classicsoncall
Director Lars von Trier never fails to shock and challenge one's sensibilities with his pictures. "Dancer in the Dark" and "Dogville" are two recent examples I've viewed, but this is one that will probably make you the most squeamish. In it, actress Emily Watson portrays Bess McNeil, a woman who's slavish devotion to a near comatose husband exposes her to shame and ridicule when she attempts to honor his wish that she see other men and report back to him on her sexual escapades. Though at one point, husband Jan (Stellan Skarsgård) rethinks his idea and writes a conflicted note stating "Let me die. I'm evil in head". That would have been enough, one would think, to deter Bess from proceeding with her destructive behavior. At a certain point, one must come to grips with the idea that perhaps the simple minded Bess actually does suffer from some form of mental illness to invite the seamy and destructive relationships she encounters. Why else return to the same ship to encounter a pair of thugs who violated her once before?Another reviewer for the film here on IMDb writes, "This sounds like a grungy tale, but von Trier tells it with such humanism and focus on his themes that we never feel like he is rubbing our faces in drear." Well excuse me, but that's exactly how I felt about the picture, so you'll have to leave me out of the foregoing generalization. Personally, if one's own perverse definition of love and how it can lead to destructive behaviors is your thing, then have at it, but this film does nothing for me, demonstrating once again that von Trier's film making appeals to a segment of film goers that don't mind immersing themselves in sordid and pointless dramas. If there's one thing about the picture that's worth mentioning on a positive note, it would actually be Emily Watson's role in the story, as she arcs her character through a complex set of emotions which leaves the patient viewer drained and dispirited. If that was von Trier's objective, then I guess he succeeded. And by the way, the near comatose husband, who's doctors insisted he would never walk again, closes out the picture hobbling around on crutches, hearing imaginary bells that aren't really there. Best not try to explain it.
Per Johnsen
When this film was finished I just had to sit calmly and let out some of the mood I was stuck in. My tears were running, and there were many others sitting behind in the cinema. Even when the marquee was finished and the lights came on, the sobbing was still noticeable. Never have so many been sitting behind for so long. I went outside and had a cigarette together with a friend couple. We just stood there petrified and nobody said anything. After a while a guy came wrestling out the door with a big cardboard figure of Leslie Nielsen, an advert for Spy Hard, and he even carried it on to the smallest car around. It broke the ice and we just had to laugh. This says a lot about what Breaking The Waves did to us.
I haven't dared to see it again. If you haven't - do it.
valadas
Love above all. That seems to be the theme, the leit-motiv of this movie. However although this theme could deliver the necessary ingredients to make a good movie, it becomes too strange to be good. A young naive girl falls in love with a man a bit older than her but who corresponds deeply to her love. Their mutual love is physically and spiritually overwhelming. All this takes place in a remote place of northern Scotland where a puritanical and fundamentalist religious community dominates and morally rules. The husband works at sea in an oil rig and suffers a serious accident there which breaks his neck making him totally disabled. This fact unchains a series of actions and reactions also in psychological and affective terms, some of them very odd, uncommon and perverted, namely in the sexual field that reveal that they both have neurotic personalities which makes those events a bit difficult to be accepted in terms of reality or to have an aesthetic value in terms of cinema or literature. This movie is of some value only for its good direction and excellent performance of all actors and actresses.
