Breaking the Waves

Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable.
Review: Lars Von Trier's "Breaking the Waves" is a unique film in both its style and its story. Von Trier has been accused of making films simply to showcase his eccentric directorial techniques. I strongly disagree. He certainly is unconventional but the audience can almost always feel that he strongly cares about his characters and the story he's trying to tell.

The film is shot as a documentary, but Von Trier makes that work very well. The film tells the story of Bess whose love has no limits and knows no boundries. Her decisions are always influenced by her own definition of her own faith. Emily Watson is extraordinary in the scenes where she talks to God. Her performance is truly one of the greatest I've seen in a while. Her eyes seem to light up whenever she's happy and dim down whenever she's sad. Stellan Skarsgard as Jan and Katrin Cartlidge as Dodo also give fine performances.

We are confronted by many philosophical questions throughout the film. Questions like: can our beliefs be so strong that they give us the power to triumph over anything and everything? I don't think that many of us know the answer to that but Bess sure does.

I think the film is a must see. Challenging films are such a rare experience nowadays.

Rating:
Summary: HEARTBREAKING
Review: Lars von Trier is not known for conventional films. If anything his films court controversy and push the envelope on what is acceptable and appropriate in films. Some of his Danish works, which are less well known, like a strange film called Idioterne, are positively shocking. Breaking the Waves is more mainstream but by no means conventional. The story tells of a naïve and mentally unstable young woman named Bess MacNeil (played startlingly by Emily Watson). She has been reared in a very conservative and religious community (women are not allowed to speak in the church, people are judged harshly by the church, and they can easily be shunned for their activities. Outsiders are not easily welcomed into this community). Bess marries an oil rig worker named Jan (an excellent Stellan Skarsgard. He is an outsider to the community and is not easily accepted. The beginning of the film tells the tale of their marriage, Bess's exploration of sexuality with her new husband, Bess's childlike innocence and mental instability... and how she copes (or does not cope) with Jan's frequent absences. Eventually Jan succumbs to an accident on the oil rig and has to return home. He is hospitalised and is paralysed, and it is thought that he will be paralysed for life. He cannot bear to see his wife especially knowing that he cannot perform his husbandly duties, so he convinces her to go out and experiment sexually with as many men as she can. He convinces her that this helps him when really he is trying to do it for her. Not to add that he is doped up on pain medication. Soon the town learns of her activities and she is shunned from the society. The end is heartbreaking and the ironic twist at the end is painful. Lars von Trier cannot be faulted for his creative vision, despite what you make think of this film or his other films. Most of them are love them or hate them ventures, and Breaking the Waves is no exception.

Rating:
Summary: A Shocking and Unforgettable Parable of Love and Sacrifice
Review: Child-like, devout, not quite right in the head, Bess gets married to Jan and is immensely happy. When he has to return to the oil rig where he works, she is devastated and prays to God for him to come home. And so he does, on a stretcher, after a serious accident at work has paralysed him. Now it is guilt that devastates Bess. Jan meanwhile begins to have some, ultimately well-intentioned, thoughts that she should free herself up from him, taking a lover perhaps, as he has little prospect of ever making love to her again. She won't hear of it. So now he urges her to do this not for herself but for him. And indeed, his own mental balance shaken by his physical condition, he places the thought in her head that by having sex with other men she can somehow help him to recovery. The deadly seriousness with which she takes this makes her an outcast in her small Highland community and leads to her ultimate destruction.

This film is set in the Scottish Highlands. Film lovers the world over, hearing that, may immediately think of the rather fey, whisky-soaked and carefree landscape of "I Know Where I'm Going", "Whisky Galore", "Local Hero", etc. If you do, now is the time to forget these cosy images. The Highlands here are a cold, difficult place where small inward-looking communities are dominated by the ministers of a cold and unforgiving Presbyterian faith and where, out in the harbour, in the "big boat" there lurks a lawless and dangerous world of psychopathic sexual sadism. It's a bleak picture indeed though I doubt that von Trier intends it to be a particularly realistic picture of a Highland community. The brutality and ugliness of Bess's environment is simply intended to represent the brutality and ugliness of the world quite generally and indeed von Trier may intend a certain irony in providing his story with a setting so often viewed as a place of escape from such things. (Despite this setting, von Trier's first English language film remains also unmistakably Danish and reviewers who profess to see here the strong influences both of Soren Kierkegaard and of Carl Dreyer are surely dead right.)

