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.
It is ironic that people so outwardly engaged in the religious domain can actually be so far from it and even, pathetically without realizing, attack the people who are religious. To put in Christian terms, as Christianity is the religion in the film, a person with power in a church can be oblivious to the fact that he or she is acting like the people who Jesus castigates in the Gospels. Astonishingly, an avowed Christian involved in the governance of a church can be oblivious to the fact that he or she is violating Jesus' preaching on neighbor-love, for example. To count oneself as part of the elect (i.e., predestined to be saved) does not give a "Christian" license to act contrary to Jesus' words and example.
In the film, for example, the minister walks away from Bess when she is collapsed and unconscious in front of the church. Although he has stopped boys from pelting Bess with pebbles, the minister who excommunicated Bess then looks around to be sure he is not being seen as he walks away from her. He is the opposite of the proverbial good Samaritan, based in part on his presumed infallibility in excommunicating Bess from the church and community. At the end of the film, his arrogance is on full display as he consigns her to hell at her burial even though she has voluntarily sacrificed her life so her ill husband would receive a miraculous recovery rather than die. Her vindication comes in the form of another miracle on the early morning after her burial. Sound familiar? Not to the minister or the church elders. Their lack of compassion for Bess is all the more pathetic because at her wedding they recognized her for her faith as well as the many times she had cleaned the church.
It is all too easy for the hypocrites in charge to view Bess as "slow" or mentally ill, and thus as delusional in prayer when she talks to God. Is not a Christian in prayer to listen for God's thoughts? Surely this form of prayer is superior to asking God for favors. To be sure, Bess is not perfect; she asks God to return Jan to her from the oil rig. This petition is answered, but not in the way Bess assumed. Also, she sins in going along with Jan's sexual fetish that she sleep with other men and tell him about the sex. The excommunicators, however, missed the fact that she complied out of love for her suffering paralyzed husband.
When Bess willingly goes back to a sadistic sailor in hopes that God would miraculously heal Jan because of her sacrifice of her life, she wonders aloud at a hospital whether she is wrong because Jan has not improved. Her fallibility and humility amid sacrificial love is in contrast to the stern minister and church elders. It isn't until the miraculous sounds of bells at sunrise on the day after Bess has been buried that the viewer knows for sure that the minister and elders are actually anti-Christians and that Bess has indeed been talking with God in prayer, although it is possible that she has been delusional in what she said God was telling her in prayer and yet her sacrifice has prompted God to heal her husband, Jan. Surely the minister and elders would be appalled to learn that a retarded or mentally ill woman whom they expelled is in heaven whereas they are bound for hell. The lesson is that we mere mortals are not able to consign people to heaven or hell, especially in the case of a religion that privileges matters of the heart. That the minister and elders even miss Bess's fruits of the Spirit tells us that even people governing a congregation or serving as its clergy can be wrong rather than presumptuously infallible.
We too, even as viewers of the film, can unwittingly accept the perspective of the minister and elders, and indeed Bess's own mother. This says something about us. The fact that the supranatural sound of bells does reveal the validity of Bess's relationship with God until the end of the film keeps the viewer in the wrong camp long enough for the bells to be a shock. "I sure got that wrong," I said to myself (perhaps God replied, "Yes, you certainly did). It was not that I agreed with the way in which the minister and elders treat Bess in the film; rather, I shared their assumption that Bess is crazy and so cannot possibly right about her relationship with God.
At one point in the film, Bess addresses the men meeting in the church after someone emphasizes the need to keep the law. Bess is dismissed and excommunicated after she objects that words cannot be loved; only people can be. In reforming Judaism, Jesus says the same thing to the Pharisees. Loving even strangers trumps observing the strict Jewish law. The minister and elders are Pharisees who conceive of God as angry and judgmental at the expense of compassion, love, and forgiveness. The minister, elders, and even Bess's own mother have missed this fundamental point about Jesus and they stupidly and arrogantly presume themselves to be members of the elect. For all the importance they give to their religious identities, the hypocrites in the film do not internalize Christ's message of the humble love of self-sacrifice even for sinners.
