1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 16: Breaking the waves

Opening lines:

BESS: “His name is Jan.”

MINISTER: “I do not know him.”

BESS: “He’s from the lake.”

MINISTER: “You know we do not favor matrimony with outsiders.”

ELDER: “Can you even tell us what matrimony is?”

BESS: “It’s when two people are joined in God.”

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The plot of this 160-minute parable is so simple that were I to recount it, your viewing would be spoiled.

And yet, it’d be negligent not to discuss this movie. Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese both list it among the decade’s ten best. It’s not as good as that, though it’s certainly a landmark of the period – and of the career of the director, Lars von Trier.

In his review, Ebert provides an interpretation of the movie that is very close to my own – at the cost of spoiling almost every plot point. A reader of his website comments: “Nobody ever gave away entire movie plots as proficiently as did Ebert.” But that’s not quite fair. How else could this most skeletal of movies have been analyzed?

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In bleak, windswept Scotland, village lass Bess (Emily Watson) marries oilman Jan (Stellan Skarsgård). Gentle and easygoing, Jan is indifferent to religion. Bess is profoundly pious (and maybe a bit mad). Her church is ruled by stern elders.

As newlyweds, Bess and Jan are blissful, even ecstatic. Then a brutal hardship, which I’ll not describe, befalls them, and they must make sacrifices to prop each other up – indeed, to save each other. The logic is basically that of an O. Henry story such as “The Gift of the Magi” or “The Last Leaf.”

It’s a tiny chewing-gum morsel of a story, stretched out to near-ridiculous length. Now add this: the hardships and sacrifices that Bess and Jan undergo are grotesque, verging on inhuman. So, the story turns horrific. (Imagine the wife in “The Gift of the Magi” resorting to the vilest prostitution.)

All of this takes place on cliffs and moors and oil rigs over a cold ocean.

Scene by scene, it’s tension-filled, compelling. The handheld camera jerks us into the middle of the action.

But we’re also constantly reminded of the movie’s artificiality. “Chapters” are announced with gorgeous, dream-like title cards set to rock music of the 1970s.

For whatever reason, I was much less affected by Breaking the Waves than by two of von Trier’s other movies, Dancer in the Dark and Melancholia. But if you like those movies, you’ll probably like Breaking the Waves. All three are grimly humorous; all are grainy and naturalistic, with occasional, highly stylized interruptions.

All have stunning conclusions.

Our trip to the east, pt. 3

What I’d forgotten about Ithaca is that you’re always climbing. The hills are steep; worse, the buildings tend to have lots of stairs. Ithacans are used to this. Karin & I are not.

Yesterday, at Karin’s prompting, we climbed up one of the gorges – just after having breakfasted more than was good for us. Of course, we left the car at the bottom of the gorge, so that when we reached the top we had no choice but to climb right back down again.

We were pretty well ruined after that. No matter: we dragged ourselves around to my other old haunts.

Karin told me the baby kicked and kicked, as if to say, What ARE you doing.

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Today, I defended my dissertation. It received a result of “pass.”

Everyone was very kind. I was put at ease when Derk, the first committee member to arrive, told me what a lovely dissertation I’d written.

The hero of the occasion was my old teacher, Nick, who agreed to serve on my committee despite having retired seven years earlier. He’s physically infirm. And yet he played a crucial role during the defense, asking sharp questions and providing encouragement.

It was poignant to learn of the intention of my adviser, Dick, to retire at the end of this month. As I’ve been completing my degree, he’s been wrapping up his career.

Karin also was present at the defense – as was my son.

Our trip to the east, pt. 2

The plan for tomorrow is for Karin to see Downtown Ithaca, where I used to live. Today, we’ll explore Cornell’s campus and its environs.

Our hosts of last night and tonight are my advisor and his wife.

Yesterday, we arrived in Ithaca after an arduous drive from Brooklyn, where we spent a night with our friend, Andrew, and his wife, Tanya. It was Karin’s first visit to New York City. She was delighted to view Times Square – and the subway rats. She was less delighted with the drivers, who’d ruthlessly cut her off or park their cars in the middle of the road and walk away. On our return to Ithaca, we were on the FDR (the expressway along the east of Manhattan) when an accident halted traffic. We decided to make our way through Manhattan to glimpse Central Park. Two consecutive wrong turns put us onto the Queensborough Bridge, and so Karin got to view that part of New York instead. We made our way up through Queens and the Bronx to the George Washington Bridge, which sped us through to New Jersey. It’d taken us two hours just to leave New York City.

