Review of Breaking the Waves (2014) by Paul Z — 18 Aug 2010

Set in the Scottish countryside of the 1970s, comprised of grainy images and hand-held photography, this first installment in Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier's Golden Heart Trilogy is deeply and metaphysically formidable, pummeling at orthodox purity with the omniscient certitude that God not only exists and sees all, but appreciates a great deal more than we give him credit for. It tells the story of Bess, a simple woman of unfeigned innocence, who subscribes herself to sexual brutality to save the life of the man she loves. Is she a sinner? The forbidding bearded elders of her church think so. But Bess is the kind of person Jesus was thinking of, if he was any kind of god at all, if he suffered the little children to come unto him.

Even while this is surely one of the more accessible films Von Trier has written and directed, it nevertheless includes various remarkable divulgences. It has the sort of fresh impact, the kind of vulnerable consideration for the power of good and evil in the world, that we tend to want to sidestep. It is easier sometimes to wrap ourselves in romanticism and nice hackneyed sayings, and forget that God supposedly forged nature "bloody in tooth and nail." Bess does not have our capacity for justification or cop-outs, and dauntlessly submits herself to God as she understands him.

This performance by Emily Watson is more like that of an animal than a woman, deriving from impulse rather than contemplation and judgment. It is not a bleak performance and is a number of times stroked by comedy and happiness, which makes it all the more touching, as when Bess talks out loud in two-way conversations with God, speaking both voices, making God a grim adult and herself a guileless child. Her church expels her, and little boys in the village throw stones at her. Von Trier makes us ponder what sorts of movies Dostoevsky might've given us. He finds the inflexibly undiluted thread through the heart of a story, and is not made anxious with what cannot be known: This movie does not explain Stellan Skarsgaard's inhuman demand of his wife, because Bess does not question it. It shows people who care about her, such as the sister-in-law and the local doctor, and others who do not: Auditor-like clergymen like the bearded church elders. They comprehend nothing about their Christianity save for authoritarian standards they have learned.

Not many movies like this get made, because not many filmmakers are so fearless, aggressive and daring. Similar to quite a lot of genuinely religious films, it will displease the hypocrites. Here we have a story that compels us to take sides, to ask what truly is right and wrong in an existence that feels bitter and aloof. Is belief in a god merely a comfort for our certain outcome in loss of life? Or can faith afford the ascendancy to prevail over death and evil? Many of us believe the former for sure, but Bess believes the latter for sure. And there's something all too real about Bess.