The
Deep Blue Sea is a Fragmented but Fitting Drama
by
Kristin Battestella
Fractured
people are trying to fix themselves and more in this 2011 British
adaptation of the 1952 post-war play by Terrence Rattigan. While some
of the symbolic, broken framework and mid century pace will deter
viewers, the intersecting character studies here provide plenty of
modern intrigue and social examinations to discuss.
Hester
Collyer (Rachel Weisz) has left her older husband Sir William (Simon
Russell Beale) and has been living with former Royal Air Force pilot
Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston). The aristocratic Hester, however, has
found living with the devil may care Freddie is not as she expected.
While her husband vows there will be no divorce and wants to keep
this scandal quiet, Hester contemplates suicide thanks to her
emotional upheaval and the turbulent consequences of the post-war
times...
This
is London, 1950, and director Terence Davies (The House of Mirth)
opens the 98 minute melodrama with a bleak suicidal monologue. The
old fashioned dialogue will be difficult for some, and silent
establishing montages with snippets of sunny memories or outdoor
happiness may be confusing as well. The
first half hour does eventually catch up in real time before more
redundant stalling recaps what we already saw, and the entire drive
by start seems unnecessary, a dry delay in the telling of the tale on
top of stuffiness and suicide as a crime that today's audiences will
already find tough and unfamiliar. The
whirlwind recollections highlight the blissful, but they are intercut
with a slow, lingering, dreary reality, and the result is uneven
rather than a balanced pre-war etiquette versus breaking free
conflict. I understand the intentionally broken narrative structure
symbolizing the fractured minds and hearts of its players, but
for modern speedy viewers, The Deep Blue Sea will
be a little too arty in the summary of its affair. Ironically,
The Deep Blue Sea is rushed
in its disjointed timeline, too – this liaison has been happening
for months yet the skipping around viewpoint creates willy nilly
emotions. It's tough to appreciate the anger and regret from moment
to moment, and we might have understood the passion and pain more had
we seen the bad marriage, felt the swept up romance, and then saw the
cracks of the arrangement in linear fashion. Fortunately, once
you get through the fifties styled constructs, the script is
delightful. Actual, uninterrupted conversations blossom into
character development, and hearing the players express themselves
truly tells the audience what a tumultuous time this has been. The
Deep Blue Sea is a day in
the life of an affair, but getting to know the characters replaces
the fallout because we can't see the behind closed doors action.
Affairs, alcohol, clinging to the old aristocracy – how does one
rebuild themselves and a nation when talking about shell shock and
sex is stiff upper lip taboo? The rigid, unyielding pre-war society
that sustained these people during The Blitz is now festering an
inability to cope with the war's unknown aftermath.
Oscar
winner Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener) beautifully
captures this post-war era and looks the classic
and reserved part needed for The Deep Blue Sea. Women
weren't supposed to be so shocking back then – though we know they
totally were – and Weisz delivers sophistication alongside being
scandalous and seemingly carefree in a slip or robe. We may not see
much saucy beyond lightweight lingerie and sideview nudity,
but Hester is enticed by Freddie's reckless abandon and clings to
him, desperate to consume him and get her kit off. When her minister
father tells her to go back to her husband, it isn't what Hester
wants to hear – she is done with dull safety and intends to speak
her mind. No, she shouldn't be angry
or ashamed for having gotten what she wanted – a man to make her
feel better – but she can't have it both ways and therein lies the
titular dilemma. Hester is too accustomed to aristocratic
style, and this dalliance can't be
sustained once physical or emotional needs turn the passionate into
an arrangement that is just as stuffy, non-talkative, stilted, and
awkward as her marriage was. Looking through our modern lense, this
back and forth, uneven behavior can make Hester seem bitchy and high
horse. It's tough see what either man likes about her when she is too
busy blaming Freddie for her problems. Does she love him or
just need him to love her? There is a difference, and Hester is too
confused within herself to accept Freddie for who he is.
She
expects him to remain simple and fill her needs, be a big man and fix
her mess, or conveniently come up to her high society perfection.
