4) The Broken Circle Breakdown
Chances are when you hear “Belgium,” “bluegrass music” is not the first thing to enter your mind, and yet Flemish filmmaker Felix Van Groeningen unites the two beautifully in The Broken Circle Breakdown, the terrific and devastating Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film this year. The title is a reference to the old Christian hymn “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” a peppy little ditty easily translated into the bluegrass style. It’s one of those songs that creates a disconnect between relatively happy sounding music and pretty macabre lyrics—it’s essentially about the desire to reunite with loved ones after death.
The film is a gorgeous interpretation of this sentiment, centering on a family, whose circle is broken by some pretty tragic life events. It captures the devastation and shock of this beautifully, and it’s heartbreaking, particularly because of the non-linear editing that splices the past and present together to drive home the sense of loss. The opening performance of the aforementioned bluegrass-infused hymn sets a tone that’s quickly undermined by scenes in a children’s hospital, which hit me particularly hard based on personal connections to such an environment, and likely will for many others as well. And yet beneath the sadness is this gorgeous soundtrack that offers an element of coping to the worst curveballs life and throw at you. If there’s one title on this list that I would strongly recommend to anyone, it’s The Broken Circle Breakdown.
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