With Breaking the Waves, director Lars von Trier questions the extent to which the camera's omniscient POV is and should be taken for granted in cinema.
Audiences have always been taught that what the camera shows is to be trusted entirely within a film’s world. Experimental Danish director Lars von Trier, who co-authored the Dogme 95 manifesto championing purity of cinema, challenges this notion with his 1996 film Breaking the Waves, in which he intentionally makes viewers doubt the reality of the depicted action. By doing so he confronts the ease with which audiences accept information, and the passive way in which people experience films. Despite this, he rewards his audience’s cooperation with uncertainty by ending his film with a magnificently conceived manifestation of what he argues is a truly omniscient point of view.
Uncertainty Expressed Through Cinematography
The uncertainty expressed by Breaking the Waves is felt from the very first shot as a result of the washed-out, filtered quality of the images. Although the film is shot on standard 35mm, von Trier elected to transfer it to video and re-capture the video on 35mm, resulting in almost dirty looking images. This, in conjunction with the uncertain handheld cinematography reminiscent of home video recordings, causes the viewer to feel immediately uncomfortable, and sense that perhaps it should not trust whoever is delivering the information.
The seemingly arbitrary landscape shots that mark the transition from one chapter to another symbolically support von Trier’s agenda. They are composed as classic landscape paintings from a decidedly objective perspective. At first glance, the shots appear static, although closer inspection reveals that they all contain movement. The 70’s pop music played over them strangely contrasts, and almost mocks, the seemingly straightforward images. This is von Trier’s way of asking viewers to look closer, and doubt the apparent vision of the camera’s perspective.
Uncertainty Expressed Through Story
Once the supernatural aspect of the story becomes clear so does the rationale behind von Trier’s subversive technique. He wants audiences to be completely unsure as to whether or not Emily Watson’s character is truly gifted with a connection with God, or simply insane. Watching Watson speak with God and undergo atrocities in the name of sacrifice for a loved one, viewers simply don’t know how to feel. Should they pity her, because she is insane and is being manipulated by her perverse husband? Or should they admire her determination, and be in awe of her spiritual closeness with a higher being? The answer is uncomfortably unclear throughout.
As the finale approaches, von Trier uses omission to intensify the audience’s doubt: he conspicuously leaves the cause of Watson’s death off screen. The film implies that Watson revisited a group of violent men on a ship, and that they abused her until the point of fatal injury. However, how the violence escalated to such a level, the extent to which Watson provoked it, and whether she retaliated or not, is all left unanswered.
At the film’s final minutes anything seems fair game. Jan (Stellan Skarsgård) makes a miraculous recovery but, all things considered, this is not incontrovertible proof that Watson’s character had a genuine connection with God. Viewers have learned from the film not to take everything at face value.
The Finale
Then von Trier unleashes his final shot, a bird’s eye view of the action from the point of view of the heavens, with Watson’s bells plainly visible as the source of the chimes. This, von Trier wants to tell the world, can be trusted. Although he has stressed ambiguity so strongly throughout, this is not say that there is no truth, or no answer. Merely that one should not take information given for granted. Once he has taught viewers to appreciate ambiguity, almost as a reward, he presents them with truly objective reality.
