The Broken Circle Breakdown (Soundtrack)

Tags

Bjorn Eriksson, Bluegrass, Broken Circle Breakdown Soundtrack, Country Music, Johan Heldenbergh, Music review, Veerle Baetens

Stands alone as a CD or hooks the memory of those who loved the film

I’m not a genre admirer of bluegrass music, but this CD might make me think I could become one!

Hooked into it on the back of the Belgian film which this is the soundtrack from The Broken Circle Breakdown  I headed over to buy this pretty instantly, worn out by having to go to YouTube, again and again, in order to play trailers to hear tracks again.

So now the music is merrily (and heartbreakingly) playing, and dissociated from those stunning performances in the film where the tracks are in a different, progressive order and each track is telling the story of what is happening for Elise and Didier, I can settle to form a musical relationship with the CD.

This title is one of the purely instrumental tracks, Sand Mountain. Be patient, as the repeated, languid opening phrase, which then hangs silently for a beat or two (up to 44 secs in) then springs into hootenanny toe tappy jig, leaving the listener ebullient with all the steely twangs!

I have focused on the You Tube excerpts of the tearbreakers on my film review, but here is a bouncier vocal and instrumental (Country In My Genes)

Within the film itself my focus was on vocal performance from Veerle Baetens and Johan Heldenbergh. Baetens has a sweet, fragile voice working particularly well on the stick a knife into the heart tracks, though there is a lovely openhearted freshness in her rendition of bouncier numbers like Country In My Genes, whilst Heldenbergh has more textures in his voice, rich, full, even a little rough and burly on the Bruce Springsteen number Further On Up the Road,and lighter, more tender, without the grit in his duets and accompanying numbers with Baetens, as befits the way the music is used to explore their relationship as individuals who sing love songs with each other.

Divorced from the film, it is the quality and texture of the marvellous musicians that I’m now drawn to engage with: the weavings, the riding a horse trot and bounciness of the rhythms of the faster numbers, trotting, cantering galloping Yeeeee —-Haaar! so that sitting to listen is hard, the listener forced to toe tap, arm shake and finally give in and jig and skip. Finally (because of the different order of tracks in film and CD) you are allowed to rest, catch your breath and and hear how tender and soulful Bjorn Eriksson’s guitar, and the viols or mandolines of Geeart Waegeman and Nils de Caster can get.

The purely instrumental tracks are a wonder and delight of flying, flirty weavings, call and response, back-chat and breathless virtuosity

Within the film itself the movement of the music is one of steady darkening, the fizz and ebullient, show-off daredevil champagne tracks occurring earlier, and the steadily painful tracks of loss and despair and loneliness inevitably charting the sad journey of the film.

The CD mixes this up , and this is indeed a much better arrangement for a stand alone.

Who knows, I may find myself wanting to don that cowboy hat and become a country gal after all!

The Broken Circle Breakdown Soundtrack Amazon UK
The Broken Circle Breakdown Soundtrack Amazon USA

The Broken Circle Breakdown

Tags

Belgium, Bluegrass, Country Music, Felix van Groeningen, Film review, Johan Heldenberg, Nell Cattrysse, The Broken Circle Breakdown, Veerle Baetens

Lacerating and heart-breaking, beautifully told and with fine music

On the face of it, this is a simple and alas reasonably common tale : – man and woman meet, fall in love, have a time of bliss, and a child, who intensifies and changes their bliss, and then some tragedy strikes the child, and everything is changed utterly, and unravels into pain all the way.

This isn’t too much of a spoiler, as the opening of the film shows a small child in hospital, being talked through receiving something intravenously, and we see from the parents’ expressions this is not going to be good, and immediately the viewer knows where we are heading.

Any individual story is only going to work if we engage with the protagonists, though surely a suffering child almost automatically is going to grab most of us by the throat, sinew, gut and heart, squeeze and not let go. I must admit from the very beginning I was short of breath, and saying ‘oh no, no, no’

However, there has to be some leaven to get the viewer through this and this Belgian film, directed by Felix van Groeningen, manages its leaven spectacularly, both in filmic, narrative terms and the excellence of the 3 leads.

Elise (Veerle Baetens) is a quirky young woman who owns a tattoo parlour. She meets Didier (Johan Heldenberg, who also co-wrote the script) a blue-grass musician in love with America and its country music. The wonderful, intricate music runs through the film, as the band achieves greater success and scenes take in concerts from little smoky dives to larger stadiums.

The structure of the film (and it works stunningly) is non-linear, as over 7 years of relationship cuts between different moments of past and present. The audience is pretty well in the know of ‘what happens next’ all the way through, so what we focus on is the how and the internal psychology of the individuals. Intercut with this is the friction between faith (Elise) and atheism (Didier) and the wider way in which politics, medical research and individual lives collide.

Baetens and Heldenberg offer beautifully raw, real performances, and are un-airbrushed and unsentimental.

Johan Heldenberg, Veerle Baetens

However – I mentioned 3 leads – little Nell Cattrysse as Maybelle, Elise and Didier’s daughter, will not so much break your heart as rip it in pieces.

No doubt this review is screaming at the more sensitive – avoid, avoid, but, there is real joy and sweetness within it, and the savour and fizz of life, the upsides as well as the downs, are engaged with. The non-linear narrative inserts slivers of the very very good and the very very painful cheek by jowl with each other. And this is how life is.

A strong heart and a day of equanimity might be needed for this beautiful rendition of If I Needed You by Baetens and Heldenberg

Belgium’s entry for Best Foreign Language film for the 2014 Oscar nominations

I received this DVD as a review copy as part of the Amazon Vine programme, UK

The Broken Circle Breakdown Amazon UK
The Broken Circle Breakdown Amazon USA