Themes: Self-Destructive Romance, Message From God, Innocence Lost
Main Cast: Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, Katrin Cartlidge, Jean-Marc Barr, Adrian Rawlins
Release Year: 1996
Country: DK/FR/NL/NO
Run Time: 159 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
With Breaking The Waves, director Lars von Trier fashions an often disturbing tale of the singular power of love. Bess (the Oscar-nominated Emily Watson) is a naïve, borderline simple young woman who lives in a Scottish coastal town ruled by the religious doctrine of its council of elders. Recovering from a mental breakdown caused by the death of her brother, Bess marries a rough yet compassionate and attentive oil rig worker named Jan (Stellan Skarsgård). For a brief time, the couple enjoys peaceful wedded bliss, with the worldly Jan introducing Bess to the mysteries of sex. Jan must soon return to his job on the rig, however, where he is paralyzed from the neck down in a freak accident. Bess' emotional trauma over Jan's injury turns into obsession as she prays to God for his recovery and offers to do anything to have her husband back whole. Jan, constantly medicated and profoundly depressed, asks Bess to have sex with other men and tell him about it, thinking this will allow her to return to a normal life. Bess, on the other hand, sees it as an expression of her devotion to Jan that even God won't be able to ignore. Bess' resultant downward spiral leads to a finale of both tragedy and spirituality. Breaking the Waves is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive European movies of the 1990s, marking von Trier's movement toward his influential Dogma 95 school of filmmaking, which emphasizes realistic situations of contemporary life, filmed without background music and with a hand-held, restlessly moving camera. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
Review
There was never any doubt that Lars von Trier could create an atmosphere in his films. The Element of Crime, Zentropa, and The Kingdom all proved that few filmmakers could fashion a visually distinctive world as well as von Trier; but with Breaking the Waves, he vaulted to the forefront of the serious filmmakers of the 1990s. It's a highly original, highly challenging story about love and faith featuring two remarkably difficult yet successful performances from the stars, Emily Watson (nominated for an Oscar in her screen debut ) and Stellan Skarsgård. Von Trier brings his unique visual style, here dominated by vertiginous hand-held camera movements that reportedly made some viewers physically ill, and makes it part of a complementary moral and spiritual complexity. The stylized documentary feel of von Trier's Dogma 95 film movement (though much praise for the grainy monochrome must go to noted German cinematographer Robby Müller) serves both what we are seeing and how closely we are drawn to the plight of the characters. So much is tackled here, with such a commingling of romantic vision and postmodern technique, that it seems almost impossible to relate this visionary yet perversely old-fashioned movie to other movies of its time. It has the sweep and eloquence of a grand opera, and the emotional payoff to go with it. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
Sandra Voe - Bess' Mother; Mikal Gaup - Pits; Udo Kier - Sadistic Sailor; Phil McCall - Grandfather; Anthony O'Donnell - Boy; Gavin Mitchell - Policeman; David Gallacher - Glasgow Doctor; Ray Jeffries - Man on Bus; Roef Ragas - Pim; Finlay Welsh - Coroner; Charles Kearney - Praying Man; Robert Robertson - Chairman; Sarah Gudgeon - Sybilla; Brian Smith - Police Officer; Iain Agnew - Praying Man; David Bateson - Young Sailor; Peter Bensted - Ugly Man; Callum Cuthbertson - Radio Operator; Bob Docherty - Man on Boat; Simon Towler Jorfald - Boy in Film; Owen Kavanagh - Man at Lighthouse; Steven Leach - Praying Man; Ronnie McKellaig - Precentor; Desmond Reilly - Elder; Dorte Rømer - Nurse; John Wark - Boy; Jonathan Hackett - Priest
Credit
Joyce Nettles - Casting, Axel Helgeland - Co-producer, Marianne Slot - Co-producer, Rob Langestraat - Co-producer, Peter van Vogelpoel - Co-producer, Manon Rasmussen - Costume Designer, Morten Arnfred - First Assistant Director, Lars von Trier - Director, Anders Refn - Editor, Lars Jönsson - Executive Producer, Joachim Holbek - Composer (Music Score), Karl Juliusson - Production Designer, Robby Müller - Cinematographer, Peter Aalbæk Jensen - Producer, Vibeke Windeløv - Producer, Per Streit - Sound/Sound Designer, Lars von Trier - Screenwriter, Ray Williams - Executive Music Producer
Breaking the Waves is a 1996film directed by Lars von Trier and starring Emily Watson. Set in the Scottish Highlands in the early 1970s, it tells the story of an unusual young woman, Bess McNeill, and of the love she has for Jan, her husband. The film is an international co-production led by Lars von Trier's Danish company Zentropa. It is the first film in Trier's 'Golden Heart Trilogy' which also includes The Idiots from 1998 and Dancer in the Dark from 2000.
Breaking the Waves tells the story of Bess McNeill, who marries Norwegian oil rig worker Jan, despite the apprehensions of her community and Calvinist church. Bess is somewhat simple and childlike, and has difficulty living without Jan when he is away on the oil platform. She prays for his return, and when he returns paralyzed after an industrial accident, she believes it is her fault. No longer able to perform sexually, and mentally affected by the accident, Jan urges her to find and have sex with other men and then tell him the details. With each act of promiscuity she performs Jan's health improves. Bess slowly begins to believe that what she is doing is the will of God. She goes aboard a ship at anchor as a prostitute, but when the men try to have brutal sex with her she fights her way out. Learning that Jan has taken a turn for the worse Bess returns to the ship, is brutally gang raped and dies in hospital. Jan at this point miraculously makes a full recovery. The community treats her like a whore during her burial. Later, upon returning to work on the rig Jan and his coworkers hear the peal of church bells coming from the sky.
The film is influenced by the realistDogme 95 movement, of which von Trier was a founding member, and its grainy images and hand-held photography give it the superficial look of a Dogme film. However, the Dogme rules demand the use of real locations, whereas many of the locations in Breaking the Waves were constructed in a studio.[citation needed] In addition, the film is set in the past and contains dubbed music, as well as a brief scene featuring CGI, none of which is permitted by the Dogme rules. Von Trier's first true Dogme film was The Idiots.
The extreme use of cinéma vérité has been the cause of a number of viewers of this movie in the theater to become nauseated or suffer migraines.
Production
Helena Bonham Carter was von Trier's first choice to play the role of Bess, but she dropped out just before shooting was to start, reportedly due to the large amount of nudity and sexuality required by the role.[2]Melanie Griffith was also considered.
The exterior scenes were shot in Scotland: the graveyard was built for the film on Isle of Skye; the church is in Lochailort, the harbour in Mallaig, and the beach in Morar.[3] The interiors were shot at Det Danske Filmstudie, Lyngby, Denmark.
The movie was also named one of the ten best films of the decade by both Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese during a show where the famous film personalities listed their top movies of the 1990s.
Box office
Released on November 13, 1996, the film has grossed just over $4 million in the US.[5]
