In what begins as a story about Bess, a mentally-ill (or cognitively challenged) woman who marries Jan, an oilman, Breaking the Waves (1996) is a film that ends on a distinctively religious note that is nothing short of miraculous. The viewer is meant to be skeptical concerning the authenticity of Bess's spirituality, especially as seems delusional in having two-way conversations with God. Even as one of her prayerful petitions seems perhaps of having been granted when Jan returns from the oil rig to Bess, albeit with Jan paralyzed from an accident, the overwhelming view of the characters in the story, including Jan, is that, as Bess's physician asks Bess, "Do you really think you have so much power?" Bess is blaming herself for Jan's serious medical condition. She could reply, "It's God's power, not mine," but she is slow. Yet she can love, unconditionally. When Jan urges Bess to sleep with other men then tell him about the experiences so he will have the will to live, Bess complies and is summarily kicked out of her church. Even Bess's mother, with whom Bess lives, locks the door. The church elders and the minister are judgmental hypocrites who presume that they can consign a person to hell. Even so, Bess's trust in God as a matter of faith continues, and she sacrifices her life by willingly submitting herself to a sadistic sailor so that God might then heal Jan. Meanwhile, the unbelievers are trying to get Bess to a mental hospital, given her "delusion." On the morning after Jan and his friends on the rig drop Bess's body into the sea, one of the friends wakes Jan to come outside and hear bells ringing even as radar shows nothing out there. The viewer now knows not only that God performed a miracle on Jan, for he is walking around and even back on the rig, but also that Bess's faith is vindicated as heaven's bells miraculously are chiming. The burial followed by bells ringing at sunrise reflects the story of Jesus' passion. The overall message seems to be that we mortals don't know as much as we think we do about God's ways, even if we do happen to have power in the governance of a church.
The full essay is at "Breaking the Waves."
