Breaking the Waves

Lars von Trier established his reputation as one of the most exciting—and provocative—filmmakers on the planet with this megaton meditation on faith, sexuality, and redemption. In a revelatory, Oscar-nominated performance, Emily Watson plays Bess, a troubled, zealously religious young woman living in the Scottish Highlands for whom sex with strangers becomes a twisted path to spiritual salvation after an accident paralyzes her oil-rig-worker husband (Stellan Skarsgård). Beneath the eyebrow-raising conceit is a profound humanist heart that yields, in the stunning climax, a moment of cinematic grace evoking none other than von Trier’s filmmaking idol, Carl Theodor Dreyer.