The Deep Blue Sea (2011)

Directed by: Terence Davies | 98 minutes | drama | Actors: Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale, Karl Johnson, Barbara Jefford, Ann Mitchell, Harry Hadden-Paton, Sarah Kants, Jolyon Coy

The film story of ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ is an adaptation of a 1952 play by Terence Rattigan. In the opening scenes, we see a young woman writing a suicide note. She lives in a simple apartment, closes the windows and doors, opens the gas fireplace. It is London, somewhere around the year 1950. However, her suicide attempt is discovered in time by her landlady. Then the story moves on to what came before.

Hester (Rachel Weisz) is married to Sir William Collyer (Simon Russel Beale) and lives with him a comfortable and wealthy life in a wealthy environment. It is a marriage full of routine, a relationship without any passion. William is a judge, holds a good social position. Their relationship is in fact based on nothing more than affection and security.

Hester falls passionately in love with Freddie (Tom Hiddleston), who is the complete opposite of William in everything. Freddie is a cheerful flier who had his heyday as a pilot in The Royal Air Force during World War II. He still lives on that emotionally and he can talk about it with great passion and convincingly. Freddie strikes the right chord with Hester, who puts everything on the line. She discovers emotional love and risks everything for the fierce, deep passion she feels.

She trades financial security, social and relational security for the young Freddie, who is constantly on black seed. He spends a lot of time in the pub with his friends. But with him she can share love and fierce sexual feelings. With her background as a minister’s daughter and with a deadly boring husband who only thinks in legal terms and obeys strict social conventions, the break is complete. He refuses a divorce and wants to make her life miserable. In later stages he tries to win her back and envisions her an existence in which her sins are forgiven and she can resume her old safe life.

The cultural world of difference between Freddie and Hester leads to fierce clashes in their relationship and Freddie’s fear of commitment becomes increasingly dominant in their relationship.

‘The Deep Blue Sea’ shows with thorough camera work what painful social consequences people were confronted with in England in the early 1950s of the last century, where the story is told through Hester’s eyes. The radical choice she makes was shocking for the time, but perfectly normal in the current era and fitting in the much more independent position of women.

During the film, Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto is almost dominantly present. The acting is convincing, the locations are well chosen with good dialogues. Visually, there is therefore little to fault. The storyline unfolds almost excruciatingly slowly with interlude shots in the underground and singalongs in the pubs. In the long run, the story of ‘The Deep Blue Sea’ more or less ripples on. It does look pleasant, but because of the little drama, the attention can drift off a bit. For lovers of an era of 1950s England and the then prevailing moral conventions, there is plenty to enjoy, especially from a visual point of view.