FILM ETHICS: BREAKING THE WAVES(Lars Von Trier,1996)

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Student ID Number:(9-digit number): 161046068 Module CODE and TITLE: FLM6207 - FILM AND ETHICS Title of Coursework: Film Ethics in Breaking the Waves Essay no: 1 Number of words written: 3845 Module Organiser: Libby Saxton Seminar Tutor (if applicable): Libby Saxton

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‘’Human beings operate from a conscious moral center, an ethically capable ego’’ (Lisa Downing and Libby Saxton, 2010:2). The ethical turn in film studies accelerated the exploration not only of the content but, also the form of films in ethical terms. It also, encouraged readings of the ethical relationship between film and spectatorship. One of the directors that has received critical attention in the field of film ethics in the category of narrative cinema is Lars Von Trier. Main ethical premise of studying his films is the morality of ‘looking on’ outlined by the contractual nature of Lars Von Trier’s manifesto. Breaking the Waves (1996) is part of Lars Von Trier’s Golden Heart Trilogy including moreover, The Idiots (1998) and Dancer in the Dark (2000). This essay will explore the ethical issues that arise in the filmmaking and film viewing experience of Breaking the Waves, the moral responsibility that Lars Von Trier has towards its fellow community of filmmakers, actors and audience in pursuing truth and the morality behind the actions of the characters within the fictional world.

Breaking the Waves on a first layer of interpretation stages ethics in the battle between good and evil, virtue and vice. Richard Rushton in Cinema after Deleuze: Recent Elements of the Time-Image points out that in Lars Von Trier’s films, it is impossible to distinguish between good and evil as he ‘’offers us images freed from judgement’’ (Rushton, 2012: 140). By exploring the actions and words of the two main character Bess and Jan, I will test to which extent Breaking the Waves belongs to non-judgmental cinema and what are the ethical implications of this type of cinema. The whole film is in fact a game that Lars Von Trier constructs in which the status of characters shifts between the two ethical poles constantly in their relation with other characters and the environment.

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In the context of the Scottish Highlands in the 1970s, in a highly religious isolated community, Bess McNeill (Emily Watson) and Jan (Stellan Skarsgård) are real people with flaws, not condemned as being ‘bad’ or ‘good’. After a quick marriage experience, Jan has to return to work to the oil rings far from the hills of the community and Bess has to wait for him. Felling in love for the first time, Bess is unstable emotionally and not being able to stand the distance between her and Jan. She prays to God to make him return faster. Jan has an accident in the oil rings trying to save one of his friends and suffers from serious brain injuries.

As there are no signs of recovery and the doctors speculate that he will stay paralyzed for his whole life or even die, Jan persuades Bess to sleep with other man and describe him the stories. He highlights that this would be the only way to keep him alive, with stories of love.

Ironically these stories are not stories of love as Bess pushes herself into situations of rape.

She believes that these sexual encounters are improving Jan’s health as established in her mind due to the positive synchronous occurrence of the two in some of her early acts. As she states to the doctor of the clinic ‘’I don't make love with them. I make love with Jan, and I save him from dying’’.

Bess has many virtues, she can love unconditionally both her husband and God and moreover, tries to transcend her strict religious environment for the greater good. However, the community sees Bess dressing provocatively, following men, having sex in exterior spaces and the gossip probably spread out. The climax of Bess’ ‘shameful’ walk is when she enters the church with short red skirt, black boots and tights, loose hair and a cut shirt and starts speaking about love while everybody is staring at her. At this moment the community decides to cast her out. Her public speech in a place that only men were allowed to express their beliefs loud, is a radical act that goes against the order of the community and that of

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patriarchy. As the community and even her mother abandons her, as even the children of the community are bullying her, Bess becomes isolated in an already isolated place. This will define her next actions as apart from her sister-in-law Dodo, she is left with herself and God. She continues getting involved more radically in threatening situations as if she has nothing else to lose. Therefore, there is judgement from characters within the fictional world of the film towards Bess and this judgement defines or accelerates the steps that lead to her death.

