Review of Breaking the Waves (2014) by Kevin D — 08 Nov 2010

It's like a combination of Million Dollar Baby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Requiem For a Dream. Notice that the movies I compared this one to all came out after Breaking the Waves and that the movies I mentioned are incrdibly bleak and horrific (in a good way).

Breaking the Waves is no different. It starts out extremely happy. Some scenes feature the main stars Emily Watson (Punch-Drunk Love) and Stellan Skarsgard (the guy from Good Will Hunting that was always arguing with Robin Williams that wasn't named Matt Damon) smiling for the sake of just showing them smiling and being happy.

But if you look over the plot description, you will know that those scenes are just softening you up for the kill. The second half of the movie is a dark psychological character study that often gets disturbing and heart-wrenching.

This is a really overlooked film that doesn't get a lot of the attention it deserves, which is surprising since it is from the self-proclaimed "biggest director in the world" Lars von Trier.

It's the first movie I've seen from him and his visual style can be best described as a combination of Paul Greengrass-esque handheld camera shots and the quick editing style of British films.

Emily Watson's leading performance was brave and gutsy. She was rightfully nominated for a Best Leading Actress Oscar in 1996. Obviously Frances McDormand won that year and I don't even think that that performance was a leading role, but that's a whole other story.

I just looked at the cast for this movie and there's a guy named Jean-Marc Barr...kind of like that weirdo John Mark Carr haha. Another thing I liked about this movie was the chapter segments. I liked the titles, cinematography, and classic rock songs between the chapters.

The film itself is an intelligent meditation on the old phrase "You get what you wish for", religion, the role of women, assisted suicide, love, and addiction. The movie gets progressively darker as the run time progresses, but I still found it to have good entertainment value.

The movie also has a cool title. The ending is surprisingly uplifting and kind of nifty. Breaking the Waves was quite an experience.