Hester never considers that these things won't happen, much less the
notion of giving a little his way. Her extraneous pressure makes
their good loving damn depressing. Did she think this relationship
would be no less turbulent when turbulence and passion go hand in
hand? By comparison, was her marriage really so bad then without such
love and lust expectations from Sir William? Hester is put to the
test as an honor and hold, sickness and in health missus, but she
only compliments Freddie, asks if he wants breakfast, and shines his
shoes when their torrid is at its end. She has the conversation about
where they aren't going when it is too late – just like her husband
did with her. Hester is both strong and progressive in a time when
women weren't supposed to be so gung ho, yet she never learned how to
be herself and thought another man would make it better. Can she make
it on her own? This is a superb performance from Weisz, and it's
wonderful to see an unhappy woman's perspective and mid life
awakening – reflections so often dismissed in favor of some
blossoming young love phooey. As I asked after seeing Weisz in Agora,
why aren't there more roles like this? Where are the
movies that make room for female performance and character movement
rather than superficial babe spectacles?
Hello.
Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers, Crimson Peak) has
the first line in The Deep Blue Sea,
and it is a keeper! He looks great in a period suit with a
fedora and slick fifties short hair, too, when most of today's actors
simply can't carry off this past debonair much less relate the mix of
excitement over war glory and its lingering pain. Freddie hides his
shell shock with drinking and a lot of fun – mocking the toughness,
joking with sound effects, and telling tall tales with jolly good
chap RP punctuations. We understand why Hester would be swept up in
this adventure and take such a wonderful risk, but what are
Freddie's needs in this relationship? He goes golfing and expects
their playing house to go smoothly – forgetting that running away
with a married woman won't be so dandy. Freddie needs Hester to take
care of him – he notices when she doesn't look at him when he
enters the room but seems oblivious to how upset she is and
wonders what he's done wrong. Freddie ignores her request not to read
her suicide letter to him, for it is addressed to him and therefore
his to do with as he pleases. He wears his emotions on his sleeve but
that doesn't disguise the fact that he is also stilted within himself
and childlike stunted by the war more than he cares to admit. He's no
doubt passionate, but Hester expects him to shut off his pain. She
wants him to man up, drink, and not reveal the barbarism of war, but
Freddie is correct when he says he is not a villain for wanting to
express himself in more than just the accepted alcoholism of the time
or when it is convenient for her.
While
the audience probably expects weighted roles from Weisz and Beale,
Hiddleston more than holds his own with the elder dramatists thanks
to an honest and tearful but no less simmering and manly performance.
With less screen time and little room to maneuver in the period
constructs, his kettle about to boil over character adds a much
needed counter point zing to The Deep Blue Sea. Freddie is
just as damaged – and perhaps more traumatized – than Hester is
yet he makes no demands on her when she berates, bullies, and calls
him childish. It isn't okay for her to insult him as uncultured and
groan when she doesn't want to hear about his bravery. He's right in
calling her extreme for contemplating suicide over his forgetting her
birthday. After Freddie has already seen a war far worse, he is still
trying to live it up and smile scars and all. Why can't he share that
turmoil with her? Hester wants to get her O on all well and good, but
remember, men of this time weren't supposed to talk about shell shock
or share their fears and war trauma just as women weren't supposed to
be so sexually taboo. Freddie is capable of the softness she wants,
but he needs her nurture in return. Whether he's uncouth or not
shouldn't matter if you love him, but Hester ignores his tender need
to sing, dance, and ground himself with their romance. She needs one
fix, he needs another, and neither knows how to give an inch to the
other. This affair could save Freddie, but whether he is drunk and
still a good pilot or not, he returns to daredevil flying because he
realizes their lust may be just as destructive. It pains them both,
but he loves Hester enough to let her go into an unknown but better
fate than their would be lethal passion.