On the contrary, there is no judgment from the director towards her. Bess is person that has been extremely moral amplified even more from her childish nature, waiting to marry to have a sexual relationship with a man. The doctor in the end has to address the community, describe Bess’ mental condition that led to her death. He is nervous and corrects for an instance his previous statements ‘’if you were to ask me again to write..the conclusion, then... instead of writing neurotic or, um, psychotic uh, I might... just, use a word like... good ". This game that Lars Von Trier is playing around the morality of his characters has ambiguous ending as the doctor then is asked by the judge ‘’You wish the records of this court to state that, in your medical opinion, the deceased was suffering from being good? Perhaps this was the psychological defect that led her to her death!’’ and he replies ‘’No. Of course, not’’. Even if the doctor does not fulfill the belief in his statement, the audience is aware that indeed Bess was suffering from being good, good to her husband that loved so much to the point to sacrifice herself. Bess was an altruistic person, acting selflessly and believing that only good exists around her. Even if she had these sexual relationships she was the most innocent person in community, in a setting of supposedly religious good people. Lars Von Trier opens a debate in which rejecting the religious connotations of sinner for what Bess has done and replacing it with the exact opposite ‘good’, presents the positive extreme as something that

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should be questioned. He lastly, provides justice to her presentation as good person through the last shot of the film, the church bells, symbolic imagery of heaven.

There is judgement from the director however, towards the close-minded strictness that encircles Protestantism and religion in general. The portrayal of the old religious men that exercise power over community and the Calvinist church is bleak. They always wear black clothes, remain unmoved emotionally and maintain a strict facial expression. From really early in the film, after the wedding in the church, Jan’s friends ask the priests to ring the bells of the church and they declare that they don’t need bells to worship God. The priests are the columns of the community in which Bess lives and they prove they do not care about the individuals of their community in a deeper human way if they sin. When one of them finds Bess laying in front of the church weeping because the kids, product of the religious environment were bullying her, he just ignores her because a sinner does not deserve protection. The priests do not sympathize with Bess as they perform the funeral according to their beliefs, condemning her to hell as a sinner. Dodo’s statement on that case raises the stakes for criticism as she exclaims ‘’Not one of you has the right to consign Bess to hell!’’. By defining the religious outline of the character’s environment, by introducing evident in all instances the belief of the sin and that of the sinner, Lars Von Trier questions the audience’s moral beliefs on good and bad from the point of view of religion. The religious community reminds us that being accepted into heaven or condemned into hell is being performed by agencies in power and by subjective definitions of good and bad, virtue and vice.

It is difficult to distinguish between good and evil when it comes to Jan who loves Bess but, he reacts in a more ambiguous, stable and strong-willed way than her. Close to the end, he signs with hesitation the paper that would lead Bess to the psychiatric clinic and he would

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never see her again. This action shows that he can control his emotions with logic for the good of Bess. The fact that he insists Bess should have sex with other men is morally ambiguous and non-judgmental by the director. The doctor and Dodo judge Jan for his desire, stating that he is affected by his condition, due to his medications and his injured brain. When Jan is speaking to Bess in the hospital on the contrary, by his performance we realize that actually he loves Bess to the extent in which he doesn’t want to restrict her sexual life due to his condition, even if he says that this would be for his own good. This initial premise becomes ambiguous as the story continues due to Jan’s confession that when people are close to death they are polluted, started thinking evil. He writes in a paper to Bess ‘’Let me die. I'm evil in head!’’. Jan seems a morally good person but, as his condition is deteriorating he starts acting in a way that lead to Bess’ crucifixion. His shaky writing character and facial expressions for that given moment portray him as he personifies evil. In the end, he is devasted by Bess’ death as he has recovered by the previously ‘evil’ state. It is unclear if Jan’s supposedly evil spiritual power condemned Bess to her death. Its somehow a contract between life and death and its ambiguous if the good won the evil, Bess’ love won the disease or the evil won the good, Jan intentionally got his life back by performing a series of choices that determined Bess’ death.

It is important to mention that Breaking the Waves was Lars Von Trier’s first film made after presentation of the Dogma ’95 manifesto, composed by Lars Von Trier, a contract of filmmaking rules outlining the responsibility towards truth, against Hollywood’s superficial narratives and aesthetics. Aaron Michele, professor on film in the American and Canadian Studies department at the University of Birmingham, in Spectatorship: the power of looking on states that the agreement of Dogma ‘95 transcends from the initial circle of filmmakers

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that sign it and exercise it to the audience, in her words it ‘’impacts filmmaking and filmtaking’’ (2007:99). In Dogma ’95 Lars Von Trier states ‘’My supreme goal is to the force the truth out of my characters and settings. I swear to do so by all means necessary and at the cost of any good taste and any aesthetic considerations’’ (von Trier, quoted in Aaron:99).