Two things destroy Bess. One is her love for her husband twisted into madness by her grief and mental weakness. The other is the unforgiving cruelty of her community who, at a moment in her life when she most needs their compassion and understanding, turn their back on her with freezing contempt in spite of their ostensible adherence to a religion of love and forgiveness. In horrible scenes late in the film, Bess's mother shuts her out of her house; she is chased, jeered at and stoned in the street by the local schoolchildren; the local minister (a great chilling performance by Jonathan Hackett) finds her unconscious at the church door and simply walks away. This lost and hopelessly corrupted world fails, in von Trier's eyes, adequately to see that the love and goodness embodied in Bess, for all her innocence and self-destructive foolishness, offers it its sole hope of redemption. Unmistakably this is a profoundly religious film, the work of a director who recently before converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism. But it is a religious movie that is certain to - and I have no doubt is purposefully designed to - shock and distress most religious viewers.

Indeed, in a whole bunch of ways, it will shock and distress just about anybody. The events of the second half of the movie are profoundly harrowing, disturbing and painful to watch. (Not least because Emily Watson turns in a performance so brilliant that it is very easy to forget we are only watching someone acting.) And it is hard viewing. Though not officially a Dogme95 film, it goes a good distance in respecting that school's self-denying ordinances in favour of location shooting, hand-held camera work, lack of incidental music (except here for the occasional "chapter" headings accompanied by 70s style rock music), etc. But none of this prevents it from being an extraordinarily compelling, altogether unique movie, one that nobody who cares about good cinema should even think about missing out on.

Rating:
Summary: Not your average God-obsessed-nympho movie...
Review: A fascinating but not entirely successful fantasia that owes just about all of its power to Emily Watson, making a stunning film debut. Watson is the mentally unstable Bess, who talks to God (God seems to talk back in her voice). Bess, a virgin, marries the burly but sensitive oil-rig worker Jan (Stellan Skarsgard). Once she tastes the joys of sex, Bess becomes delirious with love for Jan. But soon he must return to the oil rig, where he has an accident that paralyzes him. The erratic and heavily medicated Jan takes it into his head to ask Bess a favor: she must sleep with other men, and tell him about the encounters, to keep him alive. Both Jan and God seem to want Bess to go through with it.

It's a mistake to take this sort of fable literally, but director Lars von Trier makes everything seem realistic with artsy touches like handheld camerawork, jump cuts, and saturated photography (by Robby Muller). He also, for whatever reason, divides the movie into chapters, and the chapter headings are surreal landscapes with sometimes grating '70s rock songs played over them. You nod and understand all the points von Trier is making, but everything is so symbolic and predetermined that it seldom truly reaches you. The film is haunting but mechanistic and, in its last third, borderline ludicrous -- the meaningful masochism gets to be more than a little much. Yet Emily Watson, who's in almost every frame, very nearly puts the entire gigantic daft movie across all by herself. Her elastic face is a playhouse for violently conflicting emotions, and she's never less than touching. With anyone else in the role (like Helena Bonham-Carter, who was going to do it but dropped out), the movie would probably collapse.

