The Concept of Good in Lars Von Trier's Films
This paper examines how Lars Von Trier constructs and interrogates the concept of moral goodness through the female protagonists of Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark. Using the epilogue of Breaking the Waves as a critical entry point — in which a doctor diagnoses the deceased Bess as simply "good" — the paper explores how Bess's religious upbringing, social conditioning, and desire to prove herself virtuous drive her toward self-destruction. The paper draws on feminist theory, including Louise Kaplan's work on female perversion and social constraint, to argue that both Bess and Selma from Dancer in the Dark are sacrificial figures trapped between personal freedom and cultural expectations of womanhood.
- Introduction: The Challenge of Trier's Films: Trier's eccentric style and disturbing subject matter
- The Epilogue and the Question of Goodness: Doctor's diagnosis of Bess as simply 'good'
- Bess, Social Conditioning, and the Price of Freedom: Religious upbringing and guilt driving Bess's choices
- Prostitution as Moral Sacrifice: Bess prostituttes herself to prove love and virtue
- Dancer in the Dark: Selma and the Good Mother: Selma's sacrifice mirroring Bess's doomed goodness
- Conclusion: Cultural constraints trap women between freedom and conditioning
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses a pivotal scene — the coroner's epilogue — as a sustained interpretive lens, grounding the entire argument in a specific textual moment rather than abstract assertion.
- It draws productive parallels between two Trier films, strengthening the claim that "goodness as self-destruction" is a deliberate directorial theme rather than an isolated narrative choice.
- Integration of feminist critical sources (Kaplan, Zerilli, Jackson) provides theoretical scaffolding without overwhelming the close reading of the films.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates close reading combined with thematic comparison: it anchors its argument in specific dialogue from Breaking the Waves, then uses that anchor to illuminate a parallel structure in Dancer in the Dark. This method — establish a pattern, then test it across a second text — is a reliable technique for film and literary analysis essays at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by contextualizing Trier's filmmaking style and the interpretive difficulty his work poses. It then introduces the central thesis through the epilogue's medical diagnosis. Subsequent sections trace Bess's psychological and religious backstory, interpret her acts of prostitution as expressions of a warped but sincere moral drive, and extend the argument to Selma in Dancer in the Dark. The paper closes by linking both characters to feminist theories of cultural constraint and female self-sacrifice.
Introduction: The Challenge of Trier's Films
If you have never watched a Lars Von Trier film, you are likely to find yourself extremely confused by the subject matter or purpose of a film like Breaking the Waves. The film is deceptively simple where story is concerned, yet it explores so many contentious issues and highlights such deeply buried controversies that one wonders why it was made at all. What exactly was the purpose of making such a movie? If you are familiar with Trier's past work, however, you are in a better position to answer that question, because you may already be aware that Lars Von Trier simply loves making films that are different to the point of becoming eccentric.
Most of his work is deliberately unconventional, and since the Nouvelle Vague techniques of filmmaking are employed, not everyone is likely to fall in love with it. One thing is certain, however: you cannot easily forget his films — not because of the story itself, but mostly because of their disturbing content and the issues they compel you to think about. How many times would a viewer leave the cinema with a million questions in mind, each of which appears to have no obvious answer? That is what happens with Trier's films, and with Breaking the Waves you can simply double the number of questions you will be left with. Why did Bess do what she did? Was she really a good woman? Was she truly in love with her husband? Did her husband respect her, or did he simply use her for his own pleasure? The list goes on.
In this paper, we shall address only one of those questions — an answer that may help resolve the others as well. We shall discuss the concept of "good" as presented by the director and examine whether Bess was indeed a good person in a religious, moral, and social sense.
References
Louise J. Kaplan, Female Perversions: The Temptation of Emma Bovary (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
Linda M. G. Zerilli, Signifying Woman (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994).
Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London and New York: Methuen, 1981).
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