Breaking the Waves

It is one of cinema’s great dilemmas—if a director falls into a habit of repetitious themes and characterizations yet still broaches those topics with ingenuity and insight, should he then be regarded as a one-trick pony? Since his 1996 breakthrough, Lars von Trier has seemed almost calculated in his chronicling of female subjugation and martyrdom for a man/Man, but even so, with his first foray into these topics in Breaking the Waves (1996), von Trier constructed one of the most exacting studies of unwavering faith amidst social prejudices and hierarchies.

Utilizing a narrative that questions the fundamental idea of religious truth, of the Word of God being channeled through the devout yet dim Bess McNeill (Emily Watson), von Trier explores the murky area between extraordinary devotion and absurdity of faith. Certainly here he remains critical of the institutionalization of faith by church elders, who prioritize tradition far more than they prioritize true love for their neighbors. Yet sexual love, voracious though it may be, is combined with something akin to a native spirituality when Bess finds a husband (Stellan Skarsgard). However, when Bess’ husband suffers a paralyzing injury and asks her to commit sexual acts with others and then report those stories back to him, as these words will aid his recovery, or so he believes, there is the foreboding sense that Bess is falling into a trajectory of degradation without principle or purpose.

Still, von Trier is humble in his treatment of faith, even if he isn’t humble in the face of the institutionalization of it. It’s a fine line between mockery and humiliation, but von Trier positions Bess as less an idiot than an idiot savant, devoted to granting her husband the same faith that she grants to God as she regularly visits the church. Here, in an auspicious debut, Emily Watson shines as a film actor, and Skarsgard and Katrin Cartlidge provide quality supporting work, yet von Trier does the best work, balancing secular and religious devotion for a final image that is humbly poignant and heartrendingly transcendent.

Breaking the Waves: 10/10