Note: Nothing on the featured cover artwork or in Amazon.com's description indicates whether this DVD is letterboxed. I'd have a look at the back cover or rent it first to make sure, as this is a widescreen, 2.35 movie that needs to be seen letterboxed, though since there is an existing widescreen VHS edition, I see no reason why Artisan wouldn't have letterboxed the DVD.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Ultimately Beautiful!
Review: This is a painful, realistic and unflinching exploration of religion, faith, mental illness and true love. The wide-eyed Emily Watson is absolutely unforgettable in her screen debut, one of the key performances of the 90's. Lars Von Trier directs brilliantly in a documentary-style fashion, also with dizzying handheld camerawork that adds to the realism. Beautiful movie that raises profound questions. I enjoyed the 'chapters' idea and some contain great music. Watson's two-way conversations with God could of seemed laughable if not handled right, but she pulls it off beautifully. The ending is heartbreaking but touching. From a scale of 1-10 I give this film a 9!

Rating:
Summary: So disappointing...
Review: A long, slow study of life in a small northern Scottish town, ruled by the old men of the village's Calvinist kirk, as seen through the eyes of a village lass who appears to be able to hold conversations with God. And I mean sloooooow. At times fascinating and at times just frustrating, the story moves along at its own pace, broken into sections that are annoyingly introduced with still frame shots and titles.

The movie is at times beautiful and at times clearly an exercise in self-indulgence on the part of the director, Lars von Trier. What I found absolutely inexcuseable was the final, very final shot. Without giving the ending away, hearing the bells was beautiful. It was transcendant. It made up for the length and leisurely pace of the whole movie. But then von Trier spoiled all the goodwill he had just created with me by showing me the bells. Why? Oh, why? The ending ruined the movie. What, we're too dense to put two and two together and figure out for ourselves where the peels were coming from?

Rating:
Summary: One of von Trier's many masterpieces...
Review: Emily Watson's debut performance carries this superb reworking of Carl Dreyer's Ordet. Von Trier's direction is bold here. The film is completely, unabashedly melodramatic. It manages to hit heights that few films can, since it fearlessly risks alienating us. It's not the director's best film (Dancer in the Dark) but it's easily on of the top 20 films of the 90's.

One interesting thing that I read the other day regarded the use of the chapter headings in the movie. Von Trier called them rather offhandedly "God's point of view". Certainly, in light of that they become really relevant to the film. They are all gorgeous & shot on a normal film stock. If they're taken to be God's point of view, we can see all along that the events that take place are all part of God's plan. Furthermore, the scenes that aren't from God's POV are bleached out in color. this suggests only God can see the beauty in the world (and Bess' actions). Until I thought of them this way, they were mildly problematic for me. Of course until you see the whole film, there's no way to really come to this interpretation on your own, but it's food for thought.

If you haven't seen this film yet, stop reading and seek it out. It's best seen if you know little about it, as the film provides some of cinema's most transcendent moments, and those are best experienced without dilution.

Rating:
Summary: Unforgettable.
Review: Lars Von Trier's "Breaking the Waves" is a unique film in both its style and its story. Von Trier has been accused of making films simply to showcase his eccentric directorial techniques. I strongly disagree. He certainly is unconventional but the audience can almost always feel that he strongly cares about his characters and the story he's trying to tell.

The film is shot as a documentary, but Von Trier makes that work very well. The film tells the story of Bess whose love has no limits and knows no boundries. Her decisions are always influenced by her own definition of her own faith. Emily Watson is extraordinary in the scenes where she talks to God. Her performance is truly one of the greatest I've seen in a while. Her eyes seem to light up whenever she's happy and dim down whenever she's sad. Stellan Skarsgard as Jan and Katrin Cartlidge as Dodo also give fine performances.

We are confronted by many philosophical questions throughout the film. Questions like: can our beliefs be so strong that they give us the power to triumph over anything and everything? I don't think that many of us know the answer to that but Bess sure does.

I think the film is a must see. Challenging films are such a rare experience nowadays.

