Belgium and bluegrass are two words you won’t usually hear in the same sentence. That is, until The Broken Circle Breakdown, a new film about a banjo player who falls for a tattoo artist in an early-2000s Belgium you might mistake for Tennessee. In the film, the couple tours around Belgium with their band The Broken Circle Breakdown, playing country-gospel standards like the one the group (and the movie) is named for. Yet for all the American-flag bikinis, The Broken Circle Breakdown isn’t Dukes of Hazzard-on-the-North-Sea. Half way through the film, the couple’s daughter is diagnosed with cancer. The film also has political undertones: Didier, a fervent atheist, holds President Bush and religious fundamentalists responsible for his daughter’s condition by obstructing the stem cell research that could have helped her.
Based on a play by Johan Heldenbergh (also the movie’s lead actor), The Broken Circle Breakdown has been racking up awards, culminating in an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Felix Van Groeningen, the director, has been making intimate, homegrown films that straddle the line between comedy and drama ever since his 2004 debut Steve + Sky, about a relationship between a naïve prostitute and a small-time drug dealer. He got his first taste of international success in 2009, with his tragicomic book adaptation, The Misfortunates. From Los Angeles, the young director spoke to us by phone about the benefits of bawling your eyes out, meeting Alfonso Cuarón, and why it might be better if he didn’t win that Oscar.
The Broken Circle Breakdown is now playing in select theaters nationwide
Pieter Colpaert: Music is absolutely essential in this movie, and you have a great band that’s performing songs all throughout it. It seemed to offer moments of lightness in the more difficult-to-watch parts. Was that a conscious choice?
Felix Van Groeningen: Music is the basis of the film, and it was the basis of the play. The actors would tell the story, then play a song, and so on. So after very difficult moments, there would always be a song, offering you some time to breathe. I think the genius of that structure was that it kept you enthralled by the emotion. Those songs were really soothing too, which helped because it was such an overwhelming experience. That is something I tried to recreate with the film.
Bluegrass and country aren’t musical genres anyone would normally associate with Belgium. Were you into this music before you started making this movie?
I didn’t know it at all. But when I started working, I just dived into it. So I listened to bluegrass a lot and it’s incredible music––but I haven’t really listened to it since. I am not a very musical person, you know, but when I decide to focus on something, I live with it for two years. In the end, we had a list of 30 songs we were considering for the movie, and I think I listened to those non-stop for almost two years. I worked on the script for a year and a half, so I took care of every single detail. I was trying to find a certain kind of flow––the songs were picked in service of the story, not the other way around. Some songs that were in the play weren’t appropriate for the movie, and then there were other ones we couldn’t afford, but that’s something you set aside.
Being Belgian myself, I have never heard of any Belgian bluegrass bands, let alone the whole subculture around it which exists in your movie. Is there
Based on a play by Johan Heldenbergh (also the movie’s lead actor), The Broken Circle Breakdown has been racking up awards, culminating in an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Felix Van Groeningen, the director, has been making intimate, homegrown films that straddle the line between comedy and drama ever since his 2004 debut Steve + Sky, about a relationship between a naïve prostitute and a small-time drug dealer. He got his first taste of international success in 2009, with his tragicomic book adaptation, The Misfortunates. From Los Angeles, the young director spoke to us by phone about the benefits of bawling your eyes out, meeting Alfonso Cuarón, and why it might be better if he didn’t win that Oscar.
The Broken Circle Breakdown is now playing in select theaters nationwide
Pieter Colpaert: Music is absolutely essential in this movie, and you have a great band that’s performing songs all throughout it. It seemed to offer moments of lightness in the more difficult-to-watch parts. Was that a conscious choice?
Felix Van Groeningen: Music is the basis of the film, and it was the basis of the play. The actors would tell the story, then play a song, and so on. So after very difficult moments, there would always be a song, offering you some time to breathe. I think the genius of that structure was that it kept you enthralled by the emotion. Those songs were really soothing too, which helped because it was such an overwhelming experience. That is something I tried to recreate with the film.
Bluegrass and country aren’t musical genres anyone would normally associate with Belgium. Were you into this music before you started making this movie?
I didn’t know it at all. But when I started working, I just dived into it. So I listened to bluegrass a lot and it’s incredible music––but I haven’t really listened to it since. I am not a very musical person, you know, but when I decide to focus on something, I live with it for two years. In the end, we had a list of 30 songs we were considering for the movie, and I think I listened to those non-stop for almost two years. I worked on the script for a year and a half, so I took care of every single detail. I was trying to find a certain kind of flow––the songs were picked in service of the story, not the other way around. Some songs that were in the play weren’t appropriate for the movie, and then there were other ones we couldn’t afford, but that’s something you set aside.
Being Belgian myself, I have never heard of any Belgian bluegrass bands, let alone the whole subculture around it which exists in your movie. Is there