I'd like to start off with a movie that was so wildly talked about during awards season that I was chomping at the bit to see it. It was even so "good" it was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2014 Academy Awards. (The spoken language is Flemish.) So to me that says, "this movie is probably awesome, you must see it." I mean, after all, I've had great luck with foreign language films in the past. Anyone remember my post about A Royal Affair??
I watched this film for free (with my Prime Membership) on Amazon Instant Video last night, finally.
Let me just start out, right off the bat, by saying that this is one of those unfortunate instances when the trailer that Amazon Instant had for me to watch completely outdoes the film itself. The trailer left me standing on my feet with my hands knotted in my hair I was wanting to see this film so bad. But after I finally watched the film itself... it was a total bummer. I thought.
The summary on Amazon Instant led me to believe that this film was, and I quote "intensely romantic." I beg to differ.
I'm gonna spoil the whole thing for you, so if you want to watch this movie for yourself and not be tainted with my opinions, you'd best stop reading after a certain point. But you can skip this one as far as I'm concerned, so read ahead!
So in The Broken Circle Breakdown we are told the story of Didier and Elise. Didier is an atheist, and a banjo player/singer in a bluegrass band. Do they even have those in Belgium? I didn't think it was a thing. Anyway, he is obsessed with America. He loves American music and basically just thinks America is the end all be all.
Elise is an artist in a tattoo shop, and according to the IMDb summary, she is a religious realist. Honestly the only "religion" ques I picked up on where the anti-religious rants Didier went on towards the end of the film, but maybe I missed something.
This film jumps back and forth A LOT. And it left me pretty confused most of the time. I know films do that sometimes, cutting between the past and present, for dramatic effect, but the way it was done here left me scratching my head. It starts off when Didier and Elise's daughter, Maybelle - named after Mother Maybelle Carter from the famous Carter Family - is diagnosed with cancer. I should have known right then that this film was gonna leave me lacking. Anyway then it flashes back to Didier and Elise's first night together, ever. Like they drive up into his yard (he's renovating an old looks like a church type building but living in a little travel trailer) and wham bam bada bing. No explanation of how they met, why they met, how long they've known each other, not a clue on who these people are, other than the fact that we know that 7 years into the future they have a child with cancer. Didier talks to Elise about America, and about how stupid tattoos are ('nothing is worth writing it on your body,') and then he wakes up the next morning to the sounds of her taking his truck. She shows up, I'm assuming, a few days later wearing the Old Glory bikini shown in the poster above, with an American Eagle "tattooed" on his truck hood. Thus begins their "intensely romantic" (hogwash) relationship.
The bluegrass music, while I love it as a genre and I actually enjoyed the musical numbers contained in the film, seemed SO out of place. Maybe it's because everyone was speaking Flemish and then singing Bill Monroe's greatest hits in PERFECT English. It made me wonder, do they even know what they're singing?? To me, that's the point of bluegrass and gospel music (of which there are a few songs towards the end), it's knowing what you're singing about. I never could understand why, if it was Didier's band, why he was singing gospel songs if he was an atheist. Riddle me that one.
It is obvious that he loves Elise, who somehow magically has a songbird's voice (I think she screeches through her version of "The Wayfaring Stranger," completely killing the emotion of the song, even though it was supposed to be a highly emotional moment) and is instantly the female voice in the band. But when she shows up telling him she's pregnant, he acts like a complete turd and drives off. He shows up a little while later with a bunch of carpentry supplies and tells her that they can't have a baby living in the "caravan." So we are supposed to take that as an "Ok."
Maybelle is an adorable child. I cannot tell you how cute this girl is and frankly I think she's the best little actress in the whole film. She takes her cancer like a champ. There is one scene in particular where a bird flies into a window and dies. She cradles the dead bird in her hands, sobbing, and Didier tells her it's dirty, that he's going to throw it in the trash can. I was sitting in my recliner hollering at the TV. "Can't you see she needs you to BURY that bird?? Your child NEEDS that comfort!!! She's dying and she knows it! What are you gonna do with her when she dies? Throw her in the trash can!!??" And then he goes on a rampage saying that the birds are stupid and they need to learn not to fly into glass. When Elise puts some decals on the windows so that the birds will see and not fly into the glass, Didier tells her it's not fixing the problem, it's just covering it up. They're birds. They're never going to learn. They're birds. Get over yourself. Maybelle finally tells her Daddy that the dead bird became a star and instead of breaking her heart, which I was expecting him to do, he says "Ok, sweetie." Whoa. Deep, man. Real deep.
