“Breaking the Waves” (1992) – *9.0*

Credits:

Director: Lars von Trier
Writers: Peter Asmussen & Lars von Trier
Cinematographer: Robby Müller
Editor: Anders Refn
Costume Designer: Manon Rasmussen
Starring:
“Bess McNeill” – Emily Watson
Co-Starring:
“Jan Nyman” – Stellan Skarsgård
“Dorothy ‘Dodo’ McNeill” – Katrin Cartlidge
“Terry” – Jean-Marc Barr
“Dr. Richardson” – Adrian Rawlins
“priest” – Jonathan Hackett
“mother” – Sandra Voe
“sadistic sailor” – Udo Kier

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Plot:

Set in the Scottish Highlands during the 1970s, Breaking the Waves tells the story of the marriage of Bess McNeill and Jan Nyman.  A strange, somehow childlike woman, Bess’ love for Jan is intense and sweeping:  their frequent times apart — he works on an oil rig — literally cripple her.  A member of a Calvinist community, Bess’ entire perspective on life is deeply set in a framework of faith and obedience; everything for which she yearns, she yearns for through prayer.  At one point, Bess selfishly prays for Jan to come home no matter how important his work is.  When Jan is paralyzed in an accident on the rig and sent home shortly afterward, Bess blames herself and commits herself to proving her repentance by doing what Jan says will give him a will to keep on living:  sleeping with many other men and telling Jan about the encounters.  Though her family — especially her sister-in-law, Dorothy — tries to intervene, Bess’ devotion to her husband spirals out of control, ultimately leading to events not only tragic but also, maybe even essentially, good.

The film is divided into seven chapters and an epilogue:
- Chapter One: Bess Gets Married
(Mott the Hoople: “All the Way from Memphis“)
- Chapter Two: Life With Jan
(Kathryn Williams: “In a Broken Dream“)
- Chapter Three: Life Alone
(Jethro Tull: “Aqualung“)
- Chapter Four: Jan’s Illness
(Annie Lennox: “A Whiter Shade of Pale“)
- Chapter Five: Doubt
(Leonard Cohen: “Suzanne“)
- Chapter Six: Faith
(Elton John: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road“)
- Chapter Seven: Bess’ Sacrifice
(Deep Purple: “Child in Time“)
- Epilogue: The Funeral
(Elton John: “Your Song“)

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Direction:

A founding member of the Dogme 95 movement in cinema, Trier utilizes many techniques that focus on promoting a sense of realism in the film, including shooting the film using only natural light, handheld cameras, and no score.  That being said, the film’s emphasis on a character whose own beliefs and personality remain static as her situation changes cements its place as the first part in Trier’s “Golden Heart” trilogy of films (continued in 1998′s The Idiots and 2000′s Dancer in the Dark).  Trier uses Breaking the Waves to explore issues of faith in a unique fashion:  this is no film about whether faith is beautiful or ignorant, about whether or not there is a God — this is a film about faith and its effects on the individual.  This is a film about what the individual is as a result of faith, a film that questions how sin can even be possible in light of faith.  Yes, Bess sleeps with men, but as the film so quietly observes, “Mary Magdalene sinned, and she is among [God's] dearly beloved.”  Trier treats the convergence of sexuality and faith with a brutal complexity rarely seen in spiritual films.

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Writing:

The film’s writing is perfect yet tiring.  There is no out-of-place eloquence, no grand oration:  the characters speak plainly, inelegantly, and directly.  The consistency of each character’s dialogue, however, writes each character to become a three-dimensional human being.  As plainly as she speaks, there can be no doubt of who Bess is, for she is written perfectly.  Never does she fall into a cliché of immaturity, nor does she rise above the challenges sent her way in some resounding moment of greatness:  Bess is simply Bess, and she reacts to every situation as Bess.

One might try to argue with me here:  “Jan,” one might say, “isn’t a three-dimensional character at all!  He goes with no explanation from being a sweet, loving, and somewhat selfish man to being a manipulative prick.  His character seems to change abruptly, not naturally, with his illness.”  To that, I would accuse my challenger of not properly understanding the story.  It is true that Jan’s shift of character during his period of paralysis, while somewhat understandable, seems to take just a slight step too far, transforming his paralysis from plot device into gimmick.  That, however, is simply not the point.  The film does not question the motives behind Jan’s selfishness quite simply because no one in the film questions it:  Dr. Richardson and Dodo notice the selfishness but refuse to investigate it while Bess sees nothing but a personal challenge.  Jan remains mostly in character; his personality shift is just a slight step too far. That step can be explained through Bess:  she never looks into it.  She never asks him why he wants what he wants, she just struggles through her own fears to do it.  She never asks him why because the “why” doesn’t matter:  it is a fact, and she loves him, so she must make sure to meet his needs.  That is the very essence of the film.  Bess is a creature of faith:  her challenge isn’t against her faith but rather against her ability to meet it.  She loves Jan, and so she must struggle to do what he needs, even if it destroys her.  Bess is among those few characters in film who are perfectly written:  she is, quite literally, an entire person, captured on film.

The one flaw among the film’s characters is that of Bess’ mother, portrayed by Sandra Voe.  She is written too simply as a character torn between obedience to Calvinist teachings and love for her daughter, rendering her personal struggle the sole example of cliché in the film.  While Voe’s performance is commendable for its visceral power, the character as an whole fails to rise above the deficiencies of the script.

