The Revolutionary and the Revelatory

02/06/2025

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       Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg were co-signatories of Dogme ’95 but the key films they made after signing it - Breaking the Waves for Von Trier, Festen for Vinterberg- are projects with antithetical aims, despite in many ways a similar sensibility. In Breaking the Waves, Von Trier sets his film in a remote, religious Scottish island community (shot on Skye), while Vinterberg locates his at an upmarket family hotel in the Danish countryside (filmed at Skjoldenæsholm manor house). We could initially assume that their response to the given communities they focus upon is the same, with both directors seeking to tease out contradictions and hypocrisies in the milieus they examine. But this might be to misconstrue a fundamental difference between these important works, with Von Trier exploring the transcendence of the community, and Vinterberg the transformation of it. 

           In Breaking the Waves, Bess (Emily Watson) is a young woman described at various stages as stupid (and even says it of herself), who may well suffer from deficiencies of the intellect, and who is certainly capable of both naivety and a divided personality. She marries an offshore worker Jan (Stellan Skarsgard), and prays for his return. While most of the others in this island locale are devout, and her friend and the doctor outsiders, who respect the community’s values without especially agreeing with them, Bess encapsulates these values in their purest, undiluted form. When she prays to God she speaks as if to a close acquaintance, illustrating a split personality as she moves between two voices; her own and God’s. Others like her mother and grandfather are what we might call socially devout - they obey the word of God within the communal assumptions that are made about his role in their lives. The only true believer would appear to be Bess. And so she prays for Jan’s return and ideally for it to be permanent. It comes to pass — Jan is injured on the rig when a huge pipe falls on him — and he returns incapacitated. Bess has him exactly where she wants him - at home with her - but maybe not quite as she intended, as Jan cannot even leave his bed. 

    There is, of course, much melodrama and absurdity in Von Trier’s exploratio,n but what we wish to extract from it is that Bess isn’t at all a transformative presence in this community. She isn’t an antithetical force in this oppressive environment; she is its starkest manifestation. "It’s been a long time. Most unlike you”, the vicar says when he is surprised that she hasn’t been to church. She is a local girl who has swallowed God whole. Others have nibbled away at the biblical texts to allow for the maximum amount of rectitude, evident in the Elders' muttering proclamations. She is even capable of condemnation equal to the most judgmental — when her friend Dodo (Katrin Cartlidge) questions Bess’s claim that by sleeping with other men she is making Jan get better, Bess says “You don’t come from around here do you?” She adds - “Why don’t you move then? Your husband is dead.” It is offered in the harshest of tones and shows a woman defending her community. At the same time, at this stage of the film, she is doing the very thing that not surprisingly leads to the condemnation of some and the ridicule of others as she has sex with various men. She does so assuming her deeds will lead to Jan's recovery.  She isn't wrong, it would seem. 

    Some might see the end of the film as the community transformed. At the beginning, one of Jan’s friends and colleagues asks about the bells and an Elder says,  “our church has no bells.” At the end of the film in Von Trier’s absurd miracle, after Bess has been murdered by foreign sailors, and Jan making a remarkable recovery, Von Trier shows us a shot of the bells in the sky looking down on the oil rig. Does this indicate a change in the milieu as the church will now have bells? This would perhaps be presumptuous. The bells don’t look down on the village but on the oil rig, no doubt many miles away. The only people hearing and seeing these bells are Jan and his co-workers. The village will remain the same. There hasn’t been transformation; there has been transcendence. The viewer might choose to reject this miracle, but this is what the director offers us. The film proposes that the gift Bess claims she possesses (belief) has led to Jan’s recovery and her presence, perhaps in the bells that now chime and look down on her husband.

             In Festen, there is no such miracle, even if the haste with which the film registers its transformation is surprising. As the family gather for the father’s 60th birthday, one of the sons, Christian (Ulrich Thomsen) announces to the various guests that the father should choose one of the two letters he has written. The father picks the one that contains a terrible announcement: the father sexually abused Christian and also his late sister, who recently took her life. Initially, everybody responds not with astonishment at what the father has done but at what the son is doing — ruining an important occasion with his claims. People absorb the remarks into polite society and all but ignore Christian’s impolite accusations. But in time, over the next couple of days, there are further claims, evidence is produced and the workers in the family hotel, responsible for feeding and attending to the large number of guests, help Christian oust his father. By the end, the father’s commands will be disobeyed (nobody will pass him the port) and the next morning the younger son Michael (Thomas Bo Larson) asks him to leave so everybody can have their breakfast. The father meekly retreats. 

