Breaking the Waves (1996) 2 x DVD9 and Blu-Ray Criterion Collection

Great movies shake you up. They make demands on you, challenge your beliefs, force you to look at things through another person's eyes. "Breaking The Waves," the first English-language film from Danish director Lars von Trier, is transcendent filmmaking. Using a tragic love story as his framework, Von Trier takes an unflinching look at the chasm between the rational and the spiritual sides of our lives. A haunting, brutal fairy tale, this masterfully detailed character study is uncompromising and emotionally exhausting. It's a great movie.

Set in the early 70's, the North Sea oil boom brings outsiders to a remote Scottish community on the Isle Of Skye. Bess, a "simple-minded" local, meets and falls in love with Jan, a Norwegian oil-rigger. Their impending marriage disturbs the religious community, a group of Calvinists whose severe fundamentalism makes the Amish seem like anarcists by comparison. Bess' determination wins out, though, and life with her new husband becomes a blissful journey of personal and sexual discovery for the naive young woman.
Eventually, Jan has to return to the rigs, leaving a devastated Bess begging God to bring her husband home. When an industrial accident sends Jan back, paralyzed from the neck down, Bess is convinced the disaster was caused by her prayers. She stays by her husband's side, acutely depressed and desperate to atone. Then, under the influence of drugs and despair, Jan makes an startling request of his wife that sends her spinning madly on a frenzied and shocking quest of self-sacrifice in the name of love.
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