Behind the Scenes: Breaking the Waves (von Trier, 1996) with Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård

I asked Bess to take a lover, but she'd never do that, you know. She's not that kind of girl. More religion and stuff. So this morning, I told her it was for my sake, and I said she should go out and find someone to have sex with. And then I asked her to come back here and tell me about it. I said she could save my life that way. And hearing about her having sex would keep my sexuality alive. But I couldn't live without her, which is true. I can't. She'd never have another love in a line with me lying here. If I'd have told her it was for my sake. But I set her free this way. And I really wanted to find some good man and have a good life. She deserves love. Yeah, totally. So she'll come here and tell me everything. Second thought? For my sake, I love her. I mean, listening to her telling me how she's had sex with some other guy. Well, you can imagine. I don't know what's happened to you since you got married. You sound like a goddamn priest, man. If she deserves to be screwed by some bloke, you should be man enough to listen. Anyhow, you said it. It might even do you some good. I feel f***ing crazy. Well, at least I'm f***ing crazy. I think you're f***ing crazy too. Well, I mean, screw these ashes because I don't like getting my hands dirty. Could you kill this ----? I think they're going to be pretty happy with you at the hospital. Is something up? No. Don't you love me anymore? Of course I do. Say, say that. I've made up my mind, don't I? Why not? I thought it might make you mad. Why should it make me mad? Everyone says that I love you too much. If you find out how much I loved you, you might get upset. Yes, Bess. What is it you want? Father, I'm so raging. I don't think I can endure it. I love him so. Yes, MacNeil. For many years, you prayed for love. Shall I take it away from you again? Is that what you want? Oh no. Oh no, no. I'm still grateful for love. Our love's almost like being together. You must not forget about love. He told me that. What's got into your head, Lester? Don't let him gain any more power over you. Sickness is a mighty power. I saved young. Are you stupid enough to believe that? You always said I wasn't stupid. You're stupid if that's what you believe. Why are you saying I'm stupid now? You can't stop me telling you when I can see you're on your way into your world of make-believe. Good. Stella? Yeah? What's the order there for? Yes. Make her laugh. Could you do that? Stella, make me laugh. I can't do that. Unless I... I'm sure you can. Yeah, if I shut my dick, she'll laugh. Breaking the Waves is being filmed in the largest film studio in Copenhagen. But in this huge stage, Lars von Trier creates a playground that is so limited that the film crew can hardly move in it. The outer frame must be realistic. The film and the technique must stand for the illusion. Monkey, I don't know what it was you... Well, it actually started a couple of years ago when Lars called me and asked if I wanted to help him make a commercial for a French insurance company. And there were a lot of actors in it. And there was a time when Lars didn't have a lot of experience with working with actors and there were a lot of people involved in it. And then I said, well, I can do that. Would you like to help me? And then we had a good collaboration. And even though we are very different, we actually get along pretty well together. He's afraid of a lot of people. He's afraid of space. He's afraid of not suddenly being able to get out. He's afraid of sitting in a car with a lot of people, right? So in that way, it's damn difficult for him to be a director, right? And then he has to find someone he can play with who understands those things and who still wants to do it. And then Lars also has that weakness, if you can call it that, or strength, that he writes all his phobias in his manuscripts. So if there is a scene on a boat or on an oil rig or a plane or something, then they are in Lars' manuscript. But he couldn't dream of putting his leg in place himself, right? In this type of film as Breaking is, which is a handheld film, the monitors are really an important work tool, right? Because I can't be present in the room where the shooting takes place, because the camera basically turns all the way around. And it's hard to have any impression of what's coming on the stream or whatever. So I've used it in the last films. I've had a lot of fun, right? What is of course also difficult is to communicate based on what you've seen with the people who are going to do it next time. So it's difficult. And sometimes we've worked at much greater distances, where I've sat far away, right? And that's both good and bad. You could say that in the old days, you always said that the editor shouldn't come to the recordings, because he had to be completely separated from the problems that had to be with the recordings. And in the same way, you could say that there is a certain advantage that the director is not present everywhere, because he can only listen to Morten Arnfreds' incredibly tired voice, and now this is very difficult, right? It's windy, it's raining a lot, it's cold, and so on and so forth. It's like something that comes in in some small, tired remarks, which I slowly understand when it's windy, raining and cold. But the advantage is not to be there. In fact, you can be very objective about what's going on here on the stream, right? Okay, so Mark, ready? Cut this! Thank you. There was the line right in the Dutch meal, right? Yes. It's like, no, you went up and then you ate breakfast. Then you went down, because there was a little time left, and you're reading. He comes back and has got this in front of him. So you both put on what you have on underneath your... Fat! Right? ------- fat! ------- fat, yes. Oh, the storm is howling outside. And you don't give a ----. No, no, I don't give a ----. Thank you. Beautiful. Yes. And then we just do a close-up of Jan. Beautiful, much better. He is a man where... Yes, with these old animals where... A man is a man, and a word is a word. And his loyalty is also medieval-like, right? So he is a knight, a little knight. Yes, I met Peter... Oh, yes, it must have been ten years ago, on a commercial. I had been through it. I think all the producers from Spørm, there was someone who wanted to produce what I did, and there wasn't. So the last thing she did was go to another new student from film school. He was very interested. He had produced some very small productions before, which he had done. He had a huge budget, and was in a contest, and I don't know what. So it was like Lasse Roner who got together there, right? Peter also knows that if he tells me I have to do things in a certain way, I do it the other way around, right? So that's why he has