BREAKING THE WAVES Movie Review
Fritz Lang is reputed to have said that the widescreen CinemaScope process was only fit for photographing snakes and funerals. If he had lived long enough, he would have included a happier image in that brief list: the face of Emily Watson. As Bess, the holy innocent and devoted wife in Lars von Trier's exhilarating and gloriously wacky Breaking the Waves, Watson is a woman whose love for her disabled husband, Jan (Stellan Skarsgärd) is so pure and all-encompassing that she's willing to do anything he wants to try to preserve their shattered intimacy. The fact that this includes sexual encounters with other men may disturb the residents of the small Scottish village where Jan and Bess were wed, but Bess's burning passion for her husband is of such magnitude that even her humiliation becomes something she's proud to bear, all the way to its logical end. How we know all this about Bess, and the reason that Breaking the Waves doesn't simply collapse under the weight of all that male-fantasy-disguised-as-religious-experience baggage, can be explained in those same two words: Emily Watson. Every time this risky, sexually frank fairy tale threatens to simply turn into a long, silly parable about inner purity versus public hypocrisy, von Trier reminds us whose show this is. The supremely expressive face of this small woman is filmed in huge close-ups by von Trier, with a camera that is always in motion, suggesting the ocean of feeling that moves continually within her. You can't take your eyes off her, and Jan's obsession with her needs no explanation whatsoever; he knows he was the luckiest man in the world before the accident that left him paralyzed, and his fury and his passion collide in ways that make emotional sense. Breaking the Waves shouldn't work, but it does. It does despite an ending that seems out of character with the rest of the picture not because of the leap of faith that it requires, but because Emily Watson's face isn't on the screen. Jan misses her, but not as much as we do.
NEXT STOP … Wings of Desire, Beauty and the Beast (1946), The Kingdom, Parts I & II
1995 (R) 152m/C DK FR Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard, Katrin Cartlidge, Adrian Rawlins, Jean-Marc Barr, Sandra Voe, Udo Kier, Mikkel Gaup; D: Lars von Trier; W: Lars von Trier; C: Robby Muller; M: Joachim Holbek. Cannes Film Festival ‘96: Grand Jury Prize; Cesar Awards ‘97: Best Foreign Film; New York Film Critics Awards ‘96: Best Actress (Watson), Best Cinematography, Best Director (von Trier); National Society of Film Critics Awards ‘96: Best Actress (Watson), Best Cinematography, Best Director (von Trier), Best Film; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘96: Best Actress (Watson); British Academy Awards ‘96: Best Actress (Watson); Golden Globe Awards ‘97: Best Actress—Drama (Watson), Best Film—Drama; Independent Spirit Awards ‘97: Best Foreign Film. VHS, Letterbox, Closed Caption EVE