Rating:
Summary: von Tier's relentless tragedy about faith, loss, and love...
Review: Bess McNeil (Emily Watson) is a naive woman who was brought up in an oppressive environment with patriarchal Christian believes where Christian rules are worshipped above all else. Nonetheless, Bess gets the Church elders approval, after some hesitation, to marry an outsider. This outsider is Jan Nyman (Stellan Skarsgård), an oil rig worker on the North Sea. Bess and Jan are so much in love that Bess declares her love for Jan in the bathroom of their reception by saying "You can love me now!", which leads to Bess loosing her virginity. This is the beginning of her sexual transformation as her love expands for Jan and in appreciation she thanks God for the gift of love that he has given her. However, the honeymoon must come to an end as Jan must return to the oil rig to earn a living. On the oil rig Jan is seriously injured in an accident, which leads the audience into a relentlessly tragic story about faith, loss, and love.

Breaking the Waves is broken up in different chapters and in between the chapters von Tier uses scenic shots that are artistically enhanced. These shots cue the audience on the upcoming chapter as it deals with different issues around Bess and Jan's relationship. The film is shot in a Dogma 95 style that von Tier introduced to the public in 1995, which adds to the realism of the story. In addition, the cast performs brilliantly as they help paint the true vision of Lars von Tier in a brilliant cinematic experience that some will love and some will hate as the story forces the audience to choose a side.

Rating:
Summary: Take Me To The Big Ship
Review: There have been many great films made within the last ten years or so that could be described as "great cinema." Fargo, Pulp Fiction, Silence of the Lambs, Schindler's List, Goodfellas all come to my mind. As well as other overlooked (by the moviegoing public, anyway) or misunderstood gems like Heavenly Creatures, Hoop Dreams, Matewan, or Slacker. This film, however, is the best of them all. To put it another way, I think it's the best film of the 1990s.

In all my years as a cineaste and as a movie-goer, few films have affected me as profoundly as this film. Some of it is indeed 'disturbing' but only in the same sense that, say, the Gospels are disturbing.. telling us things we'd rather not hear and showing us images we'd rather not see... but things which make us wiser and more human. This film is about faith and love and hope, yes, but it is no feel-good movie of the week slop. It's a challenging film, which means that some may not enjoy it. As film critic Roger Ebert writes: "It has the kind of raw power, the kind of unshielded regard for the force of good and evil in the world, that we want to shy away from. It is easier sometimes to wrap ourselves in sentiment and pious platitudes."

It redefines our definition of sin and redemption and gives a vision of a righteous person that is probably more in line with what Jesus had in mind than any conservative church elders (like the ones in the film) are capable of conceptualizing. Rarely does a film come along that is as both spiritual and as morally complex as this one. It will alienate some viewers with it's frank sexuality, nudity, and it's devastating second act.

It's their loss.. and what a huge loss it is.

And then there's the performance of Emily Watson, which I think is simply one of the greatest single performances in the history of the cinema. And I would defend that with as much passion as I would my most cherished philosophical, religious, or political viewpoints. There are scenes where Watson's character carries on a two-way conversation between herself and G-d, speaking both voices, and we are reminded of what good acting is and what it means. After years and years of seeing mediocre acting, a great actor can devastate you with their realness. This was the case with Emily Watson and myself. The supporting cast also delivers very fine, if not as memorable, performances.

The ending, poetic and unexpected, reminded me of the literary genre of 'magical realism' which Angel Flores described as "an amalgamation of fantasy and realism." The ending is neither cheap nor unnecessary, it is the perfect ending to a perfect film.

It is the ending, too, which gives the story of Bess parallels with the life of Christ. Whereas Jesus understood his fate (atleast according to tradition), Bess cannot comprehend the forces that overwhelm her. Bess, just like another so-called blasphemer and criminal, has her life and sufferings ultimately shown through miracle to be vindicated by God. Christ's resurrection (in the case of Jesus) was a "yes" to Jesus and a "no" to the community that condemned him. Likewise with Bess. The story, at it's core, cannot be seen as anything but a devastating critique of the dogmatic and sectarian aspects of Christian religious practice.

There is simply no excuse for this film to be as overlooked as it is. Hopefully, time will vindicate it and it will eventually be seen as the great classic that it is. If this film is lost to time, it will be a tremendous loss to the artistic medium of film.

I truly love this movie. And when I say "love", it's not hyperbole.

Please see this film.