According to Aaron, truth for Lars Von Trier has to be interpreted as the quest opposite to the illusion of the ‘’cosmeticized, decadent and superficial trickery of mainstream cinema’’ (Aaron, 2007:99).

Moving to the ethical frameworks of film spectatorship, beyond the judgement and distinction of good and evil, Breaking the Waves relates to ethical experience by means of self-reflexivity and due to its ethical need to pursue and reveal reality to its audience. Horeck and Kendall in the book The new extremism in cinema (2013:1) note that the films of the new extremism, in which I argue Breaking the Waves belongs due to its presentation of flesh, blood, sex, reveal the need to rethink contemporary spectatorship. These films disturb with their ‘’highly self-reflexive appeal to the spectator’’ (Horeck and Kendall, 2013:1) and ‘‘interrogate, challenge and often destroy the notion of a passive or disinterested spectator’’ (Horeck and Kendall, 2013:2). Breaking the Waves establishes the ‘’impossibility of neutrality in spectatorship’’ (Aaron,2007:107) by juxtaposing morally charged images which makes the audience feel uncomfortable, unable to enjoy due to images of suffering. As Aaron states ‘’Film spectatorship is inherently hooked on the real or imagined suffering of others’’ (Aaron, 2007:112). It is at these moments of suffering that the spectator awakens ethically. Similarly, Lilie Chouliaraki in the The Spectatorship of Suffering states that ‘No other spectacle can raise the ethical question of what to do so compellingly as suffering’ (Chouliaraki, 2006). Jan felling unconscious in the oil rings, his struggle to move his body, the surgeries in his brain, Bess

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crying when being separated from Jan or when she is being bullied at her most vulnerable by children that throw rocks or while having sex with a stranger or when she realizes the sailors are dangerous and approach her with the knife are some of the many images of suffering that define Breaking the Waves. Self-reflexivity in a similar way to suffering establishes the impossibility of neutral spectatorship through the close-ups of Bess and in the scenes of the chapters that divide the story. Self-reflexivity is when a film offers cues of self-awareness and reminds the spectator the film watching experience, triggering further critical response and reflection. Self-reflexive moments carry antinarrative function and subjectivity. According Maria Poulaki self-referential models and self-reflexivity were particularly famous in the 1960s and 1970s, a chronological context that reminds that of the film, and the post-Marxisist tradition in film theory engaged at that time, with the anti-mimetic character of selfreflexivity that according to the Breachtian phrase ‘’broke with the illusionism of the spectacle’’ (Poulaki,2011:2). Self-reflexive cinema adopts a political stance, against the manipulation of meaning by agencies, against the illusion of the spectacle, towards the freedom of interpretation by spectators.

The absence of score music that usually, in Hollywood conventional storytelling manipulates our emotional response serves the purpose of non-judgmental cinema that was discussed above and moreover, in the instances when it is present, it introduces self-reflexivity. The music is evident only in the change of chapters, in shots in which the characters are not present. When the priests ask Bess to tell them one thing of real value that the outsiders have brought with them she replies their music. From this moment the 1970s pop music becomes a structural motif that separates the sections of the story. Music is an artificial device of fragmentation and orientation. Lars Von Trier being critical in his manifesto of Dogma 95

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about music being added to films in post-production, within his film is critical of music being used apart from artificially implemented moments of structure. In this way, he expands further into his manifesto, debating the use of music in films. In a wider context this is the manipulation and superficiality that Hollywood filmmakers use throughout their narrative. By breaking his own rules, Lars Von Trier proposes a ‘meta-manifesto’ on the aesthetics and ethics of cinema by raising questions such as where should score music being used in films or what does score music indicates in films? Aaron states that Lars Von Trier’s films ‘’work as visual enactments of the manifesto, not just abide but debate them and the doctrine they may mean to express’’(Aaron,2007:100). Lars Von Trier questions his own authority as an agency who manipulates meaning and, in this way, he questions Hollywood filmmaking which epitomizes the use of color grading and music to create mood.

