Beth, an insecure, neurotic, sensitive, and abnormal woman, is a typical Lars von Trier heroine. The ideas and values in Von Trier's mind are always carried and expressed with the help of extreme character psychology and personality. Of course, this is because his ideas are equally extreme.
The film starts with a sweet wedding. It is divided into 8 chapters in total. This is Von Trier's signature mode. Chapters are used to prompt the direction of the plot and the psychological changes of the characters. The so-called step by step, the chapter falls into the abyss. . Beth is in love with Ion, an oil worker, and her marriage is a sweet and ordinary life. Beth lying next to Ion, listening to Ion's snoring, smiling shy and happy is the sweetest moment in the film. The display of fragments of life constantly outlines Beth's love and dependence on Ion, and there is only Ion in her world, 100%, without a single vacancy. All the emotions, all the disappointments and joys are because of Ion, her life is Ion. As Ion is injured and paralyzed in a work accident, the story takes a turn, and Beth's love for Ion, instead of waning, becomes more frenetic and irrational.
Ion, who is paralyzed, has lost his ability to exercise and lies in bed all day long, and has not yet escaped the clutches of death. He needs to continue to operate to prolong his life. It was hard, painful, and meant Ion was incapacitated. Sex is the source of life, the most direct embodiment of the will to life, and the spirit of Dionysus praised by Nietzsche. Without sex, life will wither from the inside out. In order to continue the desire to live, Ion asked Beth to find another lover, to have sex with other men and tell him the process. This is an extreme and disrespectful request, but it is also Ion's way of rediscovering his will to life. Using Beth's body and talking about the pleasure of regaining sex, the pleasure of life, can keep him alive. want. So Beth, the woman whose heart was filled with Ion, began the road of self-sacrifice to save her husband's desire for life. She was seduced by stripping naked in front of the doctor, but was rejected, so she made up the story of sex with the doctor in front of Ion. She handjobs an old man on the bus, then gets out of the bus and vomits. She is constantly having sex with strangers in pain, just to save her lover's life. She kept praying to the God of faith to love the lives of others and asking the justification of her actions, and every time God would tell her the right answer through her mouth. Dressing herself up as a prostitute to seduce men in bars, she became a secular woman, humiliated by the children of the town, kicked out of the church by the priest, and turned away by her mother. It was the sister-in-law and the doctor who really cared about her, but they had to send her to a mental hospital in order to stop Beth's crazy behavior, and it was her lover who signed the agreement. She had promiscuity with the sailors on the ship, only to escape due to the violence of the sailors. Then she saw her comatose lover in the hospital being rushed to the emergency room. For Beth, the deterioration of her lover's condition was due to her escape on the ship, so she went to the dangerous ship again to save her lover , as a result, she was severely injured until she died. She saved her lover's life with her own life, and after her death, Ion miraculously recovered to the point where he could walk on crutches. What seemed to be absurd at this moment made sense, it was a miracle, it was the will of God, in the name of love. Finally, the bell in the sky told the world that Beth had entered heaven, and the priest had cursed the dusty woman to go to hell. The final bell is a ruthless mockery and humiliation of this arrogant and arrogant act of man as the earthly representative of God's will. Beth's pure soul filled with love under the dusty exterior is her essence. Ion looks at the heaven ringing the bell with relief. The world doesn't understand Beth's love, but fortunately there is God.
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