Steve Pulaski
Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves tells the story of Bess McNeill (Emily Watson), a young Scottish woman burdened by psychological issues and the judgments of a frigid, Calvinist community that clings to the traditional teachings of the church. By traditional, I mean classic gender roles and little to no expressive freedoms outside the home can be enjoyed and embraced by females. Bess, like most women in the village, marries young, to an oil rig worker named Jan (Stellan Skarsgård), an atheist who provides Bess with the kind of warmth and acceptance she's not used to, not even from her own family. Bess's relationship with Jan is one of the most significant relationships she has in life, tied only with God, who she prays to each day and converses with Him using her own voice. More on that later.When Jan takes a job out of town, Bess becomes incredibly lonely, one day praying for Jan to come home. Following a serious, nearly-fatal accident at an oil site that leaves Jan paralyzed, Bess curses herself for being "selfish" and wishing for Jan to return home. Because of this, she submits herself to the mercy of Jan, who instructs her to go out in the world and seek the highest form of human pleasure, sexual intercourse, for he feels like a failure of a man for never being able to provide her with such sensations and feelings ever again. The film follows Bess's sexual awakening, as she's caught between the cold shoulders of her family and her village along with the desire to please Jan and adhere to the teachings and expectations of her almighty creator.Von Trier illustrates from the beginning that Bess carries the crippling weight of harsh judgment on her shoulders from numerous different individuals, and downplays the idea of mental illness in favor of showing the repercussions of such pressure. If you were living in a traditional village, already a minority being a female, limited in your rights as a human being, felt ostracized and unloved by your family, harshly criticized no matter what choice you made, and the only person you were able to unconditionally love who loved you back sat on the teetering edge of death and lackluster quality of life, I think you'd be hardpressed not to have a mental breakdown. Von Trier illustrates the Bess character as someone not easily written off as a whiny, insecure twit nor somebody crippled by a mental illness, but somebody tired and worn, and who will only grow to be more exhausted as time goes on.Her conversations with God are the most interesting because, as I stated before, she acts as God responding to her prayers and requests. Her comments as God reflect an assumed bitterness about the Almighty's general attitude towards her and her decisions that seems to more or less be made up of the general opinion of her in her village. This explicitly shows that she has predicated her idea about God's opinion of her thanks to the false, perverted teachings of her Calvinist church and the rejection of her family. It's an ugly way to see life, but who could blame her for not bearing even a shred of confidence after all that she has been through in life? Breaking the Waves follows Bess closely for all one-hundred and fifty-nine minutes, rarely including a scene without her and rarely losing sight of her as a character. Metaphorical interpretation of the character could potentially see her as Jesus Christ himself, somebody well-worn with the responsibility of providing solace (or "saving" in a grandiose sense) to the one she loves, and putting up with a great deal of mistreatment amongst her peers, especially as she turns to prostitution. A key parallel between Bess's story and the life of Christ is when Bess is walking her bicycle through her village, in torn leggings, looking disheveled and moments from collapse, as young children walk behind her, throwing rocks at her and hurling insults. This scene directly mimics widespread interpretation of the Romans taunting Christ as he carried his cross to his death, and in this particular scene, Bess is made so powerless and feeble that the children that tail her are seen as more powerful and worthy than her.The film is shot in the 1990's style known as "Dogma 95" which was characterized by immediacy, naturalism, and the lack of artistic credit. The film is shot with a hand-held camera, using natural, available light and nothing more, and neither von Trier nor any of the actors involve receive credit in the form of opening or closing titles within the film. This provides Breaking the Waves with an additional later of blunt realism, capturing the ugliness of life as is and not tweaking or modifying its appearance to fit some kind of cutesy disposition or inauthentic portrayal of mood. Dogma 95 is a style that effectively communicates ugliness and it does nothing but elevate this film to a grittier height.Whether you're viewing it as a surface exploration of a battered character driving herself off a cliff she's long rested on the edge of or a story that mirrors the life of our lord and savior, Breaking the Waves is a fantastic motion picture, heartbreaking and, not only brutal, but convincing in its depiction of depravity. Von Trier masterfully contrasts the beauty and intimacy sex can bring and the horrid, unexpected consequences it can bring when practiced in a shallow and unsafe manner, along with putting emotionally complex characters on screen for us to evaluate in several different ways. The 1990's was a decade that allowed for revolutionary cinematic movements far and wide, and amidst incredibly pivotal voices of Richard Linklater and Spike Lee, was Lars von Trier, who showed it like it was in a way nobody wanted to see, but needed to.
