Breaking the Waves

REVIEW
Danish director von Trier has managed to tightrope his way toward straight narrative while at the same time making a thoroughly unconventional movie. And it must be said at the outset that this 156-minute marathon is definitely not for all tastes. But for those who are not put off by a claustrophobic, handheld, ultra-intimate character study of the pitiful lives of a few hardy souls in an inhospitable Scottish hamlet on the North Sea coast, the result is a riveting and thought-provoking examination of obsessive love and one's relationship to God. Bess (Watson) is an emotionally unstable young woman who breaks the village taboo by marrying an outsider, Jan (Skarsgård). Jan, a big bear of an oil rig worker with a heart of gold, seems bent on seeing her passions flower beyond her strict religious background. But on the fateful day that he must return to his rig, she breaks apart mentally and thus begins her slide into all-out obsession. Bess regularly throughout the film holds intimate two-way conversations with God -- as hokey as they could have been, Watson miraculously pulls them off. Ultimately the film seems as confused about faith as its characters are, but that by no means diminishes its effectiveness as a philosophical puzzler.