4. Bess McNeill - Breaking the Waves
This is a more straightforward entry than the previous couple, and for good reason. This is a film about the purity of love. I challenge you to find a love more pure in the whole of cinematic history than Bess' (Emily Watson) love for Danish oil worker Jan (Stellan Skarsgard). Bess is childlike in her complete, unquestioning devotion to him, rendered almost incapable of functioning when he is away. And it is this love that leads, eventually, to her demise. When Jan is injured and subsequently paralysed in an accident aboard an oil-rig, Bess takes extreme and wholly illogical measures to try to help him recover. The film is an eclectic examination of the force of religious belief, mental illness and, above all, the power that love can hold over people. It's a disturbing tale that shows us in explicit detail how far Bess is willing to go to try to influence Jan's recovery. This being a Lars von Trier film, the ending does not bring us redemption and a warm feeling that, somehow, love will triumph all. Instead we are left wishing that Bess wasn't so childlike in her devotion to Jan. Perhaps then she may have avoided her horrific fate. Breaking the Waves is not a film to cheer you up on a rainy Sunday. It is however a visceral and shattering masterpiece of cinema; a film that shows both the redemptive and destructive qualities of love.