Blu-ray, DVD Release: Breaking the Waves

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: April 15, 2014
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95
Studio: Criterion


Breaking the Waves movie scene

Emily Watson stars in Breaking the Waves.

Lars von Trier (Antichrist) became an international sensation with the 1996 drama Breaking the Waves, a galvanizing realist fable about sex and spiritual transcendence.

Emily Watson (War Horse) stuns, in an Oscar-nominated performance, as Bess, a simple, pious newlywed in a tiny Scottish village who gives herself up to a shocking form of martyrdom after her husband (Stellan Skarsgård, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is paralyzed in an oil-rig accident.

At once brazen and tender, profane and pure, Breaking the Waves is an acclaimed examination of the expansiveness of faith and of its limits.

Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD Combo pack of the film contains the following features:

• New 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Selected-scene audio commentary featuring director Lars von Trier, editor Anders Refn, and location scout Anthony Dod Mantle
• New interview with filmmaker and critic Stig Björkman
• New interviews with actors Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård
• Interview from 2004 with actor Adrian Rawlins
• Watson’s audition tape, with commentary by von Trier
• Deleted and extended scenes, with commentary by von Trier
• Deleted scene featuring the late actor Katrin Cartlidge
• Cannes Film Festival promotional clip
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• One Blu-ray and two DVDs, with all content available in both formats
• An essay by critic David Sterritt

Buy or Rent Breaking the Waves
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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.