Breaking the Waves is a 1996 psychological romantic melodrama film directed and co-written by Lars von Trier and starring Emily Watson in her feature film acting debut, and with Stellan Skarsgård, a frequent collaborator with von Trier.
Set in the Scottish Highlands in the early 1970s, it is about an unusual young woman and the love she has for her husband. The film is divided into seven chapters and an epilogue, separated by audio-visual art by Per Kirkeby and accompanied by music.
The film is an international co-production between the US, Denmark, seven other European countries, and is von Trier's first feature film with his Danish production company Zentropa. As von Trier's first film made after his founding of the Dogme 95 movement, it is heavily influenced by the movement's style and ethos. It is the first film in Trier's Golden Heart trilogy, which includes The Idiots (1998) and Dancer in the Dark (2000), the former made in compliance with the Dogme 95 Manifesto.
Breaking the Waves was well-received, with Emily Watson's acting receiving unanimous critical praise and earning her first Academy Award nomination. The film has been described as "perhaps von Trier's most widely acclaimed film" and cited as among the best films of the 1990s. The film won numerous awards, including the Grand Prix at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot Bess McNeill is a young and pretty Scottish woman who has, in the past, had treatment for an unspecified mental health condition after the death of her brother. She opines to others that a church should have bells, unlike theirs. She marries oil rig worker Jan Nyman, a Danish non-churchgoer, despite disapproval from her community and her Free Scottish Presbyterian Calvinist church. Bess is steadfast and pure of heart but quite simple and childlike in her beliefs. During her frequent visits to the church, she prays to God and carries on conversations with him in her own voice, believing that he is responding directly through her.
Bess is infatuated with Jan and has difficulty living without him when he is away on the oil platform. Jan makes occasional phone calls to Bess, in which they express their love and sexual desires. Bess grows needy and prays for his immediate return. The next day, Jan is severely injured in an industrial accident and is flown back to the mainland. Bess believes her prayer was the reason the accident occurred and that God was punishing her for her selfishness in asking him to neglect his job and return to her. No longer able to perform sexually and mentally affected by the paralysis, Jan asks Bess to find a lover. Bess is devastated and storms out. Jan then attempts to commit suicide and fails. He falls unconscious and is readmitted to the hospital.
Jan's condition deteriorates. He urges Bess to find another lover and tell him the details, as it will be as if they are together and will revitalize his spirits. Though her sister-in-law Dodo constantly reassures her that nothing she does will affect his recovery, Bess begins to believe these suggestions are the will of God and in accordance with loving Jan wholely. Despite her repulsion and inner turmoil at the thought of being with other men, she perseveres in her own sexual debasement, believing it will save her husband. Bess throws herself at Jan's doctor, but when he rebuffs her, she takes to picking up men off the street and allowing herself to be brutalized in increasingly cruel sexual encounters. In the face of probable expulsion from her church, she proclaims, "You cannot love words. You cannot be in love with a word. You can only love a human being. That's perfection". The entire village is scandalised by these doings, and Bess is excommunicated.
Dodo and Jan's doctor agree the only way to keep Bess safe from herself is to have her committed and move as far away from her husband – whom they believe to be in terminal decline – as possible. Bess decides to make what she thinks is the ultimate sacrifice for Jan: she unflinchingly returns to a derelict ship, where sailors brutally attack her. Dodo and Mrs. McNeill meet a severely injured Bess in the hospital for the last time, forgiving her for her actions. Bess dies in Dodo's arms.
Her church deems her soul to be lost and hell-bound. Unbeknownst to the church elders, Jan and his friends have substituted bags of sand for Bess's body inside her sealed coffin. Without notice to the church elders, Dodo condemns them, saying no-one has the right to consign Bess to hell. Later, Jan is shown, substantially restored to health despite the doctors not having thought it possible, burying Bess in the ocean, deep in grief. The film ends in magical realism as crewmen show Jan the radar screen is clear of contacts then take him topside where church bells are heard ringing from high in the sky.
Cast
Production Development Breaking the Waves was von Trier's first film after founding the Dogme 95 movement with fellow Danish director Thomas Vinterberg. Nonetheless, the film breaks many of the movement's "rules", including built sets, post-dubbed music and computer graphics. It was shot entirely with handheld Super35mm cameras and is the first of von Trier's Golden Heart trilogy, so named after a children's book called Guldhjerte he had read about a little girl lost in the woods who gives away everything she has to others needier than herself. He wanted to make a naturalistic film that was also a religious film without any miracles. Von Trier claimed that it took him five years to write the film and get financial backing, and he began to lose enthusiasm for it right after filming began. It had a budget of 42 million kroner.
