24 replies to this topic

[Darrel Manson]

Since Alan is encouraging us to starts some threads on some Top 100 films that don't already have them, let there be one on what may be my all time favorite film.

There is so much to discuss in BTW that I'm not sure where to begin. I'll probably ramble a bit. Pick your nit to discuss.

Bess is one of a series of female Christ figures in von Trier films. They are a varied lot: wrongly accused (Selma in Dancer in the Dark, self-emptying (Karen in The Idiots), despised and rejected -- and vengeful (Grace in Dogville). Bess is such a pleasure to encounter, totally loving, committed, will to sacrifice herself. She is the one "who becomes sin who knew no sin."

I fell in love with Bess. Her dirty talking phone call to Jan on the oil rig would have had me jumping into the North Sea and swimming.

I was fascinated with her conversations with God. And I understood them as such, not as some superego within her speaking to herself. And her understanding after a time of silence when God says to her (on her way to the evil ship) "I have always been with you."

This is a superb example of substituionary atonement. (And keep in mind that I don't view atonement in that way.) It is through her stripes that Jan is healed. She is humiliated, degradated, treated as dung. She goes willingly, knowing what is ahead of her.

The church in BTW: This is a bit problematic, but even with its problem it is a challenging picture. This dour Calvinist church is joyless. It serves as the role of Pharisees in the Gospels. When Jan and Bess marry, one of Jan's oil rig friends is waiting for the bells to ring, and is informed that there are no bells at this church. What an awful indictment of what some churches have become!

Spoiler

(note: it was watching this scene, about the third time I watched the film, when I finally understood the ending.

I also love the scene at the reception where the roughneck chugs a beer and crushes the can, which then leads one of the church people to pour a glass of lemonade, down in and crush the glass.

I'm a bit surprised that this came in at #50 on the list, since the criterion for votings was Definitely belongs, probably belongs, etc. I cannot not fathom why someone would say it doesn't belong, and think that even "probably belongs" may be dissing the film.

[Darryl A. Armstrong]

Alan:

A great film that I may never watch again.

Heh. and I was just thinking, "I need to watch this one again." This was the first Von Trier film I saw and although I remember being very moved by it when I saw it, the details have faded.

[MattPage]

My Capsule Review for the top 100.

Matt

[gigi]

She was so moved by the film that she called me, in tears, to discuss it. (That's never happened before, or since.)

When I went to watch it a bit later, I found it profound, and disturbing. A great film that I may never watch again.

I too was caught completely off guard by this film. My evening class was cancelled so I popped by the cinema on the way home, was the only screening left and I hadn't heard anything about it or its director. I remember just silently weeping throughout and, when it finished, I had to remain in my seat for some time before I was able to face returning to the world again. I haven't seen it again since, I'm always wary of destroying such (rare) strong initial emotional reactions to a film with repeat viewings and analytical dissections. In this case, particularly so. It seemed to me at the time that the film strived towards this engagement on a more intuitive level. It had a definite feminine edge to it, I'm not sure that I can back that up but I do recall thinking that it was the first time I had seen on screen how it feels to be a woman.

I partifularly recall the beautiful 'title sequences' between the various acts. Any idea how he achieved such a wonderfully colourful pastoral vision?

I'm intrigued to see that others have had a similar reaction: the strong emotional response and the lack of repeat viewings. Would anyone like to expand on why this may be so?

Edited by gigi, 05 January 2006 - 06:37 AM.

[MattPage]

I'm intrigued to see that others have had a similar reaction: the strong emotional response and the lack of repeat viewings. Would anyone like to expand on why this may be so?

Personally speaking it's because I'm still trying to think it through from the first time I watched it 18 months ago. My main question is this: Is the ending sincere, or not?

Plus of course it's hard to watch.

Matt

[Darrel Manson]

I assume the ending is sincere, but as I said, I really didn't get the ending til about the 3rd viewing. Then I had an "Aha" early in the film.

All these people commenting, but no rating yet.

