Breaking the Waves is hardly an easy watch. But, it’s a powerful film which stays with you long after it has finished. I never quite know what I am going to get with a Lars von Trier film, and there’s something so exciting about that.

| Oct 10, 2024

[An] earnest, yet harrowing, heartbreaker...

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 4, 2023

Von Trier’s patent insincerity and facetiousness could be read as a satire on movie emotionalism, or as its own kind of conceptual art. Either way, it’s quite an experience.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 4, 2023

There may be no way to prepare for the shock of Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves, a film that accumulates moral momentum as it rolls on and bears down on you in its last half hour like a lightning strike.

| Dec 27, 2022

Emily Watson gives this musty spiritualism a flesh and-blood sympathetic center. Her purity of emotion, be it bliss, fear or sorrow, are convincingly unactorly and the camera -- even Von Trier's handheld pseudo-documentary one -- loves her face.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 22, 2019

There are few movies around that take such huge risks: this is high-wire filmmaking, without a net of irony.

| Feb 26, 2018

Gloomy '90s drama has cursing, nudity, mature themes.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 18, 2017

Both a ferocious love story and a tale of the triumph of vital individual faith over ossified and corrupt organized religion.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Aug 3, 2014

Issues of faith, devotion, sexuality and divine intervention are at the center of this daring and provocative piece that placed writer-director Lars von Trier on the international map.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 18, 2014

It's a testament to Emily Watson's astounding performance as Bess that she comes across as more than a von Trier construct; she's a woman of boundless passion, who follows her faith wherever it takes her.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 15, 2014

Von Trier has forged a myth of modern romantic faith that could haunt almost anyone into believing.

| Original Score: A | Sep 7, 2011

Formally, the film is a tour de force. As it is stylistically, so is it thematically.

| Jul 7, 2010

Von Trier may put his characters and the viewer through the ringer, yet his empathy toward both is unmistakable.

| Sep 1, 2009

Here is a film that makes you feel like you've read the novel, seen the movie, and lived the life of a protagonist more empathetic than any other. You just might need a stiff drink afterward.

| Original Score: A+ | Aug 30, 2009

The performance from newcomer Emily Watson is the centerpiece of this spiritual journey.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2009

A powerful tear-jerker romantic drama that intriguingly also brings religion into the mix.

| Original Score: A- | Sep 6, 2007

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 5, 2006

It's a remarkable achievement for all concerned, with Katrin Cartlidge, as Bess's widowed sister-in-law, sharing the acting laurels with the radiant Emily Watson, and writer/director Lars von Trier building the emotional and dramatic intensity ...

| Jun 24, 2006

The synopsis doesn't begin to do justice to the psychological and emotional complexities of the tale.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 15, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 4, 2005