BREAKING THE WAVES
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: In a small village on the north coast
of Scotland a paralyzed man asks his childlike wife
to make love to other men in order to have the life
he can no longer give her. This is a powerful and
moving film. The photography is wildly uneven and
the last scene misgauged, but the story is
spellbinding. Rating: low +3 (-4 to +4)
New York Critics: 27 positive, 1 negative, 4 mixed
BREAKING THE WAVES is an unusual and extremely compelling film set in the remote north of Scotland. It is set in a town long closed to outsiders where life is ruled by a tight little group of church elders, all male. As the film progresses we find that stern Calvinist values suffuse everyday life. One of the loyal daughters of the church is Bess (played by Emily Watson in an Oscar-worthy performance). Bess is a childlike woman with a strong abiding faith in God. But her feelings go beyond simple faith. She has conversations with God, voicing both parts and has formed God in the mold of the cold an unforgiving clique who run the church. Hers is a demanding and unforgiving God in this world with all rewards postponed until the next. But as the film opens, God has made a rare exception to give His Bess something wonderful. A man has fallen in love with Bess. True, Jan (played by Stellan Skarsgard) is an outsider and the elders do not trust outsiders. Still, something has opened up in the quiet, mousy Bess and she can pour out her love on a man. Jan is a rough North Sea oil driller, but Bess loves him with a fierceness that startles the people of the village. But her happiness cannot last and after a week of marriage, Jan must return to the rig. To Bess any separation is tragedy. After missing Jan unbearably she makes a deal with God to take whatever consequences to get Jan back. Then as an apparent fulfillment, Jan has a violent injury and is paralyzed and perhaps even dying. He is back to the village but unable to be with Bess in any but the most superficial way. Jan does not want to see Bess waste herself devoted to a dying man. He wants her to taste life and asks her to go and make love to men and come back to tell him about it. This request sets in motion a series of unfortunate events and a storm of conflicting emotions.
This is the fifth feature film of Danish director Lars Von Trier, best known in this country for ZENTROPA. That was a good film; this is a better one. The one thing that has not improved and, in fact, has gone considerably downhill, is the look of the film. For reasons best known to Von Trier, much of this film was apparently shot with a hand- held camera. What is more it is a camera that seems to be forever fidgeting, jumping from one person to the next. The scenes that the camera shoots, except for the chapter titles--the story is split into chapters, are almost all in subdued color. Some of the chapter titles are so beautiful they seem to be more paintings than actual scenes. The narrative is clean and well-told up until the final half hour. Then the telling becomes a little muddled. The final image of the film does things to the plot that I personally did not care for, but up until that point the story was extremely good. It is not easy to make a character as simple and straightforward as Bess as likable as she is, but the script written by Von Trier makes the viewer really feel for Bess.
Emily Watson turns in a beautiful performance, at times genuinely heartbreaking. She plays a woman who is simple--not to say dim- witted--and so totally consumed by the love of her man that nothing else has any meaning in her life. Even her love of God is superseded by her love for this gift. Hers is a degree of devotion the screen usually reserves for dogs' love of their masters. Watson is a stage actress new to the screen but whose acting instincts seem rarely short of perfect in a difficult role. Stellan Skarsgard is stolid as Jan, but his role is not one of much complexity. For much of the film he is in a horsecollar lying in bed, paralyzed from the neck down. A somewhat more interesting role goes to Katrin Cartlidge whose looks are reminiscent of Amanda Plummer. She is Bess's sister-in-law who ends up Jan's nurse. She is hostile to Jan, suspicious at first of his love of the simple Bess. Eventually she realizes the degree that he loves Bess, but then does not approve of his methods to give Bess a life independent of himself.
BREAKING THE WAVES is a powerful and a moving drama, one of the best of the year. It does not seem to be getting a lot of play, but it is worth looking for. I give it a low +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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