But, as I said, we’re back in Ithaca, where the pace of life is much slower – but still not as slow for most inhabitants as for the Salvationists.

On Sunday, we had joined my old Corps for a lakeside picnic and a performance by the brass band.

We’ll return to my Salvationist friends tomorrow night.

Our trip to the east

A fright

Last night, we were zipping along the Ohio Turnpike at 70 mph when the gigantic face of Chucky the killer doll loomed over us on an outdoor theater screen. Karin almost drove off the road.

Airbnb

It was our first time using the service. It went very smoothly and cost just $40.

Breakfast at a hipster restaurant in Cleveland

Karin’s colleague asked her to send pictures of our meals.

So Karin photographed my burrito:

The Southern Tier Expressway

This is one of my favorite U.S. roads. It’s fast, uncrowded, curvy, hilly, and lush. It runs next to gorges, small towns, and picturesque 19th-century farms with red barns and grazing cattle.

We stopped for lunch at Tim Horton’s in Jamestown. The steep streets and old buildings reminded me of Ithaca (still almost 200 miles away) and considerably lifted my spirits. Until then, I hadn’t realized how strongly I’d missed the region.

Our baby did summersaults in Karin’s belly all afternoon.

The old Salvationists

Karin got her first glimpse of Ithaca from several miles away. She marveled at its beauty. But rather than enter the city, we turned up a narrow, steep road to the town of Danby. There, the Salvationists were eagerly awaiting us.

They gave us supper and recited their ailments. But, to me, they seemed not to have aged very much at all.

Submission

I turned in the dissertation. The last days of writing it were just awful. I felt like Daffy Duck trying to write the end of The Scarlet Pumpernickel.

The dissertation is about as looney as The Scarlet Pumpernickel, too.

No, really, it’s pretty bad.

Karin & I will begin our journey to Ithaca tomorrow (Friday). We’ll spend the night at an Airbnb near Cleveland and arrive in the Finger Lakes region on Saturday.

I’ll defend the dissertation on Thursday at 3:30.

An announcement has gone out around the philosophy department so that faculty can decide whether to attend the defense. I hope no one does, except my committee members. Then I hope they give me the chance to revise a lot of Chapter IV, and maybe the other chapters, too, and to take a bunch of things out. Really, the dissertation is pretty bad. I shudder to think of its being uploaded to ProQuest in its current state.

June’s poem

… is “Father and Son.”

(Cat Stevens)

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I congratulate my sweet cousin Annie for her wedding, which I attended last night.

Chapter IV

You will have seen by now that we lost our semifinal to the Koreans.

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Once again, I’m terribly, distressingly behind on my dissertation. I’m writing the last chapter, Chapter IV.

Last night, Karin urged me to explain it all to her so that I could organize my thoughts. I talked for about forty minutes. Then I said, “All of which brings us to the beginning of Chapter IV.”

We didn’t get very far after that.

The entire dissertation, revised in response to my advisor’s comments, must be submitted to the other readers by Sunday night.

Teenagers

Ecuador 2, USA 1 (U-20 World Cup). These are some highlights:

Alas, they don’t convey how dominant the Ecuadorians were. The defensive midfielders, especially, chewed up the U.S. dribblers.

It’s a proud moment for the country: we’ve qualified for our first World Cup semifinal. (Our opponents will be the South Koreans.)

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Meanwhile, other athletes have been doing Ecuador proud. The most impressive is the teenaged race walker Glenda Morejón, daughter of greengrocers. Though she enjoys very little financial sponsorship, she recently defeated a world record holder, an Olympic medalist, a world champion, and the like in a major race, her 20 km debut.

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Very unpopular right now is the men’s senior soccer team. Tonight, Ecuador lost a “friendly” against Mexico. I watched a few uninspired minutes.

David and Stephen and I use the same streaming account, but the company doesn’t allow us all to stream at once, so I watched on a YouTube channel whose broadcast looked like this:

Los pibes

The last bits of my dissertation, not counting revisions, need to be turned in around the beginning of next week. Meanwhile, I continue to apply for academic jobs. It amazes me that so many are posted so near to the beginning of the next school year.