The dialogue can get a little tiring on the ear.  Hearing plain people speak plainly, inarticulately, and without complexity can be difficult because it can almost prevent one from empathizing with the characters.  (This is the problem with the characters in many Scorsese films.)  Breaking the Waves avoids that pitfall through its actors, whose magnificent performances ensure that the writing rings true, not dull.

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Acting:

The performances here are, quite simply, stunning.  Emily Watson brings forth a tour-de-force:  while the role on paper seems maudlin and grim, Watson infuses it with a little bit of wonder, of humor, of desire, and in doing so, makes it all the more touching.  When Jan is late for the wedding, Bess runs up to him and pounds his chest — not out of frustration or anger, but out of love.  When Bess, in her wedding dress, leads Jan, in his tuxedo, up to a bathroom during the wedding reception and offers, “Have me now?”, the eagerness and wonder in her expression — as well as her ensuing grateful bafflement (or baffled gratitude?) about the entire experience — show the warmth, the naïve excitement that serve as the foundation of her faith in God and love.  That is the true greatness of Watson’s achievement:  she creates a character whose entire sense of self is written in a framework of faith without reducing that character to a stereotype or, even worse, a character from Chariots of Fire ((1981) Dir.: Hugh Hudson, Wrt.: Colin Welland).  When Bess kneels in church and converses with God — meekly asking God for help in her own voice and then adopting a firm, serious voice with which to respond to herself as “God” — we see her faculty for reason directly at war with her emotional desires, and we see it all in the context of her faith.

The late Katrin Cartlidge as Bess’ sister-in-law Dodo almost steals the show in a performance every bit as nuanced as Watson’s.  The difference lies in the complexity required for that nuance:  Dodo is a woman from outside the Calvinist community in which the film takes place, and so the character Cartlidge creates is more of an everywoman than Watson’s Bess, whose entire personality is couched in a sense of faith.

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Cinematography:

The film’s cinemtography emphasizes nakedness and intimacy, launching the film as a deeply emotional experience.  Müller has more responsibilities than most cinematographers because it is the cinematography that carries the film:  without a score or artificial lighting, only the camera’s participation in mise-en-scène can emphasize the mood and feeling of each shot in a cinematic language.  The film is shot like an episode of The Shield ((2002-200?) Cmt.: Ronn Schmidt):  most of the shots are close-ups, and all of the shots are jerky and quick, but not in the style of a documentary.  This isn’t as primitive as INLAND EMPIRE ((2006) Cmt.: David Lynch) or as fast-paced as The Bourne Ultimatum ((2007) Cmt: Oliver Wood).  Instead, the shaky camerawork works in tandem with the various subtleties of emotion that come from the actors:  emotional stimuli, reactions, expressions are all as dynamic and shifting as the camerawork.  We know what is going on because everything is a pan, pan, pan:  we pan from Jan’s hands as he works on the rig to the strain on his face, we see that he is tired, that his work is hard, and we begrudge Bess for thinking of him so selfishly.  When Bess commits her first sexual sin on a bus, the camera initially cuts from Bess to the man behind her, emphasizing her doubts; as she decides to seduce him and walks toward him, the camera pans along with her, maintaining a single shot as she sits beside him:  she has made her decision.

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Score:

While the film has no score, it does make use of music outside of the fourth wall in two ways:  each chapter begins with a 30-second landscape shot accompanied by an excerpt of a song, and there is one montage set to music in the film proper.  The lack of score minimizes the film’s manipulation of the audience, as previously mentioned, so the use of music in these instances is quite significant.  The chapter openers are fairly simple, working in conjunction with the images to create a sense or mood in the same vein as T.S. Eliot‘s objective correlative.  Of more complexity is the single use of genuine scoring within the film proper, the montage.  The fact that it is one of two sequences to blatantly violate a tenet of Dogme 95 film philosophy is significant:  it is an instance illustrating a feeling that can only be illustrated in unrealistic cinematic language.  By resorting to montage linked through score, Trier juxtaposes images to create an overall mood and movement across time.  Significantly, the time over which Trier skips is a time of unbridled happiness for Bess and Jan:  it is not complacent faith that interests Trier, it is challenged faith.  We need to know that Bess and Jan had a time of happiness to understand their love, but we don’t need to focus on it because it is not a time of struggle.

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Conclusion:

Breaking the Waves is a magnificent film from filmmaker Lars von Trier.  A patient exploration of an individual’s reconciliation of faith, love, sin, and need, the film explores its themes with a subtlety and grace typically reserved for the films of Ingmar Bergman or the fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne.  Despite its powerhouse performances and nuanced filmmaking, however, the film is just shy of perfect:  Bess’ mother is written too simply, which is particularly disappointing given the rawness of Sandra Voe’s performance and the obvious quality of Trier’s ability to write, and the blatant structural break-up of the film seems to categorize the character developments a little too neatly. While the breaks between chapters allow Trier to emphasize moods and growth à la the objective correlative, they also simplify the characters’ development for the audience. This is obviously intentional, and there is certainly a valid artistic reason for it, but it does nonetheless take away from the power of the performances. That being said, the film is an absolute gem, one of the rare films that film ideas and concepts in the language of cinema instead of describing them directly in words.

Grade: 9.0/10.0

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~ by reedo on April 6, 2008.