Another stylistic parameter that reflects on the manifesto, its desire for truth and the selfreflexive element is the cinematography. The camera is moving freely between people and locations, hand-held, uncomfortably close to the main characters. Hand-held camera goes against techniques of intensive continuity editing, really famous in Hollywood postproduction where they assembly a high number of shots from different angles. A close-up in Hollywood filmmaking strives to present us the emotional inner world of the character and build up empathy with identification mechanisms. On the other hand, Bess’s close-up, looking on the audience breaks the boundaries that separate us from the screen and the story. We are not identifying with her as she acts in a way that transcends that of a fictional character.

She is not looking for our empathy but, she is expressing in relation to us, she is present with us, she knows and we know she is being filmed, similar to a documentary. Her look to the audience renders visible in Aaron words (2007: 98) ‘’the contractual nature of spectatorship’’

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that is in the heart of the Dogme 95. Since the boundaries fade away, we enter a contract with the director, the one of Dogma 95 that does not only include the filmmakers but the spectators too. In this way, the spectator is aware that what will follow pursues truth, awakens from the illusion of entertainment and of the comfortable position of watching a spectacle. This position of the spectator ‘’looking on’’(Aaron,2007:106) the film carries ethical responsibilities. The first of this kind of close-up occurs really early in the film, in the first scene after Bess exits the church in which she got the approval for her marriage and for this reason, from early Lars Von trier declares that the contract as Aaron points out ‘’has to be seen as part of the film experience, representing and informing the relationship between spectator and text’’ (Aaron,2007:99). The audience has the right to stop watching what follows because the film has just started, it’s all about ‘’expectation, foreknowledge and consent’’ (Aaron,2007:99). This open dialogue with the spectator is a political act as it highlights that truth has power when it arises from the collective and not the individual(Aaron,207:105). Then, the self-reflexive close-up of Bess while she speaks to herself-to God-in the boat before her crucifixion acts as a second reminder of contradisavowal, against the denial of the spectator. This a reminder that the spectator cannot escape into a fake happy ending. The end has been foreshadowed already and the spectator is a present bystander while it slowly happens thus, the spectator is given responsibility. In Aaron’s terms what arises in this moment is ‘’a kind of collective complicity’’ due to ‘’the removal of the buffers separating the realms’’(Aaron,2007:102) meaning the realm of the filmic reality and realm of the spectator. Aaron concludes that the ethical register of Dogma ’95 lies in these ‘’references to response and responsibility within them’’(Aaron,2007:108).

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Lastly, the ethical responsibility to reveal truth in Breaking the Waves in relation to the performances and setting, the portrayal of the Scottish Calvinist community recall Nagid’s speculations on World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism (2011) about Atanarjuat (2001). Even if the two are completely different films, Breaking the Waves manages to transcend definitions of fiction and myth, developing an ethnographic character similar to the one of Atanarjuat. The limited geographical boundaries of this community are defined in parallel lines with the limited freedom that the inhabitants share due to close-mindedness and judgment. The portrayal of the setting is almost ethnographic as Lars Von Trier vividly, with naturalistic style and extreme detail presents to us the Scottish Calvinist community, the interiors and exteriors of the church, the priests, their dress code and behavior, the local hospital, the oil rings, the local pub, the telephone booth, the small local buses and so on.

This commitment to reality according to Nagid ‘’translates into ethics of presenting reality as it happens, not representing it’’ (Nagid, 2011:32). Indeed, it is Lars Von Trier’s ethical need to pursue the truth behind the community which is geographically, culturally and religiously defined by true presentations.

Another premise of the ethical responsibility in presenting and not representing reality is the treatment of the physical world that encircles humans. Moullet states ‘’The spectacle of the physical world, the spectacle of the earth is his best terrain of inspiration and if he is attached to the human being, it is only insofar as this human being is attached to the earth’’ (Moullet quoted in Nagid,2011:29). In fact, this premise of cinema in relation to earth is rendered visually in the moment that Bess is getting out of the bus, in the middle of nowhere and watches a rabbit. She is attached to the physical world that surrounds her and responds to it with her facial expression as if this world is giving her signs. In a broader sense the

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characters of the film are clearly attached to their physical world. The isolation caused by the geographical location with the cliffs, the sailors and ships that is the cold and dark water element dividing the land with the unknown, the ominous cloudy weather which fits with the strict religious atmosphere, the oil rings which illustrate the sources of income and the dangers that industrial workers face are all functioning not only as carriers of the action but, as crucial elements that determine the fate of the characters.