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After starting slowly, with a draw and a defeat in the first two group games, Ecuador has progressed to the quarterfinal round of the men’s U-20 World Cup in Poland.

Ecuador’s opponent in the quarterfinals: the USA.

(I’m not saying that one side is morally better than the other, but one is like Luke Skywalker and the other is like Darth Vader.)

Los pibes, as the youths are called, seem especially bad at kicking penalties. They missed one against the Japanese, whom they outplayed and should have beaten, and another against the Italians, whom they also outplayed and with whom they should have drawn.

They did convert two penalty kicks against the Uruguayans. They used two different shooters who followed the same strategy: shooting low and centrally into space vacated by the goalkeeper.

Not very inspiring. I hope the quarterfinal doesn’t have to be settled with a shootout.

A modest proposal

Another soccer final has been ruined by a referee’s decision to award a penalty kick.

In the first minute of the UEFA Champions League final, the ball ricocheted off the chest and then the upper arm of the Potato Tots’ Moussa Sissoko. (He’d extended his arm to gesture to a teammate.) The referee blew the whistle for the penalty kick.

A deliberate handball? Not a chance.

A penalty? Alas, by today’s refereeing standards, yes. The operators of the Video Assistant Refereeing system deemed the call not controversial enough to review.

(Here are some TV pundits disagreeing about the rule. As usual, Alejandro Moreno makes a jackass of himself.)

After converting the penalty, Liverpool – usually one of the most proactive teams in the sport – sat back and “parked the bus” of defenders in front of the attacking Potato Tots.

A game-long slog ensued. Finally, with just a few minutes to play, Liverpool scored again.

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In soccer, a single goal is momentous. It releases enormous tension. It affects all subsequent developments. But VAR has multiplied the number of penalty kicks awarded, and hence the number of goals scored, cheapening their value. And now the rules have been changed so that every handball, intentional or not, that occurs inside the handler’s box is to be punished with a penalty kick.

With this policy, and with VAR to enforce it, we should expect games to have penalty kicks awarded in them more often than not. That is, we should expect games to have more goals – and of the cheapest kind.

We should expect shooters to aim at defenders’ arms rather than at the goal. (Certainly, the Liverpool forward wasn’t aiming toward the goal when he kicked the ball at Sissoko.)

We should expect goals to be scored quickly – before either team has fully implemented its attacking strategy.

We should expect a scoring team to adopt tedious “bus-parking” tactics earlier in the game.

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Therefore, I offer a modest proposal for handballs committed by non-goalkeepers:

(1) Let every handball that occurs outside the handler’s box be governed under the old rules.

(2) Let every clearly intentional handball, inside or outside the box, be punished by carding, according to the old rules.

(3) Let every handball that occurs inside the handler’s box, whether intentional or not, be punished, as the new policy requires. But let the punishment be an indirect free kick inside the box, not a direct penalty kick.

Exception to (3): Let a direct penalty kick be the punishment for an unintentional or intentional defensive handball that results straightforwardly from an indirect free kick taken by an attacker inside the box. (Here, we’ll have to make a somewhat arbitrary stipulation, e.g., that a defensive handball results “straightforwardly” from an indirect free kick taken inside the box just in case, after the initial kick but prior to the ball’s touching the hand, the ball doesn’t leave the box – or something along those lines.)

This is the best rule combination I can think of. But I wouldn’t mind if FIFA simply went back to the old rules that focused on intent.

I also would accept this option:

Let FIFA’s new rules remain in effect, with the additional stipulation that all direct penalty kicks for handballs be taken by Martín Palermo.

Update: Perhaps the exception to (3) should include all free kicks, not just indirect free kicks taken inside the box, to discourage defenders from using their hands to block free kicks taken outside the box.

With this in mind:

Let a direct penalty kick be the punishment for an unintentional or intentional defensive handball that results, inside the box, straightforwardly from a free kick taken by an attacker, where a handball is understood to have resulted, inside the box, straightforwardly from a free kick just in case, after the initial kick but prior to the ball’s touching the hand, the ball touches no player outside the box.