As long as it takes to watch and write a quick review of everything in the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (TSPDT) Master List, They Shoot Zombies, Don't They (TSZDT) Top 1000, Criterion, Arrow Video, Vinegar Syndrome and many boutique label tangents and sidebars because - when it comes to films - the journey is more fun than the goal. My running Top 100 on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/personalhistory/list/my-top-100/
2024: Post #59
Watched April 4th
As part of the Curzon Lars von Trier Complete Collection IMDB
Directed by: Lars von Trier
Written by: Lars von Trier, Peter Asmussen, David Pirie
TSPDT: 218
159 minutes. I cannot fathom the hype around Lars von Trier in the mid 90s if he made Europa and then followed it up with this heart wrenching masterpiece.
It’s also difficult to believe this was Emily Watson’s debut. What a force. She was asked to carry an emotional weight with very little equal in the history of film. Von Trier asked her to be believable as a puritan by upbringing, someone was has discovered a new sexual freedom in marriage, is later asked to reconcile her love for her God with her love for her new husband who is asking her things she is not ready for, is able to come off as a strong woman in the face of a comprehensive dehumanization, and ultimately love her husband throughout the entire process.
This is a film about sacrifice. Von Trier uses a few of his films to ask some tough questions about sacrifice. In Breaking the Waves, he asks how far a human would go to bring their partner back from paralysis if they believed God was in the middle of their pain. Young Stellan Skarsgård plays the husband of Watson. He is paralyzed at work, and asks her to sleep with men since he won’t be able to walk or use his body again. This is about the scariest thing Watson could be asked, as she has no mental model around casual sex. She hates the idea, but finally decides that God is also asking her to do this in order to heal her husband.
Because this now religiously motivated, she becomes blind to her own needs and puts herself in harms way. But von Trier does something devious with the plot. The worse off Watson gets, the more her prayers are answered and her husband begins to heal. It’s a miracle of sorts. Much like Dreyer in Ordet, we as the audience are forced to reconcile with the idea of miracles in faith and how they look in the modern day.
I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it’s powerful. Von Trier is an expert at taking an idea through to its logical conclusion, and the movie left me reeling and trying to figure out how I felt about the pain caused to this harmless, sweet woman who is portrayed as perhaps the most selfless lover in history. This is a great film, it’s just extremely tough to watch.
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