by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

Lars Von Trier is an interesting filmmaker. He directs mostly very depressing movies that are very hard to watch. Breaking The Waves is an interesting case study in his filmography because on some weird level this is one of the rare examples of a Lars Von Trier film with a happy ending. Even though you could perhaps argue that the ending is nowhere near happy at all.

Breaking The Waves is truly a Lars Von Trier film. It is the film where Lars Von Trier changed his style into the one we know him for today. The handheld style of capturing emotions, rather than the classic film style of manufacturing emotions. Both styles have their place, and with films like Europa Lars Von Trier showed that he can do the more classical style very well too. But starting with Breaking The Waves Lars had changed. Now his films remind the style of documentaries than regular films. Which makes the emotional part more realistic and therefor more visceral. And which makes the horrible parts feel more horrible. While the nice parts feel nicer. Though unlike documentaries, Lars is making sure that we feel the emotion almost in first person. The camera is not observing from a far, but rather it's inside of the action looking at everything as close as it can be. Sometimes it feels strange. But it makes the movie work so well.

Another prevalent part in Breaking The Waves is how awkward it is. Which is so Lars Von Trier. There are scenes where you giggle to yourself because of how much of a cringe it is. And it is like this because it's meant to be that cringe. For example the first sex scene in the film is just utter cringe. We have this ultra-religious woman that just got married to a cool beer-drinking dude. So he knows what to do and she doesn't have a clue. But she is the one horny. And it is just beautifully cringe.

Speaking of sex, here we are dealing with the director of Nymphomaniac, so you will see naked parts of both sexes. He is not the kind of director that censors himself. And more than that, he opened his own studio so he could censor himself as little as legally possible. Therefor sometimes you get borderline pornographic, or actually pornographic material from Lars. Though, in his case and with his sensibilities those scenes are more than just simply porn. And they are there to make you feel a certain way. To make you engage with the emotions on screen and be present within the movie. Like 3D for James Cameron, which makes you feel on Pandora or Titanic, Lars uses everything he can to make you feel what the characters are feeling. And if they are horny, he has to make you horny too. Therefor he shows you stuff to make you horny.

The story of the film revolves around a woman played by a young Emily Watson which is in love with a guy played by a young Stellan Skarsgård. Which was very weird, since I'm not used to both of them being young. The woman in the film is so in love that it's frightening. She is so in love that it's a mental illness. And then, in a good old Von Trier fashion everything goes to shit. The character of Skarsgård receives a life threatening injury at work and the mental instability of Watson's character starts to show through. She loves him so much that she will do everything, no matter how deranged to save him. And it complicates things very much.

The movie is strangely spiritual and almost religious, while in the same time being a satire on the church. As if Lars Von Trier is saying that the church or the ways the church behaves is inherently non-christian, or something. And that a true believer would be a wholly different person. As in the end, some characters see the deranged behavior of Watson's character as a sign of inherent goodness. Which makes, in my opinion, this movie to be among the most positive movies from Lars Von Trier.

The only think I want to add to this review is the presence of Jean-Marc Barr in the film. Because Jean-Marc Barr fucking rocks.

Happy Hacking!!!


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