Maybelle is given some stem cell treatments which the doctors tell Elise and Didier are going to be nearly 100% effective and that they expect the little girl to be completely cured of her cancer. (SPOILERS on the end from here on out!!!) She dies. It's heartbreaking. She was the light of the entire movie. At her graveside, in the middle of the rain, the band sings "Go To Sleep You Little Baby," you know, the song the three sirens sang on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. I admit, I sang harmony along with it... just because I like that song.
Naturally Didier and Elise's not legal marriage (they said "vows" to each other one night after a gig with one of the band members impersonating Elvis as the officiant, whatevs) begins to suffer when Elise falls into the expected depression that comes along with the death of a child. And then the blame and name calling starts getting thrown around. Didier says that maybe their house wasn't clean enough, that maybe she ate something she shouldn't have, that Elise drank and smoked for the first 3 months of her pregnancy because she didn't know she was pregnant... Elise slams back saying that there's no cancer in her family and that his Dad and two of his uncles died with it.
She leaves him. She covers up the tattoo of his name on her stomach -something she tends to do with her boyfriends apparently, as we find out in a flashback to how they met, FINALLY- and says she's changed her name to Alabama. Ok. Didier complains that if she isn't Elise anymore, then who is he? Who is he supposed to be with her? (That part I kind of thought was romantic... you know. "Who am I without you? There's no me without you!") She thinks for a moment and says his new name should be Monroe.
They're still singing together as a group and after a few more musical numbers we start seeing flashes of Didier in his white performance suit (they all dress in white to sing) driving his truck with blue lights flashing ahead of him. These go on for ever, cut in and out of scenes.
Didier goes coo-coo-bananas at one point during a gig and starts shouting about there being no God. As a Christian, I did not agree. I believe in God. I know he's real. Elise, by the end of his little speech in which he calls himself an ape and says that he's afraid, looks like someone has let all the air out of her. She believes Maybelle has gone on to a better place, and Didier believes that she has just ceased to exist. How depressing. Didier calls his beloved dream of America stupid and evil, I think, because at the time President Bush has just vetoed the embryonic stem cell bill. Didier says its America's fault his daughter died. Because America is putting the breaks on stem cell research, Belgium, who has no issues with it whatsoever, is being pulled back. He's upset, he's irrational. I moved on.
FINALLY we discover that Elise, after giving herself a mysterious tattoo, overdosed on some sort of pills. Didier finds her in the tattoo shop, where she's been living since their split, and calls an ambulance. We eventually discover that she's brain dead. So as a final farewell, the day they turn all the life support machines off, Didier and the band play her a final bluegrass jig... not a solemn goodbye song, a freaking jig, around her deathbed. But honestly, if you're gonna die, there's probably no better way to do it than with a lively bluegrass song.
The final shot of the film before it goes dark and the credits roll is Elise's final tattoo.... Alabama & Monroe. *tear*
No more spoilers!
So.... the story to this film was a good one. I'll give it that. The idea of the plot was good. The downfall of a marriage between two wildly different people after the death of their child, mixed in with bluegrass music... yeah. But somewhere I think the execution went wrong.
And can I just say this? PHOTOGRAPHICALLY.... like the technical side of photography, not the composition side, THIS FILM SUCKED!!! There was like NO CONTRAST whatsoever in any shot in the entire film. It made everything look bleak and grey and nothing had any definition to it, at all. I suppose that's the look they were going for, but me, personally, no way. Emotions tend to run higher when everything is in bright, bold detail I think. Ok, so the bleak and grey worked for the funeral scenes but come on... the beautiful shots of the horses running through the fields could have been so much more beautiful if they'd cranked the contrast up just a bit!!
IMDb gives this film a 7.8 out of 10 and I have to give it a 6... maybe a 5. I REALLY REALLY wanted to like this movie. There are 48 user reviews on IMDb and only about 3 of them have anything negative to say. I just wasn't feeling this movie, at all.
I did like the name though. The Broken Circle Breakdown... pretty awesome if you ask me.
Again, this movie wasn't my cup of tea, it didn't live up to how amazing I thought it was supposed to be from the trailer and the "intensely romantic" comment in the Amazon Instant summary. If you are interested, give it a look, see what you think.
Just as a warning, as I do for all of my reviews, there is some bad language towards the end. (The "F" word must be universally pronounced the same way) And, of course, there are some adult situations..... I don't know how she got her feet to press up against the truck window like that, but I applauded her flexibility. And also, if you're a softie like me, you may want to have some Kleenex handy for Maybelle.
I watched this next film way before I started doing the What I'm Watching posts. But since I was talking about Foreign Films today, I thought I'd throw this one in. Unfortunately, I didn't like this one either. And I thought for sure I would.
