Sexuality and sacrifice

(Note:On Christmas Day, Lars von Trier's latest provocation, ''Nymphomaniac'', will have its first-ever public screening in his native country, Denmark. It could probably be asking for the moon and stars to think that this film will ever grace our own big screens, specially if we consider that, except for ''Dancer in the Dark'', there was never a Von Trier film that had a regular run here. ''Breaking the Waves'' was my initiation into a Von Trier world, having first seen this work in the first edition of Cine Europa back in 1998. Since then, I got hooked on each of the Danish auteur's works. I finally got my own copy of the film a couple of years ago.)

Lars von Trier is one contemporary filmmaker who has no qualms about going to extremes in the service of his craft;he is always willing to transcend the boundaries of his art. It's well and good if his lead performers share the same attitude and goal. What more can you ask for? 

Being "extreme" and "out-of-bounds" doesn't necessarily have to sound "pornographic" and "outrageous" (if what you have in mind are such disguised-as-art excesses like Oshima's "In the Realm of the Senses" and Makavejev's "Sweet Movie"). It may as well have to do with the daringness to tackle crucial and sensitive issues of morality, psychology, individual action and responsibility, and social judgment and acceptance, in such a way that has never been done in the cinema before. (To be fair, though, the aforementioned films were also attempts to tread on infrequently-traversed issues;it's only that over-the-top treatment eventually took the upper hand over well-intentioned substance.) 

Von Trier's "Breaking the Waves", Grand Jury Prize winner at the Cannes International Film Festival, is a liberated cinematic work in the above-mentioned sense, aside from the significant fact that it has a female protagonist who is experiencing a certain kind of moral/psychological quandary and is thus forced to make extreme decisions regarding her extreme situation. 

The film starts off with an extreme close-up of Emily Watson (as Bess), with an impish smile and twinkling eyes, being sternly asked - we eventually learn - by the town clergy questions regarding marriage and her preparedness and capacity for it. To such questions, Bess answers with child-like simplicity and straightforwardness. But why the clergy's doubt and hesitation over her entry into a married life, despite her being at a rightful age? The chapters are just about to open up one by one. 

The Danish director's jittery hand-held camera and Robby Muller's desaturated cinematography, other than being an illustration of what was to become a discernible movement idiom (as can be seen in "The Idiots", Vinterberg's "The Celebration" and Levring's "The King is Alive", though "Breaking" is not included in the Dogma '95 film series), accentuate the precariousness and delicateness of Bess' life, being a child forever trapped in a woman's body, unable to free herself from the encroaching shadows of her parental figures. 

Thus, her marriage to an oil depot worker (Stellan Skarsgard as Jan) is simply beyond the comprehension of almost everyone in the rigid parish community (and so, the seeming "incomprehensibility" of the colors and angles). These people may have every reason to doubt and worry, but what can be more reasonable than the purity and intensity of love that Bess and Jan have for one another? Again, the unadulterated quality of this love is expressed in the desaturated colors (and thus we can see that the framings and photography in the film serve a complex purpose). 

From what was written above, we can further point out that "Breaking" progresses according to the psycho-emotional dynamics of the female protagonist. It is through her actions, feelings and words that refuse to be confined within the limits of convention and normalcy that we follow the film. The film becomes this character, in the deepest sense. 

And as the audacious and unapologetic auteur would have it, he'll put his characters (say, the beleaguered doctors in ''The Kingdom'') in a situation wherein they're inevitably drawn into decisions and actions that are not usually within their "normal" stock of choices and capabilities. 

And it is to be particularly noted that, as far as Bess is concerned, such pivotal moments are in the nature of sexuality, which only planted the seeds of her own undoing, self-destructive as it is self-gratifying. 

Thus, it's the paralysis of Jan during a work accident that serves as a basis for performing an unimaginable self-sacrifice, scandalous for the parish community with its tight-locked moral code because of the sexual liberalism that the act evokes. 

Extreme decisions and incredible sacrifices. Such are the dictums in Von Trier's finest cinematic transgressions.

Lars von Trier:A born provocateur