Breaking the Waves

This moving Danish drama provides a dramatic look into an unsettling marriage between a North Sea oil rigger and the mentally unstable, deeply religious small town girl who would do anything to make him happy. Bess (Emily Watson in an Oscar-nominated performance) has spent her life in a severe little town ruled by the fear of God. It is the kind of town where no church bells are allowed to peal out, a place where the fear of going to Hell keeps sinners at bay. The story is divided into seven chapters and begins as virginal Bess, who frequently holds odd conversations with God, prepares to marry the lusty, adventurous Jan (Stellan Skarsgård) . Although their first days of marriage are happy, Jan must work long hours and is often at sea on the rigs. Bess quietly prays for him to return. She gets her wish when he is badly injured and returns home a quadriplegic, at which point he makes an unusual request that sets in motion the rest of the film's story. Breaking the Waves is one of the most distinctive European movies of the 1990s, marking director Lars von Trier's movement toward his influential "Dogma 95" school of filmmaking, which emphasizes realistic situations of contemporary life, filmed without background music, with surprising shifts of angles and film styles, and with a hand-held, restlessly moving camera. Its daring originality, vertiginous camera movements, and unsettling story make Breaking the Waves a highly significant advance in filmmaking yet also not a film that all viewers will enjoy.