammer blow and what was once hinted at and discussed with metaphor and poetry becomes polemic. Knowing musicians and performers, Didier's anti-religious outburst felt out of character and explicit. It is recognizable that grief can be untamed, that angry and fear make up a large part of the pain but that's what art is for. Music, I would argue is the channel for suffering to be healed and Didier's opportunity to broadcast himself to an audience felt out of touch and forced. This soap box moment took me out of the film and the fact that his band members didn't try to stop him or at least calm him on stage proved also unrealistic. And that the diatribe was used to blatantly inspire Elise/Alabama's suicide attempt made it seem all the more ridiculous and immature.
Maybe one has to be true to the source material (both the original play and the tragic nature of bluegrass songs) but the maudlin sours the film's ending. Which is a little unfair for an audience already swept along by a troubled and bittersweet current of grief and love. Instead of providing mature (though at times immature), three-dimensional characters with a suitable conclusion, the movie devolves into soap opera theatrics. Humor is lost along with hope which the film carried so well.
This film is excellent (and flawed) and was nominated for an academy award for a reason but also didn't win, perhaps because of the movie's bitter, hopeless and cheap resolve.
In the film we follow in non-linear fashion the lives of Didier and Elise as they meet, fall in love, perform together, have a baby and grapple with their daughter's cancer. Didier is in love with America and American bluegrass and he speaks tenderly of the music. Once a punk rocker he now plays the banjo in a bluegrass band. Elise is a tattoo-artist, free-spirited in her own way, and by mid-way through the film we see as her more religious than her husband. She becomes a member of Didier's band.
What I like best about this film is the seamless way in which the past and present are woven together. Though the film jumps back and forth, the viewer is never lost. Felix van Groeningen has sculpted a movie so intuitively that the audience feels as if they are travelling back and forth, experiencing the highs with the lows and knowing they are part and parcel of life and love. How a moment in the present woefully contrasts a tender episode in the distant past belong to this film's masterful sweep and handling of events.
Moreover, both Johann Heldenbergh (also of The Misfortunates) and Veerle Baetens (Loft) are intoxicating in their performances. Every time I found the film harder to watch, I couldn't stop watching them. We feel grounded in their lives, their passion for each other despite the eventual pain of burying their daughter. We also feel the relationship splintering and understand how Didier and Elise react. While Elise consoles herself with religion, Didier directs his anger at the country of America.
Also, having grown up in a household of Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt and classic country, I loved the music. The performances invoke joy and feet-stomping happiness that too is intoxicating.
I suppose my only criticism and it is both major and minor is that the film seems to lose itself in the maudlin after the midway point. I kept comparing the film to The Misfortunates in its ability to balance the tragic with the light-hearted. I also found myself thinking of the Irish film, Once by writer/director John Carney which also featured a musician couple. Though the latter film dealt more with love frustrated by time and circumstance and not tragedy, I felt it was resolved with a realist touch. It is difficult to both love a movie and see its flaws and herein lies my main qualm with The Broken Circle Breakdown: it gets caught up in the pain and loses the balance and ultimately the realism. The audience has already succumbed to the death of Didier and Elise's charismatic daughter (played by newcomer Nell Cattrysse)and towards the end must then accept Elise's overdose.
I can even pinpoint the scene where the film roughly goes off course. Following a performance of 'If I needed You', Didier rants to his audience about God and religion and the banality of belief, especially when it stands in the way of stem-cell research. It is in this moment he loses Elise (having at this point re-christened herself Alabama). I know the director based his film on the play written by his lead and Miekke Dobbels but it's at this point where nuance and subtlety is suddenly exchanged for a hammer blow and what was once hinted at and discussed with metaphor and poetry becomes polemic. Knowing musicians and performers, Didier's anti-religious outburst felt out of character and explicit. It is recognizable that grief can be untamed, that angry and fear make up a large part of the pain but that's what art is for. Music, I would argue is the channel for suffering to be healed and Didier's opportunity to broadcast himself to an audience felt out of touch and forced. This soap box moment took me out of the film and the fact that his band members didn't try to stop him or at least calm him on stage proved also unrealistic. And that the diatribe was used to blatantly inspire Elise/Alabama's suicide attempt made it seem all the more ridiculous and immature.
Maybe one has to be true to the source material (both the original play and the tragic nature of bluegrass songs) but the maudlin sours the film's ending. Which is a little unfair for an audience already swept along by a troubled and bittersweet current of grief and love. Instead of providing mature (though at times immature), three-dimensional characters with a suitable conclusion, the movie devolves into soap opera theatrics. Humor is lost along with hope which the film carried so well.
This film is excellent (and flawed) and was nominated for an academy award for a reason but also didn't win, perhaps because of the movie's bitter, hopeless and cheap resolve.