Well,
it's twin beds for Hester and Simon Russell Beale (Falstaff to
Hiddleston's Hal in The Hollow Crown) as her older, mummy's
boy husband Sir William. Immediately the audience wonders why they
are even married, but this stuffy, tea time, and tennis watching very
British and totally mid century way was the utmost of society before
the war. William wants everything to go back to the way it was, where
topics of conversation never go beyond the lovely garden or milk in
first – everything remains sanctimonious and insufferable, so
naturally, no one really says much of anything. Had he noticed her
juicy phone calls and unhappiness sooner and loosened up some, maybe
this saucy might not have happened. We don't spend enough time in the
bad marriage to see how things turned ill, but we can't accept his
stagnant views any more than William could reconsider his rigidness.
No divorce, no admittance to scandal, just the expected, stalwart
notion that this carefree will pass. The disjointed timeline hampers
Beale's characterization somewhat – ten minutes after he vows no
divorce, ten months have passed and he's mellowed considerably.
However, while William knows this type of fling can't last, he too is
going about keeping his wife the wrong way, the only way he knows
how. We can't expect him to change overnight even if he himself knows
there must be a new path. William also isn't the villain by any
means, but his very station makes him unable to simply talk to Hester
and admit there is a wrong much less resolve it. This is a lovely,
classy, reserved performance from Beale in what is not an easy role
to play. Likewise, landlady Ann Mitchell (EastEnders) neither
condones nor condemns Hester and Freddie's supposed living in sin,
balancing a brief but fine line in looking the other way and letting
what's private be private. As part of an elderly couple that has
grown strong and overcome ills with dignity, she understands how past
pain and loss will make each person love more, not less. That is a
true match, not passion that fills the vacuum created by war's chaos.
Through its small ensemble, The Deep Blue Sea parallels
how society was before the war, dares to accept things are
different, and asks, 'Now what?'
Fittingly,
the palette for The
Deep Blue See is
subdued and dark. Though
not colorless thanks to traditionally scandalous red lips and nails
or patterns of the period, there is a post-war sense of dreary, an
ongoing recovery from a time when flamboyance and excess were rare
and rationed. Clutter, books, pearls, and nostalgic styles, however,
create warmth and patina along with old lamps, sunlight, and
fireplaces. Smoking mannerisms, hazy air, long drags, and deep
exhales also indicate fractured nerves while looking out windows and
filming through glass makes for a trapped perspective. The weeping
violin score matches the melancholy, but the music disappears or
reappears in old fashioned, intrusive swelling like a tragic opera
over what cannot be said. The group pub singing of some great classic
tunes has much more impact – remember, there were few records to go
around and they had to sing what they wanted to hear. Walking to the
phone booth to make a call, needing the exact change, and more such
sentimental flavor, however, feels hampered by budget restrictions or
the original play foundations. Thankfully, The Blitz sequence is
perfection, a parallel that does everything it has to do using very
little, and these minimal sets and locations do keep The
Deep Blue Sea intimate,
even quaint. Maybe the torrid doesn't go far enough for today's
audience considering the sexual impetus of the tale, but there is
something to be said for this fifties styled chaste compared to the
new millennium tawdry. The blu-ray edition's commentary,
cast interviews, and director master class shed more light on the
history for this melodrama– as do the subtitles for anyone who may
not fully understand the colloquialisms of the era.
Yes,
The Deep Blue Sea
would have had a larger audience had its structure not
paralleled the constraints of the time and simply told its naughty
straight in real time with no back and forth disruptions. The
deliberately compromising design will be too arty and overly
noticeable for some, stifling spoon fed viewers out of the fine
performances with this uneasy narrative on top of at times unlikable
character behaviors. Despite condensing its heavy into a short time,
this is uncomfortable to watch and not for casual viewing indulgences
– mislabeling The Deep
Blue Sea as a romance probably
hurt viewer expectations as well. The reflection of the era
and its mirrored upheavals, however, make The Deep Blue Sea an
interesting starting point for viewers not in the post-war know.
Classic film audiences will not be bothered by the mid century
framing design and subdued tone of The Deep Blue Sea while
upper education sociology and psychological classrooms can
discuss the lingering historical effects anew. Were the post-war
passions and turbulent realizations worth the pain and love lost?
Just because the subject matter is strained by design doesn't make
the dilemma any less difficult or uninteresting. Thinking film
lovers, fans of the cast, and those interested in complex character
studies should give The Deep Blue Sea a
thorough examination.
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