“Hell no. Absolutely not. Never Again.”
This was my friend’s response when I recently suggested we watch Breaking The Waves.
(It traumatized her)
Yesterday it was cold and rainy and glum. I searched for background movies to put on while I wrote, but my usual George Cukor go tos weren’t doing the trick. I branched out. Shane, Forbidden Games, Love & Anarchy, Mogambo, and various classic TV shows were turned on and shut off. Nothing worked. I decided to take a twenty minute nap to shake the damp. Twenty minutes turned into two hours and when I awoke, Bess McNeill was on my mind. As though she had been there all along. Sitting in the corner quietly, waiting for me to notice.
You know a film has succeeded when you miss its heroine the way you miss a dear friend. Suddenly their absence is keenly felt. Who knows what tiny thing will bring it to your attention. Maybe the shape of peeled linoleum on the floor, the color of a shoe, or the texture of a brownie. Sometimes there is simply no rhyme or reason. Something in the smell of the air or the arrangement of the furniture or the rhythm of my nap dreams whispered Breaking the Waves. And so I put it on.
The 1996 film is violently tragic, sad, and at times difficult to watch. Set in Scotland in the early 70’s, Emily Watson plays Bess McNeill, a strange childlike woman. Bess falls in love with Jan, a Norwegian oil rig worker and marries him despite the wishes of her church and family. After a few days of wedded bliss and recently devirginized sex, Jan returns to the oil rig. Madly in love, Bess can’t bare his absence and prays for his return. The next day Jan is badly injured in an accident and is flown back to shore. Bess of course believes his injury was the result of her prayer gone awry. Paralyzed and suffering vague mental impairment, Jan urges Bess to sleep around reporting back to him with the sordid details. A slave to god and love, Bess reluctantly agrees.
Lars Von Trier has always explored ideas of vulnerability, sacrifice, and subservience by those on the outside of the community. Examples can be found in nearly all his films, most clearly Dancer in the Dark*, The Idiots, Dogville, and Medea. He has a particularly keen understanding of it. I suspect this has something to do with his own familiarity with That Great Gray Cloud.