When the ‘Mistakes’ Make the Movie Beautiful

When discussing the way a film looks you’ll often come across posts that focus on how intricately a scene was framed, the unique way certain shots were composed, and the overall beauty of the cinematography. Well, either that, or discussions picking apart continuity errors, editing mistakes, lighting inconsistencies, and terrible shot compositions. But what about films where “looking bad” is what makes them beautiful? What happens when these so-called “mistakes” are what make a film truly work? It is in this vein that I would like to examine what I consider to be a truly brilliant example of this, Lars von Trier’s 1996 film Breaking the Waves.

//CLIPS & MOVIES
The Night of the Hunter, Solaris, Late Spring, 8 ½, The Seventh Seal, Paris, Texas, The Color of Pomegranates, The Red Shoes, The Leopard, Barry Lyndon, Lawrence of Arabia, Batman Returns, The Batman, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 12 Angry Men, Let’s Go To The Movies, Psycho, Johnny Guitar, Inland Empire, Living in the Light - Robby Müller, The Blair Witch Project, Cloverfield, Pure Rage: The Making of 28 Days Later, Days of Heaven, Mirror, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Berlinale Talent Campus Discussion “Here’s Looking at You, Kid” featuring Anthony Dod Mantle and Christopher Doyle, Happy Together, The Idiots, Breaking the Waves, The Element of Crime, The Making of The Element of Crime, Portrait of Lars von Trier, Interview with Stig Björkman, Europa, The Kingdom, A Conversation with Lars von Trier, BTS The Kingdom, The Name of this Film is Dogme 95, The Celebration, Tranceformer - A Portrait of Lars von Trier, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Making of Europa, Ordet, Down By Law, NYFF52 Interview with Paul Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice, Wrong Move, Alice in the Cities, Saint Jack, To Live and Die in L.A., Mystery Train, Three For the Road Interview with Wim Wenders, Film at Lincoln Center Q&A with Jim Jarmusch, Interview with Stellan Skarsgård, Breaking the Waves Selected Scene Commentary featuring Lars von Trier, Anthony Dod Mantle, and Anders Refn, Interview with Emily Watson, Interview with Adrian Rawlins, Interview with Robby Müller, The Culture Show, Kermode & Mayo’s Film Review, 69th Academy Awards, Roger Ebert & The Movies, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Roma, Dancer in the Dark

//MUSIC
Passages by Kai Engel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Two Dogs by Lex Villena is licensed under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Denouement by Kai Engel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...
Outlander by Kai Engel is licensed under a CC BY 3.0 license.
​​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

#videoessay, #filmmaking, #cinematography