Breaking the Waves
奇跡の海
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
A devout bride sleeps with strangers because her paralysed husband asks her to; sainthood and degradation in one body.
In a strict Presbyterian village on the coast of the Scottish Highlands in the early 1970s, Bess McNeill talks to God in the empty church and answers herself in his voice. She is simple and devout, and was once treated for a mental illness after her brother died. Against the disapproval of the church elders she marries Jan Nyman, an outsider who works on an oil rig in the North Sea, and they are joyfully in love. When Jan goes back to the rig Bess cannot bear his absence, and she prays for him to come home.
The next day Jan is badly injured in an accident on the rig and flown back to the mainland, paralysed. Bess believes her prayer caused it. Jan, unable to make love and changed by his injury, tells her to take a lover and describe it to him: it will be as if they were together, he says, and it will keep him alive. She storms out. He tries to take his own life and is taken back into hospital.
As his condition worsens, Bess comes to believe that doing what he asks is God's will, though her sister-in-law, Dodo, tells her that nothing she does can change his recovery. Repelled, she offers herself to Jan's doctor, who refuses her, then begins to pick up strangers, in encounters that grow more degrading and more dangerous. The village is scandalised, and the church casts her out.
Dodo and the doctor decide that Bess must be committed. Bess settles on what she believes is the ultimate sacrifice: she goes back out to a trawler anchored offshore, whose crew even prostitutes avoid, and the men sexually assault her. In hospital her mother and Dodo forgive her, and she dies in Dodo's arms. The elders declare her soul damned; Dodo tells them that no one has the right to send Bess to hell. But the coffin holds only sand. Jan, recovered and walking against every medical expectation, has taken her body, and he and his friends bury her at sea. Afterwards his crewmates call him up on deck, and bells ring out from high in the sky.
Starring
Emily Watsonas Bess McNeill
A devout, childlike young woman in a strict Highland village who talks to God and will do anything to save her husband.
Bess McNeill’s story
Bess prays in the empty church and answers herself in God's voice. Against the elders' disapproval she marries Jan, an oil-rig worker, and when he goes back offshore she prays for him to come home; the next day an accident sends him back paralysed, and she believes her prayer did it. When he asks her to take lovers and tell him about them, she storms out, then comes to believe it is God's will and keeps him alive. She offers herself to his doctor, who turns her away, then to strangers. She tells the elders that one cannot love a word, only a human being, and the church casts her out. Told she will be committed, she goes back to the trawler even prostitutes avoid, and the crew sexually assault her. She dies in Dodo's arms.
Stellan Skarsgårdas Jan Nyman
An oil-rig worker who marries Bess and, after an accident leaves him paralysed, asks her to take other men as lovers.
Jan Nyman’s story
Jan works on the North Sea rigs, an outsider, and Bess marries him against the elders' wishes; they are joyfully in love, and when he goes back offshore they talk on the telephone. An accident on the rig leaves him paralysed. Unable to make love and changed by his injury, he tells her to find a lover and describe it to him, as if they were together, and says it will keep him alive; when she storms out, he tries to take his own life. As he grows weaker he keeps urging her on, and he is still unconscious when she dies. Then, against every medical expectation, he recovers enough to walk. With his friends he takes her body from the coffin and buries her at sea, and bells ring out from high in the sky.
Katrin Cartlidgeas Dodo McNeill
Bess's sister-in-law and protector, who tries again and again to talk her back from what she is doing.
Adrian Rawlinsas Dr Richardson
Jan's doctor, who turns Bess away and comes to believe she must be protected from herself.
Udo Kieras The Man on the Trawler
A man aboard the offshore trawler that even prostitutes avoid, the boat Bess goes out to in the end.
Why it matters
Breaking the Waves asks what love is owed and what it may demand, and gives no comfortable answer. Bess believes that God speaks to her and that her body can buy her husband's life; Jan, paralysed and afraid, asks her for something that becomes her destruction; the elders of a church without bells condemn her to hell. The issues are hard ones: a disabled man's grief for his own sexuality, the coercion that can hide inside a loving request, a community that polices women's bodies, and a faith that looks like madness to everyone but the believer. Lars von Trier won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1996, and Emily Watson, in her first film, was nominated for an Academy Award. The bells at the end will not settle whether Bess was a saint or a victim, and the film leaves that question with whoever has watched her.