         It is possible the community in Breaking the Waves will continue as it has been without transformation because Bess offers transcendence. She doesn’t change the milieu; she literally rises above it. We could easily imagine ten years later the Elders are still there doling out the same values, and Bess will be talked of only in hushed, negative whispers. In Festen, we would be astonished to see the father back in the fold except under the most abject of conditions. His place as the patriarch has been displaced, and Christian has removed the power the father has in the world in which he had it not only over the children but over the workers too, while also holding a high-status position among friends and colleagues. All of this has been taken from him, and the film proposes that the younger, liberal generation will now be in control, even if we might have some reservations about some who may yield it.  Michael is happy to eject his father, but only when he knows power has shifted and we might wonder how progressive this brother will be when earlier he had made derogatory comments about the party’s one black guest, his sister’s boyfriend. But change has happened. 

       Looking at the two films together can be instructive: it shows in cinematic form the difference between the revelatory and the revolutionary — the absurd possibility of transcendence; the rapidity of immanent change when something in the community can be used to galvanise a radical shift in perspective. Vinterberg sees the story as one of “the oppression of truth” and this is a “story that has always been there, I think. Or at least as long as the culture, the civilisation has existed.” (The Name of this Book is Dogme 95) It is the film’s combination of exploring old truths with the quiet revolution of a familial situation that may be central to its appeal, as it made double its budget in Denmark cinemas alone. Festen’s truth is brilliantly lower-case; Breaking the Waves seeks it in the higher form that can prove of little use practically, but of immense use in understanding that belief is far removed from the everyday. In Festen, few initially accept Christian’s claims and, no matter the name (and the suggested ghostly presence of his dead sister), he has no reason to prove it through an act of faith. Practical evidence suffices. In Breaking the Waves, evidence is a conceit, Von Trier’s provocative way of making us have faith in the viewing experience he has given us. “I prefer working with extreme ideas” (Sight and Sound) he says. The irony is that von Trier’s extremity may leave the community unchanged, while Vinterberg’s more modest ambitions can suggest radical transformation. Yet between them, the films ask whether we wish to transcend the world or transform it, to demand revelation or revolution. One is possible, the other, impossible - but maybe we need just a little of the former to believe in the latter.

© Tony McKibbin

Tony McKibbin

The Revolutionary and the Revelatory

       Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg were co-signatories of Dogme ’95 but the key films they made after signing it - Breaking the Waves for Von Trier, Festen for Vinterberg- are projects with antithetical aims, despite in many ways a similar sensibility. In Breaking the Waves, Von Trier sets his film in a remote, religious Scottish island community (shot on Skye), while Vinterberg locates his at an upmarket family hotel in the Danish countryside (filmed at Skjoldenæsholm manor house). We could initially assume that their response to the given communities they focus upon is the same, with both directors seeking to tease out contradictions and hypocrisies in the milieus they examine. But this might be to misconstrue a fundamental difference between these important works, with Von Trier exploring the transcendence of the community, and Vinterberg the transformation of it. 

           In Breaking the Waves, Bess (Emily Watson) is a young woman described at various stages as stupid (and even says it of herself), who may well suffer from deficiencies of the intellect, and who is certainly capable of both naivety and a divided personality. She marries an offshore worker Jan (Stellan Skarsgard), and prays for his return. While most of the others in this island locale are devout, and her friend and the doctor outsiders, who respect the community’s values without especially agreeing with them, Bess encapsulates these values in their purest, undiluted form. When she prays to God she speaks as if to a close acquaintance, illustrating a split personality as she moves between two voices; her own and God’s. Others like her mother and grandfather are what we might call socially devout - they obey the word of God within the communal assumptions that are made about his role in their lives. The only true believer would appear to be Bess. And so she prays for Jan’s return and ideally for it to be permanent. It comes to pass — Jan is injured on the rig when a huge pipe falls on him — and he returns incapacitated. Bess has him exactly where she wants him - at home with her - but maybe not quite as she intended, as Jan cannot even leave his bed. 

