The Deep Blue Sea
Directed By:
Terrence Davies
Written By:
Terrence Davies, adapted from the play by Terrence Rattigan
Starring: Rachel
Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale, and Ann Mitchell
Director of Photography: Florian Hoffmeister, Editor: David
Charap, Production Designer: James Merifield
With
the cinema of Terrence Davies, sometimes all it takes is one shot. The British
director can say it all with one marvelous stroke of cinematic precision. In
his latest feature, The Deep Blue Sea,
it comes quite early. During the film’s abstract, almost wordless prologue, we
see at one point the camera swirl around lovers Hester and Freddie, naked in
bed, their bodies so perfectly aligned, they look like two puzzle pieces coming
together. Halfway through the shot, Davies slowly cross-dissolves to the exact
same shot, except we are back in the present, and Hester is alone. At this
point, we don’t know what has happened to Freddie, but we can feel the
tremendous sadness behind the eyes of Hester. She exalts a loss, which we learn
is not one of physical proportions, but actually metaphysical; A love that
simply cannot be kindled, with no hope of coming back.
And
in his first narrative film in over a decade, Davies captures the sublime,
devastating tragedy of love in this adaptation of the play by Terrence Rafferty
set in 1950s London. Davies has often been an autobiographical filmmaker—his
first two features, Distant Voices, Still
Lives and The Long Day Closes,
play more like memory totems (as does his 2008 essay film, Of Time and the City). You get the sense that there is still some
of Davies’s past creeping into The Deep
Blue Sea through the background visuals, but most of the film is dedicated
to these characters, which Davies inhabits with beauty, and devastating
emotions in this day long narrative.
