Breaking the Waves (1996)

A piece I wrote for Filmosophy.

SHE LOVED TOO MUCH

by Jessie V.

It took some time for me to muster up the courage to watch this film, based on what I’d heard about it.  Lars von Trier has never been known as a conventional writer or director, and Breaking the Waves is no exception. The movie is the first in von Trier’s “Golden Hearts Trilogy,” followed by The Idiots (1998) and Dancer in the Dark (2000), and like its successors, it intensely pushes the envelope of cinematic narrative. These movies share a common complexity in their story lines, where, as in life, the stories don’t always neatly wrap up – though despite the tragedies their respective heroines endure, each somehow manages to maintain their “golden heart”.

Breaking the Waves is a moving tale of soul mating, love, acceptance, and the extremes to which individuals will go to attain it.  Emily Watson, who was nominated for an Oscar for this role, plays Bess McNeil, a fragile young woman who lives in a Scottish coastal town ruled by the religious doctrine of the Calvinist Order, where women aren’t allowed to speak in church.   Recovering from a mental breakdown caused by the death of her brother, Bess marries a rough yet compassionate and attentive Norwegian oil rig worker named Jan (played by Stellan Skarsgård). For a brief time, the couple enjoys peaceful wedded bliss.

Soon after their marriage, Jan returns to his job on the rig, where he becomes a quadriplegic after a freak accident. Bess’ emotional devastation over Jan’s injury turns into obsession as she prays to God for Jan’s recovery and offers to do anything to have her husband back, healed and whole. Jan, constantly medicated and profoundly depressed due to his condition, asks Bess to sleep with other men and then recant the details to him, believing this will allow her to return to a normal life and move beyond her grief. Bess, on the other hand, sees her acts as an expression of her devotion to Jan that God will reward her for and heal her husband. The viewer painfully witnesses Bess attempting to play the seductress, eventually putting herself in the dangerous position of selling herself to potentially violent sailors illegally docked off the coast.

Like many stories, Breaking the Waves seems to question the right of an institution to form our identity and how we feel about ourselves. In a sense, Bess replaces the strict religious institution that she was raised in with the institution of marriage. Religion seems to quell a rebellious part of her — the need to feel something real rather than something that is dictated. She discovers this in Jan, who, intrigued by her intensity and her innocence, offers Bess unconditional love in a newly discovered sexual form.

When I first saw Breaking the Waves, I had just finished a course where I’d read Kierkegaard and was struck by how closely it seemed to follow the “Fear and Trembling” motif, particularly the ending. Later, I learned that von Trier and Kierkegaard hail from the same town in Denmark, which — though perhaps unreasonably — further reinforced my suspicion that the movie is intended to question the morality of religion, where religion itself stands accused but not God. Kierkegaard would argue that one’s ethics are developed in a personal relationship with God and cannot be communicated with others. Religion, though, is generally involved in the transcendence of routinized religious authority. It condemns souls to hell based on visible, established criteria, when an individual’s relationship with their God is often invisible, touched through emotion. In her desperation to save her husband by proving her faith to both God and to Jan, Bess is condemned by her community. At one point, she states, “I was always stupid, but I have one talent. My talent is faith.” This seems to be the crux of the film’s tragedy — that Bess’ actions, carried out in good faith and out of her love and devotion to God and to Jan, ultimately lead to her terrible fate.

Underneath the veil of devotion is a completely perverse love story that depicts Bess’ transformation from innocent and naive to a self-sacrificing sinner, thereby attacking standard notions of normalcy and goodness. There are few filmmakers who would dare to turn something as beautiful as newly formed, innocent love into a perverted, sadomasochistic relationship. In a sense, this is a stroke of genius: by ostensibly placing religion in the background, the film’s focus is not so much on blind faith in religion, but instead leads one to question why Bess would seek public humiliation and personal degradation to satisfy Jan’s wishes, or conversely, why Jan would ever ask Bess to degrade herself as he did. It is through Bess that von Trier establishes the notion of self-imposed slavery, bound either by love or religion, setting them up against each other, while simultaneously leaving one to question God’s intentions in the first instance.

The movie seems to question who would care about us in life — who would feel at a loss if one were to sacrifice for someone or something and why. It’s the closing note at the end of the film, as Bess is given a funeral by the Calvinist elders, in which we are informed that she will be sent to hell for her ghastly sins, that the line between love and devotion seems starkly evident. Later, Jan, who is miraculously rehabilitated, steals Bess’ body and gives her a proper burial at sea amongst the swelling waves. It is this moment that separates the people who actually cared about Bess, despite her love and devotion to them, and the ones who simply couldn’t or wouldn’t try to understand her. The final scene is one of the most haunting cinematic scenes that I have witnessed, because of its powerful statement on love — its power, pain, truth and importance.

The gritty film, shot with a handheld camera and underlit photography in documentary mode, makes every frame look like a decaying family portrait — the kind of picture you dig out of a box buried in the back of your closet, stare at and wonder, “What happened to them?” while a chill runs up your spine. It becomes almost impossible for the viewer to watch the film from a detached perspective, because von Trier, in a sense, presents life in its truest form. Chapter breaks are stunning, with some of the best 70’s songs and color-infused panoramas which appear to be still photographs until you notice the one little thing that’s slowly moving, maybe captured from God’s vantage point. The moldiness of the film stock, however, ensures that the scenic, cliff bound locations don’t get too picturesque. Instead, they have an imposing, lethal kind of beauty. Only von Trier could make the 70’s look like an emotionally exhausting fairy tale.

If Breaking the Waves has a major fault, it is that it is somewhat long and repetitive, and perhaps a little too intense – if only because it is so devastating. Viewing it on a television or computer screen may sap the movie of its visual grandeur; Bess staring directly at you through the camera has to be experienced in a theater for maximum impact. You may love this film or hate it to death, but it is difficult not to be moved by it.