Change Your Image
choochooman7
Reviews
Breaking the Waves (1996)
Evil Romantic Drama from Cinema's Premier Sadist
"Breaking the Waves" is an emotionally potent (though rather heavy) romantic drama for its first half and then a cruel exercise in sadistic torture for its second. What starts as a relatively normal drama about a newly married couple struck by tragedy when the husband is paralyzed in an oil rig accident transforms into something much more intense, upsetting and emotionally manipulative. Von Trier is obviously known as a provocateur, and this film is no different. I guess what surprises me is that most people seem generally moved by this film. While I'd agree with that in relation to its first half, which feels very genuine and humanist, it's second half is something else entirely.
For a long time it's about the undying power of love in the face of physical hardships and it is very touching. Then one scene changes the films entire course and sends an already very heavy emotionally draining drama straight into the pits of hell. Character actions stop making sense, our protagonist goes down an easily avoidable path of self- destruction in a misguided attempt to save her husband, and the audience is dragged through the mud in increasingly uncomfortable, and sometimes absurd ways. By the time the wife decides to go back a second time to this mysterious rape boat owned by Udo Kier as a means of curing her husband (it's as odd as it sounds), you know you're not really watching the same film.
I've enjoyed many of Von Trier's movies, and while this review might sound on the contrary, I enjoyed this one a lot too. I watched it on blu ray and it looked fantastic. Say what you will of Von Trier's visual aesthetic (which, with its grainy hand-held photography, is admittedly exhausting), the new high definition transfer really brings out the depth and raw beauty in his images. It is not a sloppy looking film as some have argued.
What is most unsettling about Breaking the Waves is how it just kind of dramatically explodes halfway through, and while I don't really find it very moving (it's too sick and mean-spirited to feel very genuine, especially it's appalling "happy" ending), it is fascinating and absorbing all the way through. I don't think it quite works, but I appreciate its willingness to take the audience on an excruciating journey and let them ponder on such interesting topics as religious faith and the power (or absence) of God. Emily Watson is a revelation and Bess is a fantastic character. Even when Von Trier manipulates the narrative in the cruelest and most unnecessary ways just to further torture this poor woman, she still anchors the entire film. I do feel like the second half betrays her character to some degree, but it's still a perfectly modulated performance from beginning to end. She has two standout scenes in the second half that I find very troubling, but also undeniably powerful.
My final point is that Lars Von Trier is insane and while this is one of his more normal looking movies, it is anything but. Proceed with caution.
Antropophagus (1980)
Not good, but works in spite of itself?
Anthropophagus (or The Grim Reaper, which is a cooler title) is a mostly terrible, unspectacular, and uneventful horror film that slowly stalls through it's non-plot, with some minor chasing and bloodshed during its brief conclusion. On most grounds, it is an undeniable failure. While it features the same goofy problems of every Italian horror flick from this period (terrible dubbing, bland acting in service of non-characters, and a story and sequence of events that don't seem to have been thought out in any logical fashion), this film creates a bigger sin than others of its ilk; it's about absolutely nothing for most of its scant runtime. Most Italian splatter flicks from this era are garbage, but entertaining garbage, and occasionally well-shot and insane garbage. But this film seems to exist in some sort of narrative black hole.
The film follows a group of 6 boring tourists who travel to a small island for some bland fun: Tisa Farrow (who was briefly bitten by the acting bug just like her look-a-like sister Mia minus having, you know, any talent and never becoming famous), this guy who I think is supposed to be the male lead, but he doesn't do much and disappears for the entire last act of the movie (only to show up in the last 5 seconds to save the day!), this other guy who looks EXACTLY like the other guy, even down to having the same face and wearing the exact same clothes, he has a pregnant wife (uh oh!), this guy who is younger than the other two guys who falls in love with Tisa Farrow's charm and beauty, and Zora Kerova who completes the pointless love triangle by being in love with younger guy. Zora also acts as the one person who has a bad feeling about their trip to the island, as every one of these movies requires the crazy hysterical skeptic who turns out to be right about the evil amongst them. It's an easy way to work around characterization.
Anyway, after an underwhelming opening kill, it takes the film almost an hour before the killer shows up and one of the central cast members is killed. An hour. It's amazing how long the characters are safe for in this film. They wander around, sleep in a spooky house during a thunderstorm, and wander around some more outside, and everyone is always A-OK, the killer is no where in sight. And then BOOM thunder reveals he's in the house with young guy and requisite blind girl. And the biggest surprise is that the cannibal maniac is actually kind of scary, genuinely.
But his brief first appearance past the halfway mark of the film turns into another lengthy absence and he disappears for another half hour (!) only to show up again for the last 10 mins. D'Amato must have been going for a less is more approach, and normally I'd agree, but when the rest of the film is so static and uneventful and not particularly effective at sustaining any consistent mood or dread (though there are occasional moments that are decent at building this), it seems like an odd choice. D'Amato, the epitome of the lowest dreck of Italian cinema, and from what I read more interested in the business side of filmmaking than the artistic, either was genuinely trying to make a spooky film that didn't rely on only gore and sex (in fact, there's no sex or nudity to speak of), or they had no budget and most of the film is filler. There's no doubt the film is meandering and boring for 90% of its runtime, and the characters somehow feel like mannequins AND are blandly over-developed ("I sometimes work at a TV studio" "I'm in pharmacy, only 2 more tests and I have my degree").
So it's a waste of time....except that killer is eerie! He's barely in the movie, but maybe that makes his appearance more effective. The make-up work is on the cheap side (as is all the gore), so some shots of him look better than others. But I must admit the chase/well climax kind of works because he is genuinely intimidating and threatening looking, and the music is actually kind of cool. It's an odd film because it is SO bland and uneventful, it doesn't seem right to suddenly have the cast be attacked by a giant scary madman with a gross face. A cast this minor and a plot this scant and atmosphere this lacking should feature a predictably lame villain, but in this case he's actually scary. And that well climax is a cool idea and is pretty suspenseful, though it doesn't milk the idea to its full potential, and then is kind of ruined by the film's stupidly abrupt ending.
And disappointingly, most of the characters get off easy and get pretty minor deaths (except of course for the pregnant woman whose fate is the only one in bad taste, therefore it's the only memorable one). Zora Kerova is practically killed humanely for this type of movie (merely gets her throat slit, off screen I should add).
So it's almost a complete waste of time, except for that killer, who fascinates me. He's like an uncontrollable, rogue element who doesn't seem to belong in the film, which is what makes him so off-putting and eerie. He doesn't conceivably belong in the movie; he's too creepy of a killer for a movie this uninvolving and pedestrian. So in that way, the movie stayed with me, despite 90% being a real slog. Is it worth it? That depends on whether one wants to put the time in to watch a worthless film with an underused but uniquely unsettling killer. He deserves to be in a better film. Anthropophagus just screams for a remake.