[MattPage]

I'm not sure it is sincere - is it just von trier laughing at cliched movie endings or not - when I first watched it I thought it was sincere, but then I read something which suggested it wasn't - I'll look it up tonight if I remember.

Matt

[gigi]

All these people commenting, but no rating yet.

It's cos I ain't seen it in so many years! I mean we're talking original release which was what - 96? 97?

[Kyle]

I, like Alan, enjoyed this film and will probably never watch it again.

I found it profound and challenging. It forced me to address the way that I view and approach God. My pastor, when talking to athiests, will frequently ask "tell me about the God you don't believe in.". Usually, their answers are far from the God he worships and serves and uses that as a jumping off point for furthing the discussion. I was reminded of this whenever Bess prayed. I was touched and moved by the sincerity of Bess's prayers. I was envious of her personal relationship with God. However, I didn't know the God she was praying to. The God I know is a God of grace. The God I know doesn't hang the good things in my life over my head and threaten to take them away if I don't fall into line. I wanted to sit and talk with Bess. I wanted to introduce her to grace.

[Andrew]

::I wanted to sit and talk with Bess. I wanted to introduce her to grace.

Alas, we don't meet her until 'Dogville.'

[Kyle]

::I wanted to sit and talk with Bess. I wanted to introduce her to grace.

Alas, we don't meet her until 'Dogville.'

Clever.

I'm not too sure I would want to introduce her to that grace either.

[MichaelRay]

However, I didn't know the God she was praying to. The God I know is a God of grace. The God I know doesn't hang the good things in my life over my head and threaten to take them away if I don't fall into line. I wanted to sit and talk with Bess. I wanted to introduce her to grace.

I finally saw this last night and am still tearing up when I think about some of those scenes. But this was the one thing that bothered me the most. There was this element of God being present and comforting her but he seemed so angry as he spoke to her. As if she were interpreting God's tone through the tone of the church she belonged to. I didn't know what Von Trier was telling us here. His representation of God and his church is inconsistent with his picture of Jesus, if we are to take Bess as a Christ-figure. I was thinking that her prayers were paralleling Jesus conversations with his own father and that I believe Jesus would have heard a kinder voice.

Does anyone else have insight into this area?

[MattPage]

I'm not sure what Bess "hears" is what God is "saying" necessarily.

Matt

[Darrel Manson]

Bess's understanding of God is a journey. It starts with the harsh God of her church. How could God speak to her other than the words the church gives to God. She experiences a drought of God's word when she is going through her dark night of the soul. When God does speak to her again, it is the God of grace and presense.

[MichaelRay]

Bess's understanding of God is a journey. It starts with the harsh God of her church. How could God speak to her other than the words the church gives to God. She experiences a drought of God's word when she is going through her dark night of the soul. When God does speak to her again, it is the God of grace and presense.

This makes sense in the context of the journey, I hadn't seen it that way before.

Here's another question that's been bothering me, did she really cause the accident by praying for his return? It would seem that God warning her not to be selfish earlier would set up the accident as retribution for being selfish. God gave her what she wanted but not in the way that she wanted it. Then her activity brought back his life by being self-less. If this is all true then it still points to a wrathful God who requires retribution. Which, I suppose is true in reality, but I'm still feeling a disconnect between Bess, the Christ figure, and God, the angry.

Maybe I just need to keep thinking through this one.

[Nick Alexander]

I saw BtW, twice, when it came out. I was both horrified at the graphic depictions of debasement, but also grateful for the analogy "He who knew no sin became sin." Because the film doesn't make much sense outside of that single quote. And although the film has some problematic analogies, I thought it was an interesting allegory that touched upon this basic truth.

Thus began my interest (before waning) of von Trier. I went from this, to _Dancer in the Dark_ (which I neither loved nor hated at the time, but ultimately grown to hate). To _The Kingdom_ (which I lovedlovedloved!) to _The Kingdom II_ (which I hated so much I turned it off mid-way through).

I don't have any more desire to see any more of von Trier's films. It's almost like everything he ever wanted to say was done so beautifully in BtW, and he is merely repeating himself in his later efforts.