    There is, of course, much melodrama and absurdity in Von Trier’s exploratio,n but what we wish to extract from it is that Bess isn’t at all a transformative presence in this community. She isn’t an antithetical force in this oppressive environment; she is its starkest manifestation. "It’s been a long time. Most unlike you”, the vicar says when he is surprised that she hasn’t been to church. She is a local girl who has swallowed God whole. Others have nibbled away at the biblical texts to allow for the maximum amount of rectitude, evident in the Elders' muttering proclamations. She is even capable of condemnation equal to the most judgmental — when her friend Dodo (Katrin Cartlidge) questions Bess’s claim that by sleeping with other men she is making Jan get better, Bess says “You don’t come from around here do you?” She adds - “Why don’t you move then? Your husband is dead.” It is offered in the harshest of tones and shows a woman defending her community. At the same time, at this stage of the film, she is doing the very thing that not surprisingly leads to the condemnation of some and the ridicule of others as she has sex with various men. She does so assuming her deeds will lead to Jan's recovery.  She isn't wrong, it would seem. 

    Some might see the end of the film as the community transformed. At the beginning, one of Jan’s friends and colleagues asks about the bells and an Elder says,  “our church has no bells.” At the end of the film in Von Trier’s absurd miracle, after Bess has been murdered by foreign sailors, and Jan making a remarkable recovery, Von Trier shows us a shot of the bells in the sky looking down on the oil rig. Does this indicate a change in the milieu as the church will now have bells? This would perhaps be presumptuous. The bells don’t look down on the village but on the oil rig, no doubt many miles away. The only people hearing and seeing these bells are Jan and his co-workers. The village will remain the same. There hasn’t been transformation; there has been transcendence. The viewer might choose to reject this miracle, but this is what the director offers us. The film proposes that the gift Bess claims she possesses (belief) has led to Jan’s recovery and her presence, perhaps in the bells that now chime and look down on her husband.

             In Festen, there is no such miracle, even if the haste with which the film registers its transformation is surprising. As the family gather for the father’s 60th birthday, one of the sons, Christian (Ulrich Thomsen) announces to the various guests that the father should choose one of the two letters he has written. The father picks the one that contains a terrible announcement: the father sexually abused Christian and also his late sister, who recently took her life. Initially, everybody responds not with astonishment at what the father has done but at what the son is doing — ruining an important occasion with his claims. People absorb the remarks into polite society and all but ignore Christian’s impolite accusations. But in time, over the next couple of days, there are further claims, evidence is produced and the workers in the family hotel, responsible for feeding and attending to the large number of guests, help Christian oust his father. By the end, the father’s commands will be disobeyed (nobody will pass him the port) and the next morning the younger son Michael (Thomas Bo Larson) asks him to leave so everybody can have their breakfast. The father meekly retreats. 

         It is possible the community in Breaking the Waves will continue as it has been without transformation because Bess offers transcendence. She doesn’t change the milieu; she literally rises above it. We could easily imagine ten years later the Elders are still there doling out the same values, and Bess will be talked of only in hushed, negative whispers. In Festen, we would be astonished to see the father back in the fold except under the most abject of conditions. His place as the patriarch has been displaced, and Christian has removed the power the father has in the world in which he had it not only over the children but over the workers too, while also holding a high-status position among friends and colleagues. All of this has been taken from him, and the film proposes that the younger, liberal generation will now be in control, even if we might have some reservations about some who may yield it.  Michael is happy to eject his father, but only when he knows power has shifted and we might wonder how progressive this brother will be when earlier he had made derogatory comments about the party’s one black guest, his sister’s boyfriend. But change has happened. 

       Looking at the two films together can be instructive: it shows in cinematic form the difference between the revelatory and the revolutionary — the absurd possibility of transcendence; the rapidity of immanent change when something in the community can be used to galvanise a radical shift in perspective. Vinterberg sees the story as one of “the oppression of truth” and this is a “story that has always been there, I think. Or at least as long as the culture, the civilisation has existed.” (The Name of this Book is Dogme 95) It is the film’s combination of exploring old truths with the quiet revolution of a familial situation that may be central to its appeal, as it made double its budget in Denmark cinemas alone. Festen’s truth is brilliantly lower-case; Breaking the Waves seeks it in the higher form that can prove of little use practically, but of immense use in understanding that belief is far removed from the everyday. In Festen, few initially accept Christian’s claims and, no matter the name (and the suggested ghostly presence of his dead sister), he has no reason to prove it through an act of faith. Practical evidence suffices. In Breaking the Waves, evidence is a conceit, Von Trier’s provocative way of making us have faith in the viewing experience he has given us. “I prefer working with extreme ideas” (Sight and Sound) he says. The irony is that von Trier’s extremity may leave the community unchanged, while Vinterberg’s more modest ambitions can suggest radical transformation. Yet between them, the films ask whether we wish to transcend the world or transform it, to demand revelation or revolution. One is possible, the other, impossible - but maybe we need just a little of the former to believe in the latter.


© Tony McKibbin