Breaking the Waves (1996)
Directed by Lars von Trier
In a small, conservative Scottish village, an oilman is paralyzed in an accident. His wife, who prayed for his return, feels guilty; even more, when he urges her to have sex with another.
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What critics compared Breaking the Waves to
The films of Lars von Trier, the brilliant, bellicose Danish director of The Idiots, Breaking the Waves and Dogville, aspires to the condition of exquisite, immersive poetry that is, to be felt, rather than questioned, analyzed, critiqued.
For me, most of this was absurdly abstract in a way that his best films – Breaking the Waves , Dancer in the Dark – are not.
He was involved in preproduction on Breaking the Waves and I was hired by a producer to redo a script von Trier owned about a bizarre historical figure, Baron Ungern von Sternberg, a German-Russian aristocrat and Czarist officer who in 1921 lead anti-Bolshevik forces in Siberia, briefly conquered Mongolia, and dreamed of an Asian Buddhist army that under his command would conquer Europe.
Writer/director Lars von Trier's ("Breaking the Waves," "Dogville") film was the lightening rod of controversy at this year's Cannes film festival and looks to continue the debate with art film audiences.
In all his best known works -- from "Breaking the Waves" (1996) through "Dancer in the Dark" (2000), "Dogville" (2003) and "Manderlay" (2005) -- Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier has repeated the the same template: He gives us an appealing female protagonist . . .
Fusing the carnal intensity of Breaking the Waves (I was with it) with the horror-movie schtick of his Danish TV series The Kingdom (I was with that, too), and piling on religious symbolism, cloaked misogyny (in the guise of feminist doctrine) and graphic scenes of genital mutilation and torture, Von Trier has delivered a movie designed to abrade and repel.
And the fact that the man has messy personal stories when it comes to women -- his mom confessed on her deathbed that the person he always believed to be his biological father wasn't (his real dad turned out to be her boss); he reportedly abandoned his pregnant wife for their young babysitter; etc. -- has provided his critics with plenty of ammo to make the claim that instead of idolizing his lead female characters (in Breaking the Waves, Dancer In the Dark and now this), he actually despises them as only a chauvinist pig can, by putting them through all manner of humiliation.
Similar fates, you may recall, befell Emily Watsonâs Bess in Breaking the Waves and Björkâs Selma in Dancer in the Dark.
The voice-over narration reminds us of Zentropa, the handheld wide-screen cinematography resembles that of Breaking the Waves, and the dissection of American pathology in terms of weakness, hypocrisy, and paranoia is reminiscent of Dancer in the Dark.
In Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, virtuous women endure unjust indignities at the hands of heartless townsfolk eager to project their own bigotry and insecurities upon their beatific female compatriots.
But that's just what we have in the case of Dogville by acclaimed Danish director Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves).
One such filmmaker would be Lars von Trier, the creator of such uncomfortable viewing experiences as "Breaking the Waves" (in which Emily Watson's character had conversations with God and played both roles) and "Dancer in the Dark" (featuring Bjork as a guileless, nearly blind factory worker who winds up on death row, thanks to bad luck and poor communication).
"Melancholia" apparently was inspired by von Trier's history of dark depression -- a history that won't surprise viewers of such past von Trier films as "Breaking the Waves," "Dancer in the Dark" and "Dogville," which abused their heroines with almost Sadean determination.
Oh sure, I concede that he has demonstrated an undeniable ability to get strong and memorable performances from actresses as varied as Emily Watson ("Breaking the Waves"), Nicole Kidman ("Dogville") and even pop star Bjork ("Dancer in the Dark") and his films usually contain at least one or two absolutely sublime cinematic passages (such as the haunting prologue to "Antichrist" in which passionate lovemaking and unimaginable tragedy are woven together into a haunting and unforgettable tapestry).
Writer/director Lars von Trier ("Breaking the Waves") claimed depression as the instigation of his last film, "Antichrist," and he seems not to have gotten over it with his latest.
Although Dunst isn’t put through the horrors that awaited Gainsbourg in “Antichrist,” or Emily Watson in “Breaking the Waves,” her character suffers endlessly.
And his shaky, quasi-documentary camera technique has been evoking gray skies since 1996's “Breaking the Waves.”
In many ways this bizarre, nihilistic meditation is a dreary, redundant, pretentious bore, continuing Von Trier’s gloomy cinematic exploration of the anguished suffering of women, as evidenced in “Breaking the Waves,” “Dogville” and “Dancer in the Dark.”
But having recently started talking to God (shades of Emily Watson’s Bess McNeill from Breaking the Waves ), Maud is convinced that she has been sent to Amanda with a purpose – to save her from herself.
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To that you could add a soupcon of other precursors, including Georges Méliès, whose work is glimpsed repeatedly on a television screen, Bernard Rose’s little-seen gem about children’s creative imagination, “Paperhouse,” James Wan’s fixation on creepy puppets, and more importantly, burgeoning feats of portraying female hysteria, such as Emily Watson’s magnificent performance in “Breaking the Waves.”
This has a dulling effect that’s particularly noticeable in the best actors—Ronan, who’s stuck reciting the pedestrian narration as well as the almost comical conversations with herself (the sort one might recall from “Breaking the Waves”), and Hurt, who seems to be sleepwalking through the picture.
Caden's subsequent marriage to his "Death of a Salesman" star Claire Keen (Michelle Williams, "Brokeback Mountain"), who, as an actress, plays herself, falls apart (enter Kristen Bush replacing Claire as herself) and the man he hires to play himself, Sammy (Tom Noonan, "Manhunter," "Snow Angels"), begins to encroach into real life by falling in love with the real Hazel, despite her presence as played by Tammy (Emily Watson, "Breaking the Waves," "The Water Horse").
Itâ??s like saying that the colorful postcard segues of Lars Von Trierâ??s "Breaking The Waves" (1995) are better than the potent story that comes between them.
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Sort of like Emily Watson in "Breaking the Waves."
In a pale mimicry of Breaking the Waves (1996) she begins to take other lovers and explore more twisted avenues of sexuality, such as being tied up, or being raped in a stairwell.
Perhaps Mann and his team were inspired by the work of Wong Kar-Wei (whose freeform Chungking Express The Insider often resembles in visual terms) or Dogma95 (the ideal co-developed by Breaking the Waves' director Lars Von Trier that prohibits the use of unnatural lighting, Steadicams, and the like).