Similarly, the performances in combination with the cinematography are so successfully naturalistic, with a sense of the everyday that it fits to say in Nagid’s words that the ‘’actor’s bodily existence slowly migrates from fiction to fact’’(Nagid,2011:29). Nagid expands ‘’the actors’ physical engagement with the performance is thus as much as an engagement with a real context as it is with a film about it’’ (Nagid, 2011:32). As it has been discussed above the contractual nature of the manifesto indicates the responsibility of the actors too in presenting reality. The actors have to engage with the real context of the Calvinist community that Lars Von Trier chooses as a nucleus of his narration. Indeed, the actors managed to perform in such a great extent, abiding authentically with the context that the boundaries between fiction, myth, documentary, ethnographic research, fact and are blurred.

The characters of Breaking the Waves are real people that carry both brightness and darkness, virtue and vice, bad and good qualities because in reality people are complex and multidimensional. This approach of being non-judgmental as a director then and revealing the truth of human nature in its greatest and in its bleakest highlights the premise of Dogma ‘95. One dimensional characters and happy endings are an illusion for Lars Von Trier who with his frank documentary style of hand-held camera, absence and presence dynamics of score music, slow and not superficial build-ups and close-ups of self-reflexive nature

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eliminates the boundaries that divide the spectators with the spectacle. He opens a conversation of political significance between filmmakers, actors and audience, a collective from which the truth will arise by presenting and not representing physical reality. Both the film form and the content of Breaking the Waves can contribute in the debate of cinematic ethics in relation to spectatorship and in the context of non-judgmental cinema and the new extremism movement. As long as, an ‘’ethically capable ego’’ exists in human beings, it is necessary to examine films that are cultural products and presentations of the truth of life within the framework of ethics for what applies to films applies in real life. Then it is even more important to question the conscious or unconscious narrative and stylistic choices of filmmakers who contribute in the field of film ethics with the process of creating the product that gives birth to the theoretical analysis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aaron, M. (2007). Spectatorship: the power of looking on. Wallflower Press, [online] pp.98-109.

Available at:

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https://qmplus.qmul.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/668793/mod_resource/content/1/Aaron%2C%20Ethics% 20and%20spectatorship%20%28key%20reading%29.pdf [Accessed 5 May 2018].

Downing, L. and Saxton, L. (2010). Film and ethics: Foreclosed Encounters. London/New York: Routlege Taylor & Francis Group, p.2. [online] Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=U0GOAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=ethical+turn+in+film +studies&source=bl&ots=3vrF8L4DqY&sig=uz7WzZqwMHY4wOGbCoqsgXqHB0A&hl=en&sa=X&ved =0ahUKEwixtOLe0PPaAhUJDsAKHbafA4YQ6AEIVDAJ#v=onepage&q=ethical%20turn%20in%20film% 20studies&f=false [Accessed 5 May 2018].

Horeck, T. and Kendall, T. (2013). The new extremism in cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp.1-2.

Chouliaraki, L. (2006). The Spectatorship of Suffering. London: Sage Publications. [online] Available at: http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/iccm/files/iccm/Chouliaraki,%20Lilie%20(2008)%20%20The%20Spectatorship%20of%20Suffering.pdf [Accessed 5 May 2018].

Nagib, L. (2011). World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism. New York/London: Continuum, [online] pp.27-41.

Available at: https://qmplus.qmul.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/668803/mod_resource/content/1/Nagib%2C%20The%20 end%20of%20the%20other%20%28key%20reading%29.pdf [Accessed 5 May 2018].

Rushton, R. (2012) Lars von Trier: A Cinema against Ethics, Cinema after Deleuze . London: Continuum, [online] pp. 139–45 Available at: file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/Rushton,%20A%20cinema%20against%20ethics%20(2).pdf [Accessed 5 May 2018] Poulaki, M. (2011). Self-reflexivity, description, and the boundaries of narrative cinema. [online]pp.2.

Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9e46/6017e84f1a48fe8bb25ba34fc81bedfa3337.pdf [Accessed 6 May 2018].

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