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. Several other big-name actresses were considered, but none of them was comfortable with the subject matter. Von Trier was eventually won over by Emily Watson's audition, even though she was a complete unknown in the film industry at the time. She was expelled from the School of Philosophy and Economic Science for having played such an explicit role in the film.
Filming Von Trier initially wanted to film the exterior scenes on the west coast of Jutland, then in Norway, then in Ostende, Belgium, then in Ireland, before finally settling on Scotland. The graveyard was built for the film on the Isle of Skye; the church is in Lochailort, the harbour in Mallaig, and the beach in Morar. Von Trier chose the Isle of Skye because it was popular with 19th century English romantic painters and writers. The interiors were shot at Det Danske Filmstudie in Lyngby, Denmark. Principal photography began on 7 August 1995 and completed shooting on 20 October 1995. Emily Watson revealed that originally, in the script, the scene of Bess' wedding night was much more traditional, with Bess getting undressed.
Music End of film credits: "All the Way from Memphis" – Mott the Hoople "Blowin' in the Wind" – Tom Harboe, Jan Harboe & Ulrik Corlin "Pipe Major Donald MacLean" – Peter Roderick MacLeod "In a Broken Dream" – Python Lee Jackson, featuring Rod Stewart "Cross-Eyed Mary" – Jethro Tull "I Did What I Did for Maria" – Tony Christie "Virginia Plain" – Roxy Music "A Whiter Shade of Pale" – Procol Harum "Hot Love" – T. Rex "Suzanne" – Leonard Cohen "Love Lies Bleeding" – Elton John "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" – Elton John "Whiskey in the Jar" – Thin Lizzy "Child in Time" – Deep Purple "Life on Mars" – David Bowie "Siciliana" (Sonata BWV 1031 / 2nd movement) – Johann Sebastian Bach "Gay Gordons" – Tom Harboe, Jan Harboe & Ulrik Corlin "Scotland the Brave" – Tom Harboe, Jan Harboe & Ulrik Corlin "Barren Rock of Aden" – Tom Harboe, Jan Harboe & Ulrik Corlin "Happy Landing" – P. Harmann
The original soundtrack album also includes "He's Gonna Step on You Again" – John Kongos.
Style The film is divided into seven chapters. Each chapter begins with a different impressionistically filmed panorama title frame featuring early 1970s rock music interludes. Each of these chapters is filmed with a motionless camera, but features movement in the panorama. In the original released film, the epilogue, "The Funeral", features David Bowie's "Life on Mars", which was replaced by Elton John's "Your Song" on early home video releases; the more recent Criterion edition restores the Bowie song. The overall style is heavily influenced by the realist Dogme 95 movement, of which von Trier was a founding member, and its grainy images and hand-held photography give it the superficial aesthetic 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. 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.
Some saw Breaking the Waves as mainstream cinema. Others saw it as a high-budget experimental film due to its elaborate chapter shots and handheld camera in a sketchy raw style that followed the actors closely. Breaking the Waves marked an important change in focus for Lars von Trier. In von Trier's early films, the protagonist is a man, typically a disillusioned idealist whose downfall is furthered by a deceitful femme fatale. In this film, for the first time the protagonist is an emotional and naïve woman. This motif continues in several of his later films, such as Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, and Manderlay. Breaking the Waves controversially connects religion with phallocentrism. The film focuses on sexual perversity and female martyrdom, issues that continue in Trier's later work.
The film was made using Panavision equipment. The low-res look of the scenes was obtained by transferring the film to video, and then back to film again. According to von Trier, "what we did was take a style and lay it like a filter over the story. It's like decoding a television signal when you pay to see a film. Here we encoded the film, and the audience has to decode it. The raw, documentary style that I imposed on the film, which actually dissolves and contradicts it, means that we can accept the story as it is".
Reception Critical response
The film garnered an 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 65 reviews. The critical consensus reads, "Breaking the Waves offers a remarkable testament to writer-director Lars von Trier's insight and filmmaking skill -- and announces Emily Watson as a startling talent". It also holds an 82/100 rating on Metacritic based on 28 reviews, citing a "universal acclaim" reception. During a show where film personalities listed their top movies of the 1990s, Breaking the Waves was named one of the ten best films of the decade by both critic Roger Ebert and director Martin Scorsese.
In an essay for the Criterion Collection, David Sterritt interpreted it as a film in which "no one is 'bad', everyone is 'good', and when trouble flares anyway, it's because incompatible concepts of 'good' can violently conflict with one another"; he praised the ending as "a magical vision that elevates the final moments to radically metaphysical heights".
Box office The film grossed over $23 million worldwide including $4.6 million in France; $4 million in the US and Canada; $1.7 million in Italy; and $1.1 million in the UK.
Accolades