110
PARTISAN R£VIEW
benighted - ground for Western condescension.
To turn from these films to the work of Lars von Trier or Olivier
Assayas is to breathe a different air. Like Mehta's
Fire,
von Trier's epic
Breaking the Waves
is a story of love and passion that begins with the mar–
riage of a remarkably innocent woman. Set on the forbidding Scottish
coast, among dour Christians as patriarchal as anyone in India, the movie
is at once sensual and visionary, trashy and transcendental. The heroine,
Bess, wonderfully played by English stage actress Emily Watson, is part
idiot, part saint. Her face, whether twisted with anguish, beaming with
sexual mischief, or
Ii
t up wi th child- like joy, is one of the most expressive
in recent films. It reminded me of Giulicta Masina's Chaplinesque perfor–
mance in Fellini's
La
Strada,
another movie about improbable love and
martyred innocence of which this film is virtually a remake. (Dreyer's
Passion
of
Joan ofA
rc may be an addi tional source.)
The film begins with close-ups of Bess's face as she explains to the
church elders why she must marry an outsider, Jan (Stellan Skarsgard), a
hunky Scandinavian who works on an offshore oil rig. After a boisterous
wedding and a wildly passionate honeymoon, Jan returns to the rig over
Bess's howling protests. In one of her little dialogues with God she wish–
es Jan back, only to see her wish fulfilled in the worst way: he returns
crippled from the neck down. From this point the movie spirals down–
ward until it becomes almost agonizing to watch. At Jan's insistence, Bess
begins picking up men who invariably abuse her. In a mixture of lurid
tabloid fantasy and religious vision, Bess's self-sacrifice leads to Jan's
miraculous recovery - a distinctly male dream of redemption. But the
questionable plot is less important than the film's rigorous technique and
arresting cinematography, especially the use of hand-held camera, impro–
vised movement and dialogue, tight close-ups, and grainy, tape-transferred
film stock, all of which heighten the film's emotional intensity and near–
documentary authentici ty.
Breaking the Waves
is almost a textbook example of the new interna–
tional art film. As Hollywood looses itself in violent action, expensive
special effects, or numbskull comedy, independent filmmakers strain for
greater reality through elli ptical narratives and documentary techniques
that focus on character, gesture, and small, intimate moments of human
interaction. This was what Scorsese achieved in
Mean Streets
more than
twenty years ago, what John Cassavetes did brilliantly in
Faces
and
A
Woman Under the Influence.
They proved to be prophets of today's most dar–
ing and self-conscious filmmaking. Such movies depend less on plot than
on actors who can feel their way into a part and build it up from the inside,
as Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall do in Mike Leigh's
Secrets and Lies,
the Festival's opening night film.