learned to control me completely. He's lying, isn't he? No, he never lied, did he? I mean, I lie 400 times a day, right? It's extreme to meet a person who doesn't lie, right? But the weakness, which is the worst, is if for one reason or another you have to weaken your ideals. That's the worst weakness. It's bad to weaken others, but to weaken your ideals, for one reason or another, because The ideals are what you base your whole life on. The ideals are the rules of how life should be lived, right? And if everything is based on that, and you then fall into something that doesn't allow you to live up to those ideals, it's a weakness that is deadly. It's incomprehensible to me that people can have mental problems. I don't understand it myself, but the other way around, we are different in many other ways. So I also assume that there is a significant difference in this area, right? I don't suffer from any mental problems myself. The anxiety that I have, it is expressed in a self-hatred of incredible proportions. It has a little to do with self-discipline as well, right? I mean, I can feel the need to control a film crew, right? Or the Russian here in Poland, right? I have no anxiety. As long as you stand up, now I'm quite small, I stand up on a little high and shout and scream, right? Then I'm completely sure that the world will handle itself. But I can't control myself, right? And that gives anxiety, and first of all it gives a self-hatred, right? That I am dictated by myself, by some forces within myself that I can't control. That's what I have to do now. It doesn't sound very banal, but it is so, obviously. But I, relatively inexperienced of film festivals and the like, was with Honomikan. And for me it was... I thought it was fun, but I also thought it was silly, like everyone else. And I got a new taste, and I stood with my wife and waited in the big hotel vestibule for Lars to come. Limousines, lots of beautiful dressed people and incredibly stylish women. Orchestras playing. And in the last minute into the limousine, down the spiral staircase, comes Lars' wife, a little sweaty, a little chauffeur. She hasn't had time to put on make-up, you see. She's nervous. Now he's coming soon, and when she's well down, Lars comes. Approximately isolated down the stairs, barely greets me. And I'm supposed to go with him, but I go after him. And then I go up to his wife and say, What's up with him? Do you see him? He walks a few meters in front of us. No. Dreyer's Smoking, from 1928. So you've been at an auction sometime. No, I don't know. ...and bought a Smoking from 1928, and decided that I should have it in Cannes. And it became so incredibly touching, and so incredibly gripping. She must be really sad about this. Yes. Should she shave? No, no. No, we've divided it into phases. So here she's just a little sad about it. Yes, just a little discouraged. What I meant by psychologically was not that it shouldn't be big. I would love it to be big. I just meant that it comes from the situation, your psychological situation. Instead of, you know, as you did it the first time, I felt it was kind of, that you were exhausted. And, you know, the feeling came from that. But this is kind of the feeling of, you know, losing everything. Do you want to know kind of like a screening going? And then I have orchestrated all the other things and taken myself out of this relatively large production. If you go out, if you see the film in the biography, then you will think that it has been a small team, because it has that documentary touch, right? But the special aesthetics that this film has, it requires, you can see, a large team. You have to understand that that's the way we work here. That sometimes it's quite difficult in a briefing to tell exactly what we're doing. Because one of the points in this film is that we don't know what we're doing until we do it. And, I mean, Lars and I and a few other of you are used to work that way, because we've done that at the Kingdom. But here we have to get used to that way of working. That may result in that you have to move even the camera a few times forth and back, because we change what's happening just before we shoot. So I'm sorry that it seems that we don't know what we're doing. We try to act as we know what we're doing, but sometimes we really don't know what we're doing. Do I make myself clear? Are there any questions? What are we doing? ...so it doesn't work so well. Because it's so screwed melodramatic in this film. So it requires that you create your own universe and that you raise it to an adequate, juicy level where the script becomes credible. And then this, you know, not take, you know, any... Sorry, yes, I just enjoy doing it. Sorry. Okay, if you please, you know, enjoy it. No, but I'll be very serious and good now. See you soon. We have this, and then you shoot it. I shot this for you. I think you should, yes. I think you had enough, right? Don't do any more. But we need some laughter. How are we going to get it? We had laughter, didn't we? No, but it was not enough. It should be really like, can you attack him or something? Yeah, I can. Yeah, attack him, please. You know, let's have a little kind of... Yeah. When I don't know what he was like before, people tell me that he was very different before now. But he does have the feeling of somebody going through a sort of personal perestroika. You know, somebody who is trying to rebuild himself and to very bravely, I think, kind of move away from something that had a grip on him as a person. And I think it sounds as if it was his mania for sort of technical... He's obviously got an extraordinary grasp of technical aspects of film. And somewhere in him as a person, there was this other Lars, you know, this Lars who wanted to understand human nature and put that together with the technical side of Lars. And I think he's allowing... He's in a process of change. He's in a flux, if you like, which is a very exciting time to be with someone. I'm sorry. He said something really beautiful. He said that he wanted the machinery of the film to be as light as a feather, the technical side to be as light as a feather. And he also said things like, you know, I want you to make mistakes. It's good if you make mistakes. I mean, this is like opening a door for an actor. It's like letting them out of a prison, really. You can just see how cold it was, and it was raining, and last night there was also snowing, and it's always like that, right? Can we record? Where is it, please? I can't see it! Can't we tilt it up and move it? Now we've seen down there where the spring water is. Can't we just tilt it up and move it and see what it looks like when it swings back and forth? I don't understand that. Can't we just tilt it up and move it? Can't we just have a camera crew dig it out of the ground? I need some fresh water here.