To The Wonder stars Ben Affleck (it was great to see him on screen again, it feels like it's been forever since he's worked, except for Argo, which I still haven't seen) and Rachael McAdams and was directed by Terrence Malick, the man that directed on of my favorite movies The New World. I assumed that because The New World struck such a chord in my soul, that this film we be the same way. Nope. Uh-uh. No way! Not even Ben Affleck could make me like this movie, and I generally love him. I am not even sure where to start with this movie. It's another one of those where I'm not sure there is an actual story line.
Ben's character, Neil meets this woman, Marina, in Paris. But we never know their names until the very end. Weird? Yes. Anyway he falls in love with her, and her daughter and she comes home with him to Oklahoma. Talk about a culture shock.
Well as you'd expect, free spirited Marina doesn't exactly fit in in Oklahoma. Never mind the fact that they're living in a huge house in a fancy subdivision, which would be enough for me. Right?
All Marina does is spin. The entire time she's on screen, she running and spinning. I got tired just watching her.
Eventually she goes back to Paris, as you'd expect. And while she's gone,
And they're awesome together. Jane doesn't spin. Thank God. Rachael McAdams is simply stunning, visually, in this movie. She's really gorgeous, wearing her pearls with her mud boots. Love it.
But then Neil hears that Marina is having some problems in Paris and he rushes back to rescue her, marrying her. WHA?! Seems kinda sudden, but whatever. And of course, back to boring ol' Oklahoma they go, without her daughter, who has decided to stay in Paris with her Father.
In the middle of all of this Marina meet Father Quintana, played by Javier Bardem, who is having a "crisis of faith." I'm not sure why his character is even in this movie. He mainly wanders, muttering to God.
Of course, all that glitters is not gold, and Neil and Marina are back in their problems again. She treats him almost like her warden, like he's holding her prisoner, but, if she would just think back, she's the one that called him and said "help I need you, take me back to Oklahoma. Dump the woman you love, the woman you can have a real life with and come back for me, I'll spin in the open fields for you. I'm French and fabulous." Yeah. It got on my nerves.
Did I mention that there IS NO DIALOGUE in this movie?? NONE! Hardly anything at all. It's mostly Marina muttering something in French, or Jane or Father Quintana praying, all in VOICEOVER. Every bit. Jane maybe says 5 words to Neil. I don't recall hearing Ben's voice much at all.
It just WORKED in The New World. IDK what the difference was. But in that film the voice overs and the running and spinning in fields just worked, in this movie it DID NOT.
I read in the Trivia section on IMBd (click the linky above to go to the IMBd page) that Terrence Malick did not have an actual script for this film. He just gave the actors notes every morning and told them to run with it. Basically this film is improvised from beginning to end, and given that, the performances are really good. Terrence Malick said he wanted the emotions conveyed with their actions and their bodies, not with words. Idealistically (is that the right word?) that's all well and good and sometimes it works, i.e. The New World. But it did nothing for the structure of the film, or for the story, really. Again it could be such a good story. Fall in love in Paris, come home, things don't work out, she leaves, guy finds love with an old flame, but then the French girl suddenly reappears, who does he love more??? It could be good, right? I see potential in that.
And, apparently, this is semi-auto-biographical. Plus the trivia section states that Christian Bale had been cast as Neil but had to drop out and was replaced by Ben Affleck.... nothing against Ben, I think he's lovely, but maybe I would have liked it more with Christian.... we will never know.
Apparently I'm not the only person that thought this film was a bust. IMBd gives this movie 6.0 out of 10 stars. I think that's being generous. I give it a 4, maybe even a 3. Rachael McAdams was my favorite part, and I enjoyed looking at the house that Neil and Marina lived in during her first stay in Oklahoma, I'm a bit of a house nut, in case you couldn't tell.
Just.... pass on this movie. Really. I say it every time that you can watch it if you want to, see for yourself, gather your own opinions, but... honestly... this movie is not worth the effort it takes to pull it up on either Netflix or Amazon Instant. Seriously. It's bad, It's... it's baaad. If you want to watch a good Terrence Malick movie, one with a story, and a beautiful setting and beautiful people, plug in The New World.
So that's it for the Bad Foreign Film Edition of What I'm Watching Wednesday!!! I think that this could possibly become a regular Wednesday thing. I really enjoy my time with my TV, in case you couldn't tell, and watching things I've never watched before and then hopping onto Blogger and writing a review about it makes me feel all special, and important!
I wish I had something to rant and rave about and tell you that I absolutely love it and cannot imagine how I lived my life before watching it, but, alas, it was not to be in this weeks edition.
Maybe next week ;)
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