Not a movie review, just an afterthought
Lars Von Trier's film will be painful to watch. There are no gardens, no birds' voices, only despicable behaviors in the world. An article once gave him a title: Master Ling Chi's Humanity. I think this title is quite appropriate. In his films I have seen, the protagonists are all women, and the endings are all tragic. It's misogynistic, I personally don't agree with that. On the contrary, I think it is through his films that he reminds people of the torture women suffer in this world. And "Breaking the Waves" tells such a story.
The story of "Breaking the Waves" is quite simple. Let me briefly describe it: Beth is a devout Christian who believes in the power of love and the power of faith. She loves an oil miner and gets married. Since the oil miner needed to go out to work, Beth couldn’t live without him, so she prayed to God to let him go home (she saw her husband’s co-worker came back early because of an injury, so she prayed more or less hope that her husband would come back with some injuries. Family). But I didn't expect that my husband was really injured and came back, but the injury was a bit big: he was paralyzed.
Beth was in pain, but she was willing to do everything for her husband, including his husband's perverted demands. At this time, the whole world is using various names to ask Beth to choose according to her own values. In the name of love, in the name of reason, in the name of caring, in the name of family, in the name of religion, and so on.
In the end Beth was ruined by the world and she died. When she most needed the world, friends, family, religion to comfort her and protect her, these places closed their doors and rejected her. Finally she died. Even so, the local church would curse her to hell after her death.
In the whole movie, Beth doesn't hurt anyone or even really hate anyone. She has established a God in her heart. Talking to myself in a Socratic way, I think it's Beth's inner reflection. Her last words were: It's all my fault. What was it that made such a pious and kind girl end up like this? In my opinion, the whole world.
So there is such a line in the movie, it is written: The cause of death of the deceased (referring to Beth) is kindness?
As the saying goes, good people are bullied by others. Kindness in this world is basically equivalent to suffering. The world wants to take something from you every moment, how can a kind, undefended girl get a good life. It's hard. If good people can live in a society that cherishes kindness, maybe their fate will be good. But does our society now cherish kindness? There are some very selfless, kind-hearted people that we sometimes think of in the movies and say they are stupid. Why? Because we believe in our bones that "people are not for themselves, and the world will be punished".
At the end of the movie, above the oil rig, a bell that is not found in the holy church (the church at the beginning of the movie, there is no bell) rings. This is a miracle. Because Beth's husband took her body away from the town that didn't love her for a sea burial. Perhaps we can understand that the bell rang for the little remaining kindness of her husband.
This movie is set in 1996. I feel that in this movie, "Director Feng" is quite gentle, especially at the end, it seems to praise the kindness that has not been completely extinguished. But after a few movies I watched, such as "Dogtown", "Dancer in the Dark", "The Antichrist", "Women Addict" and "The Melancholy", these films basically lost this trace of tenderness. Especially "Dancer in the Darkness".
I'm a bit pessimistic myself, so Director Feng's films are very appetizing, as if I've found the true god...
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