"Ge kunt verdriet niet delen. Niet echt. We waren er niet voor mekaar. Hoe goed dat wij ons best ook deden."
"You can not share grief. Not really. We were not there for each other. How good that we did our best."
– from the book "The Broken Circle Breakdown Featuring the Cover-Ups of Alabama" by Johan Heldenbergh
Some of the finest Bluegrass music these days is of Dutch and Belgian origin and out of that imported artform was born the inspiration for the play The Broken Circle Breakdown Featuring the Cover-Ups of Alabama. Written by the wonderful human being/writer/director/actor Johan Heldenbergh along with Mieke Dobbels in 2009, it was performed to sold out crowds throughout Belgian Flanders and the Netherlands.
So deeply moved by the production, director Felix van Groeningen and writer Carl Joos adapted it for film with the shortened title The Broken Circle Breakdown. Felix cast Johan as Didier in the lead male role, as he was in the play, and Veerle Baetens as Elise, the female lead. They perform all of the music in the film; Johan learned to play banjo, mandolin and guitar for the role.
The film tells the story of a passionate love affair between two souls who connected so effortlessly in the beginning, with their love of music as the tie that binds, and how tragic circumstances tested that bond. The question is whether love can conquer intense pain and grief. All of these emotions are told against the moving backdrop of country bluegrass music (soundtrack HERE). Johan Heldenberg has said that when he was writing the play it was just after 911 and he feared that religious ferver would take over and decided that his characters' struggle over religious paradigms be set against the hymnal strains of this folk music.
The title refers to the traditional Christian hymn Will The Circle Be Unbroken – that pursues the idea of being reunited after death — later rewritten in the style of country/folk by Alvin Pleasant Delany Carter (founding member of The Carter Family, of country music fame). While researching the roots of the song, I discovered that Alvin's wife Sara had a cousin named Maybelle. In the film Dider and Elise have a daughter named Maybelle. Sweet name.
The film had its international premiere at the Berlin Film Festival where it won the Panorama Audience Award and the European Cinemas Label prize and has now been nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category. I wait on bated breath to see it.
Video from the film here: If I Needed You
So Sylvie 
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