After starting his career with a series of highly stylized
films, Lars von Trier made Breaking the
Waves, his first after co-founding the Dogma 95 movement, which preached
absolute austerity: only location and handheld shooting, only contemporary
settings, no non-diegetic sound or optical manipulation, no superficial action,
no credit for the director, etc. Typically, he had trouble even playing by his
own rules, and von Trier’s break-through film arrived without Dogma
95-certification, largely because of the hyper-stylized, digitally-colored
chapter titles accompanied by non-diegetic pop songs by the likes of Jethro
Tull, David Bowie, and Elton John to establish the seventies time period.
