Excerpt from "Breaking the Waves" (1996)

"Breaking the Waves" (1996) by Lars von Trier. Please visit http://theworldcinematheque.com for more scenes, montages and tributes to the greatest filmmakers from around the world.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Breaking the Waves
• 1996
• Lars von Trier
• theworldcinematheque.com

[TheShonaMcleod]

I LOVE Emily Watson, she is awesome. And Lars Von Trier. Favourite film of all time. :)

[polybubu4]

I think a lot of journalists, like Mark Kermode, hated Lars von Trier ever since Breaking the waves because Lars did not try to make a movie to impress those critics in their intellectual and masturbating snobistic knowledge (Kubrick, Lynch, Ken Russell) but instead wanted to shake their soul, and ours, with a simple love story told without any artefact, with honest characters acting and thinking according to their own beliefs, not to what the rest of society (ie: movie critics) want you to be.

[polybubu4]

If he was so despicable to women, why is it that there are so many women viewers among his fans? Many who consider Breaking the Waves a true masterpiece. And if this movie, and Lars's work, bothers you so much, then why don't you make your own feminist movies instead of bashing his work on this page?

[MrKeepitunderyourhat]

@polybubu4 Actually Hitchcock is widely accepted to have been a raging misogynist, it's only Vertigo that has a genuinely interesting attitude towards women. And I admire the irony of you arguing against misogyny by accusing male movie goers of just not getting it. It's the ending of Breaking the Waves that really makes me unable to accept your point, and I'm afraid that I just can't believe the idea of Von Trier as a feminist; there's too much of a consistent, underlying nastiness.

[polybubu4]

And finally when I see some of the rubbish in Blockbusters or television that either show women as vapid individuals who only want to get married, have kids, the perfect house, the perfect child and the perfect clothes (Twilight, Dynasty, Sex and the City) or being dumb sexual objects for action heroes and male spectators (Crank, Fear Factor, Jersey Shore), I think Lars movies and the women in his stories are much more decent and respectable than those bimbos.

[polybubu4]

Besides, as far as I know, all the directors who have tried to show stories with women as main characters or victims of men cruelty (David Lynch, Hitchcock, Francois Ozon, Ken Russell) have always ended up being accused of misogyny when this was not true.

[polybubu4]

Thirdly, I find it ironic that most of the misogyny accusations come from male moviegoers, whom I think didn't want to understand what they watch, or didn't find what they wanted to watch, or were too upset by the movie's story to admit it in their pages and instead decided to throw stones at Lars.

[polybubu4]

From Breaking the Waves till Antichrist, Lars has tried to show this truth through many different movie genres, without giving a damn if moviegoers find it pleasant to watch or find it too sadistic to watch (as if being pleasant is supposed to be a criteria for making an excellent movie) and if it corresponds to how the conventions of Cinema are supposed tow work.

[polybubu4]

Those women also get the blame because they had the guts to say out loud how men, and our culture, have always treated them. As if they were only gracious creatures with soul and maternal kindness, all the while not having the right to speak or do anything that doesn't revolve around the men interests.

[MrKeepitunderyourhat]

@DinoAgent69 If you like your masterpieces sadistic and misogynist then sure. There are interesting aspects to hs films but his attitude towards women is pretty horrible.