#705: TRIER, Lars von: Breaking The Waves (1996)
TRIER, Lars von (Denmark)
The Booklet
31-page booklet featuring an essay by critic David Steritt and an excerpt from the 1999 book Trier on von Trier.
Commentary
Selected-scene audio commentary featuring von Trier, editor Anders Refn, and location scout Anthony Dod Mantle.
Video interview 1
With filmmaker and critic Stig Björkman.
Video interview 2
With actors Watson and Skarsgård.
Promotional clip
From Cannes Film Festival.
Theatrical trailer
Extras Rating (0-40):
Breaking The Waves [1996]
Spine #705
Blu-ray
Blu-ray
Lars von Trier became an international sensation with this galvanizing realist fable about sex and spiritual transcendence. In an Oscar-nominated performance, Emily Watson stuns as Bess, a simple, pious newlywed in a tiny Scottish village who gives herself up to a shocking form of martyrdom after her husband (Stellan Skarsgård) is paralyzed in an oil rig accident. Breaking the Waves, both brazen and tender, profane and pure, is an examination of the expansiveness of faith and of its limits.
159 minutes
Color
Color
5.1 Surround
2:35:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2014
Director/Writer
Lars von Trier was 40 when he wrote and directed Breaking the Waves.
Von Trier made his first (animated) film at 11; studied film in Denmark, and found some success at a fairly young age — he was 28 when The Element of Crime (1984) won several film festival awards.
He then started the Dogme 95 movement, which seemed rather dogmatic and constrictive. This is one of five of his films in the Collection.
Other von Trier films in the Collection:
#80/#1168a: The Element Of Crime (1984)
Other von Trier films in the Collection:
#80/#1168a: The Element Of Crime (1984)
The Film
Breaking the Waves is the first of the “Golden Heart” trilogy — followed by The Idiots (1998) and Dancer In The Dark (2000). Only The Idiots is a true Dogme film. As David Steritt (see below) puts it:
“Breaking the Waves shows that Von Trier is too ornery an artist to be bound even by his own rules.”
Breaking the Waves is a star vehicle for Emily Watson as Bess and Stellan Skarsgård as Jan. Von Trier wisely allowed them to rule the screen here; that this was Watson’s first film is an astonishing fact. She is simply magnificent and the two of them make movie magic for nearly two hours and forty minutes.
The film is too fantastic to allow for any spoilers.
Interesting technical details include the fact that he transferred the film to video, screwed around with the color, and the transferred it all back to film again!
The film is divided into “chapters” with ‘70s pop music over still tableaux, which have been digitally altered.
Film Rating (0-60):
58
The ExtrasThe Booklet
31-page booklet featuring an essay by critic David Steritt and an excerpt from the 1999 book Trier on von Trier.
Commentary
Selected-scene audio commentary featuring von Trier, editor Anders Refn, and location scout Anthony Dod Mantle.
Video interview 1
With filmmaker and critic Stig Björkman.
Video interview 2
With actors Watson and Skarsgård.
Video interview 3
From 2004 with actor Adrian Rawlins (Dr. Richardson).
Audition tape
Excerpts from Watson's audition tape, with commentary by von Trier.
Deleted scenes 1
Deleted and extended scenes, with commentary by von Trier.
Deleted scenes 2
Featuring the late actor Katrin Cartlidge (Dodo McNeill).
Promotional clip
From Cannes Film Festival.
Theatrical trailer
Extras Rating (0-40):
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