[Matthew Neale]

This is one of my favourite films too, maybe my favourite.

I read the film as critical of any belief in God - since such a belief assumes an exclusive form and such forms clash with all the intensity of the joy of the experience of God.

Bess has her beliefs. The community has theirs. They are supposed to be in the same God yet the clash between their beliefs leads to astonishing suffering. (While the film focuses on Beth's suffering, it doesn't overlook that of her mother - forced to ostracise her - and we can assume even the bearded patriarchs suffer in this situation.)

The film is great because things are not black and white. Bess is as dismissive of the patriarchs' beliefs as they are of hers. Like other great tragedies (Hardy's Tess and Jude spring to mind) the players are made victims of inexorable circumstances. The final "comment" of God is an extremely ambivalent reference to God's morality at once symbolising perfectly exactly the kind of feel-good faith the film attacks so angrily.

I think the issue at stake here - the problem of exclusive faith - will as time goes on only intensify this work's classic status. May it be seen and reflected on by many!

[Persona]

Can a moderator please seperate this into another thread? This is throwing discussion of one of my favorite films off course.

Not only that, but I am certain there must be another place on the board where concerns that the Invisible Man has have been brought out.

-s.

[adh]

Just watched this film today. I find it interesting that almost no-one commenting on the film here remarked with anything more than side interest on the sexual degradation and brutality to which Bess "sacrifices" herself in the penultimate chapter, "Bess's Sacrifice," nor on the ambiguous implications of this plotting. As one person remarked, Bess's patience and goodness are astounding, esp. when she even smiles with joy when "God" returns to her after an absence, while she is en route to the "evil ship." But why in the world would she have to go to the ship at this point and go through with this "sacrifice" that will, apparently, result in the miracle of her husband's recovery?

When God returns to her, I thought "he" would tell her to turn around and not go to the ship, and tell her that such an action is not needed. Why would God (and/or her internal voice) ask, endorse, and even apparently require such sexual victimage of Bess in order to heal her husband? It is extremely disturbing, and is it also disturbing to me that hardly anyone seems to find it disturbing! A woman repeatedly subjects herself to brutality and violence and [SPOILER!] is even killed at the end of the film by violent, brutal, misogynist sailors who enact untold (and unseen) horrors on her in that cabin where we went once and where von Trier makes Bess go again; and no one comments on that violence nor on the larger issue of violence that the film does to Bess.

Why are her acts of submitting to physical pain, sexual humiliation, and even torture seen as unproblematic instances of her admirable goodness? Shouldn't we all be a little bit enraged at the story that von Trier has written for her, and for women in general, where total self-sacrifice to sexual brutality is re-written as redemptive selflessness, and her submission to male violence and rape saves the life of her husband? Does simply placing this plot in a Christian context (a very ambigious and confusing one) make it less violent toward women? It seems that many viewers and commentators of the film seem to believe it does, since so many commented on the beauty of the sacrifice while overlooking how it fits right in with larger patterns of violence against women.

[Nick Alexander]

It's tricky to debate this film, because either it is a story in which God is a central character, or "God" is a central character. And by putting God in quotes does not at all negate the belief in God, but to pinpoint what-I-believe to be von Trier's message, that is...

Bess' relationship with God is tainted by her cultural surroundings. That's it.

Case in point: her conversations with "God" that are the crux of the film reveal a God to have similarities in cadence and content as her own overly strict pastor. (This is not uncommon... it has been said that father figures are the dominant pictures of God in most households).

Certainly what you have described could have happened in this story... but Bess was too determined to carry out her "mission" that she was ignorant as to whether God was speaking to her at all.

And yet, in the midst of her lunatic mission (instigated--not by God--but by her own not-of-sound-mind paralyzed husband), by carrying it through to its logical, tragic conclusion, she herself becomes an example of Christ, imperfect as it is. And the final, magical images show von Trier's belief in the compassion of God (no quotes) who loves Bess all the same.

Hope this helps...