The Deep Blue Sea

The return to film­mak­ing of Ter­ence Davies always gives cause for cel­e­bra­tion. A fig­ure respon­si­ble for some of the finest works in post-war British cin­e­ma, Davies’ films are remark­able for their sym­phon­ic struc­tures and metic­u­lous sense of com­po­si­tion and atten­tive­ness to detail.

The­mat­i­cal­ly, phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al endurance, class, restric­tive fam­i­ly ties and the destruc­tive effects of reli­gion and oth­er dog­ma are recur­ring con­cerns. In all these regards, The Deep Blue Sea is clas­sic Davies ter­ri­to­ry and a potent reminder of why he is a direc­tor to cherish.

Hes­ter Col­ly­er (Rachel Weisz) leads a priv­i­leged life in 1950s Lon­don. The beau­ti­ful wife of pas­sion­less but dot­ing high court judge Sir William Col­ly­er (Simon Rus­sell Beale), Hes­ter – in a mate­r­i­al sense at least – wants for noth­ing. To the shock and dis­may of those around her, Hes­ter walks out on her mar­riage and life of lux­u­ry to move in with a dash­ing young ex-RAF pilot, Fred­die Page (Tom Hiddleston).

Find­ing her­self emo­tion­al­ly strand­ed and phys­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ed, Hes­ter feels Fred­die drift­ing away from her, and in an attempt to win him back attempts sui­cide. Suc­ceed­ing only in estrang­ing her fur­ther, Hes­ter is forced to con­front all too clear­ly the foibles of the human heart.

Named after the dilem­ma of hav­ing to make the choice between two equal­ly unde­sir­able sit­u­a­tions, The Deep Blue Sea is adapt­ed by Davies from Ter­ence Rattigan’s acclaimed play, which ini­tial­ly shocked British the­atre­go­ers with its frank expo­sure of nation­al inse­cu­ri­ties about sex and class. An uncom­pro­mis­ing study of the fear of lone­li­ness and the frus­trat­ing­ly unre­li­able nature of love, the play is now con­sid­ered Rattigan’s crown­ing achievement.

In the hands of Davies – whose adap­ta­tion was endorsed by the Rat­ti­gan estate in the cen­te­nary year of the dramatist’s birth – the sto­ry of a destruc­tive love tri­an­gle also reflects the state of ear­ly 1950s Britain, a coun­try in the throes of post-war rationing whose sense of pow­er, worth, wealth and iden­ti­ty has been eroded.

Post-war Britain has been very much a vital and recur­ring set­ting for Davies and here, with an insight­ful and per­cep­tive empha­sis on the posi­tion of women in the patri­ar­chal 1950s, there is a clear lin­eage with 1988’s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Dis­tant Voic­es, Still Lives.

Strip­ping away much of Rattigan’s expo­si­tion and many of the extra­ne­ous char­ac­ters that inhab­it­ed the orig­i­nal pro­duc­tion, Davies, a schol­ar­ly afi­ciona­do of the melo­dra­ma, gives con­tem­po­rary audi­ences an almost unbear­ably mov­ing and assid­u­ous­ly non-judg­men­tal sto­ry about women’s lives and desires. By exten­sion, the film also looks in a wider sense at the quest, fre­quent­ly fruit­less or at best fleet­ing, for indi­vid­ual ful­fil­ment and freedom.

Hand­some­ly designed (the sets and cos­tumes are impec­ca­ble) and lumi­nous­ly shot by Flo­ri­an Hoffmeis­ter, The Deep Blue Sea, as is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Davies’ films, also makes excep­tion­al and res­o­nant use of music. A recur­ring leit­mo­tif, Samuel Barber’s Vio­lin Con­cer­to gen­tly under­scores the emo­tions and, along­side the ter­rif­ic and incred­i­bly sub­tle per­for­mance of Rachel Weisz, is one of the film’s most fun­da­men­tal and essen­tial components.