The Saddest Music in the World

THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN (A) - This folk-song ballet elegantly dances the fine line between sweet and bittersweet. It's one of the saddest movies I've ever seen, but it's so fully realized and so masterfully assembled -- infused with profoundly moving roots music -- that its devastating effects are offset by a life-affirming message.

Didier (Johan Heldenbergh) and Elise (Veerle Baetens) meet in her tattoo shop in Ghent, Belgium, around the turn of the millennium. They have hot sex, he further seduces her with his music, and soon they unexpectedly conceive a child, a little girl they call Maybelle, after the matriarch of the Carter music clan, because the couple are infatuated with America -- or, rather, the myth of rural America. Didier plays banjo and fronts a rollicking bluegrass band, singing folk/country classics in English, to growing acclaim, with Elise eventually joining in on vocals. Little Maybelle is suffering with cancer, and the first half of the movie perpetually tugs at your heartstrings as we watch her withstand her treatments. The girl also violently mourns a bird that has crashed into the family's glass "terranda" (a crude pastiche of terrace and veranda). That episode is milked for both comedy and somber symbolism, as Didier, a rigid atheist, is incapable of finding meaning in the bird's life or death and is downright impatient with evolution's progress in teaching those flying creatures about framed glass. (He does, however, later manage to convey the concept of eternal life to his daughter through celestial science.)

It's Didier's intransigence in the face of anything spiritual or mystical that wears on Elise, who wants to believe in the magic of the unknown, who wants the next bird on the windowsill to be carrying a message from the beyond. The film notably spans the recent Bush presidency, laying bare that myth of American infallibility, from the 9/11 attacks to W's veto of stem-cell research, the type of hard science that could save Maybelle's life.

I can't remember a time when I cried so often during a film; not just at a tender ending but multiple times throughout. The first time was when Maybelle comes back home from a long hospital stay and she's greeted by Didier's bandmates, who surprise her inside the house and clown through a campy a cappella version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Another was during a heart-wrenching duet between Didier and Elise -- on the verge of breaking up -- of Townes van Zandt's yearning "If I Needed You." That's not to mention a soul-crushing rendition of the traditional spiritual "Wayfaring Stranger," with its invocation of a family reunited in heaven, free of sickness and toil.



Director Felix van Groeningen lets many of the songs play out in full, giving them a deep resonance.
Other gems include the Loretta Lynn hit "Country in My Genes," Lyle Lovett's "Cowboy Man" and the quasi-title track, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." Heldenbergh and Baetens perform their own music (see them out of character with the BCB Band above), and I was reminded more than once of an old favorite of mine, "Honeysuckle Rose," with Willie Nelson (& Family) and Dyan Cannon as a fussin' and feudin' stage couple; I wouldn't be surprised if some homage was intended.

Van Groeningen employs a complicated flashback style that is ingenious and never confusing. He creates layers of emotion and slyly drops in key information at critical times. It is masterful storytelling, always moving and never maudlin.

Heldenbergh and Baetens draw the viewer in gradually. His face brings to mind a shaggy Stephen Rea; she has a strong-boned beauty that is a mix of innocent Reese Witherspoon and intense Maria Bello. Elise is a fascinating character -- an uber-tattooed blond sex goddess partial to stars-and-stripes bikinis yet also a submissive spouse and a worried mom. The film explores that madonna-whore conundrum, as Elise struggles with her identity (she has, over the years, covered up several men's names from her body art), choosing eventually to return to the tattoo shop and change her name to Alabama. (Their pronunciation of her very American nickname is one of the movie's joys.) She dubs him Monroe (as in Bill), and their transformation into 21st century hillbilly icons is complete.

But where does it leave them? When Didier/Monroe reaches out his hand to Elise/Alabama during "If I Needed You" she refuses to fill it with her own. After the song, he goes on a long, vicious rant to the audience about Bush's idiotic flag-waving fundamentalism and its detrimental effect on science. It's a very public breakdown and it's more than his wife can handle; it leads to her own very real breakdown.

She tells him at one point that happiness is essentially a temporary illusion; the gods just won't permit a blissful family life to continue. It all breaks down eventually, and we return to the reality of life: bitter, sweet, bleak and draining. What comes after this grueling existence on Earth? Is there a heaven among the stars, one where we are reunited with loved ones? Do we return as a bird perched on a windowsill?

Fade to black.

BONUS TRACK
Emmylou Harris' version of "Wayfaring Stranger":