Ever Seen A Butcher Smile?

As always, the music is beautifully placed and judged, which is the marker for a film that is likely to be the same. (Michael Chion: "Sound is the principle means by which consistency and coherence are maintained and stimulated in cinema"). There's no music track at all during the 'action', or dialogue in "Eyes Wide Open"; simply the brief interludes, barely a minute long, feature some brief sketches of piano or string, repetitive short sequences of notes, playing the part purely of a Nothing, a breathe-in, a punctation mark. This technique places huge demands on the dialogue and the silences within the dialogue; as if to say: there is nothing in this film apart from what the people are doing and saying, and the music only occurs to remind the viewer of this point, and adds an exactly-judged Nothing to highlight it.

On the face of it, it's a just another dark love triangle. The most powerful scenes are really those between the butcher and his wife; heartbreakingly, she is only too aware of what he is doing at the shop, but carries this and confronts him with all the kindness and tact she can. The scene where the rabbi defends the butcher from the mob, but only at the cost of his ability to reason and convince, purely invoking his authority, is a desperate one. The film is a wonderful exercise in keeping-it-simple; there are no long sequences of speech, even from the Rabbis.