The Deep Blue Sea Reviews

To be honest, I had no idea what to expect from this rather obscure feature but since I have a weak spot for Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, eventually, I really had a hard time to care about the damned thing. First of all, this movie was another example that a random chronology must be one of the of the most annoying gimmicks because it is very often used only to make a story look more complicated that it actually is. In this case,  during the first half, I was really wondering where the story was getting at with these jumps back-and-forth but, at the mid-point, it finally became crystal clear what the hell was going on. Basically, it was about an attractive but really neurotic woman who married a rich but boring man and fell in love with a pretty but also really shallow fellow. Seriously, that’s all it was and, even though Rachel Weisz was very nice to look at and gave another strong performance, I never felt sorry for this woman at all. As pointed out by Freddie, the character played by Tom Hiddleston, it seemed that she married with the first guy who proposed to her and fell in love with the first guy who gave her a little bit of attention.  It is pretty obvious that the makers were inspired by some vintage British classics, especially 'Brief Encouter', but this movie never reached that level. At least, it was visually pretty neat and the actors involved were pretty good but I’m afraid the whole thing didn’t really work for me.

Great use of colors and lighting, solid acting but uneven story and the acting couldn't save the uninteresting characters they were playing.

It’s interesting to watch the 2011 version of Terence Rattigan’s play after having recently watched the 1955 one. Anatole Litvak’s version lacked a personal touch and much insight into Hester’s character, but it contains a great performance from Vivien Leigh. It’s compulsively watchable, but makes an odd decision to film such a quiet, intimate story with widescreen and Technicolor panache. Terence Davies made a film that’s equally as great, but also lacking in a few of the same eras. Maybe the problem lies in the material?

Why exactly does Hester throw out her high society marriage to run off with a RAF? The sarcastic answer I want to give is because the RAF is played by Tom Hiddleston, and wouldn’t you runaway with him if you had the chance? But the truth of that matter is never justifiably resolved, nor is the neurosis at the heart of Hester’s character. This film also operates in flashbacks, but they’re not as cleanly presented here. I typically have an aversion to non-linear film-making unless there’s a damn good reason for it. The Deep Blue Sea comes up with a pretty good one: these are Hester’s memories, which she’s trying to sort out, examine, and move on from. So it makes a certain emotional sense to have these memories be a little blurred and jumbled at the beginning before becoming more orderly as time goes on.

Yet it’s in trying to draw a clear reasoning behind Hester’s breakdown that this film slightly stumbles from being sublimely great. It sometimes spells out its themes too grandly, or takes easy shorthand when a quiet moment would have done much better. But perhaps there just isn’t as much to Hester as I originally thought. She seems to be in love with love, wrapped up in the idealism of a hopeless romantic without having to face the realities of making something work. Maybe Davies, clearly a romantic given some of his unnecessarily arty framing of the lovers in the early parts of the film, just couldn’t smooth over the rough patches of the script?

No matter though, just like Leigh before her, Weisz steps up the challenge of trying to make sense of this woman and delivers a finely textured performance. When the writing announces itself too grandly, she uses to delicate features to look like a slowly cracking china doll. This is a role that could easily be given over to hysterics, lots of awards show clip worthy moments of her crying and breaking down while loudly pronouncing the sorrow of her fate, but Weisz is a smart enough actress to know that would not be in service of her character. Maybe modulating her performance to such a low-key is what kept her sidelined in the 2011 Best Actress race? She was definitely deserving of consideration, even if the film makes awkward choices around her central performance.

As for the men in the life, Hiddleston seems an odd choice to play a man who is worried about coming across as intellectually inferior and emotionally unavailable. His high-cheek boned good looks seem right at home as a loquacious wit or a member of the bourgeoisie. No matter, while he doesn’t entirely look the part, he plays it to great strength, nailing scenes of drunken emotional stupor or callously lacking in empathy, yet still giving us glimpses of the passionate man who made Hester throw everything away. And Simon Russell Beale plays the jilted husband with quiet pride and wounded dignity. It’s clear from several scenes that he cannot connect emotionally with others due to the abuse thrown at him by his mother, but that he does truly love Hester, even if that means letting her go. Beale follows Weisz lead and does it all with subtlety and grace.

A bit boring because I think the rhythm of the movie is very slow. But the ending is touching because my heart really broke when I saw Tom Hiddleston, a fabulous man shouting at Hester (which was like he was shouting directly at me) and I was behaving like Hester once. So, it really touched me.

Understandably, one can totally confuse this British drama for a film about the underwater world and it’s features due to the description of the title (especially the 1999 film Deep Blue Sea), but the nature of the title definitely serves its definitive meaning within the film. Time and time again, we have witnessed these dramas involving traumatised civilians that take us on an emotional and thought-provoking ride where the occurred events lead to a very tender and important message. The play by dramatist Terrence Ratigan that this is based on has already been adapted once before into a film that starred Vivien Leigh and Kenneth More, but now comes forth a second adaptation of the play.


Although it is a 1950s British drama, the extraordinary title The Deep Blue Sea provides a personal reference to death as it illustrates how one’s life can sink to an incredibly low level that could go as far as to one considering an attempt at suicide. So, as a result of this, the film exposes an explanation informing that we do not know what goes on inside the mind. The Deep Blue Sea is not adapted in chronological order so it consists of just after the suicide attempt and then taken into numerous flashbacks that exposes the motive to do so. It literally opens up the consequences and personal affects that suicide really has, not so much on the individual committing it, but for the loved ones around that person.


Out of the six films since 1988 that he has directed, Terence Davies hasn’t received any major recognition and a critical round of applause for his work. Considering that his latest film The Deep Blue Sea stars the dazzling and beautiful Rachel Weisz and uprising actor Tom Hiddleston, his work is yet again extremely underrated. What he provides with The Deep Blue Sea are concepts that are partially linked with the tones from a certain number of films directed by David Lynch, such as rather dark background settings, eerie music score and with some unique and creative camera angles. Including being the director, Davies also took the honourable role of penning the script of The Deep Blue Sea. There is so much dialogue within as it involves a lot of thought-provoking and up-close conversations like a play normally does. So all-round, Terence Davies honours the original play by Terrence Ratigan but makes it a solid drama.


To be quite honest, The Deep Blue Sea is one of those rare films where only a certain low number of specific key characters involved. Academy Award winning British actress Rachel Weisz has and we’ve seen her mostly as this simple, young, gorgeous woman in the majority of films that she has been part of. Her performance in The Deep Blue Sea as Hester Collyer is rather different from anything she has done, so she provides a slightly new style of performance in this one. She’s a lot darker in nature and is a deeply distressed and fairly psychologically disturbed young woman who is in her own personal trap and tries to break free! Weisz’s performance perhaps isn’t Oscar bait, but it’s definitely one of her best roles. Tom Hiddleston who got his breakthrough earlier in 2011 after Thor and he gives a distraught and emotional performance as Freddie Page. The chemistry between Freddie and Hester could have been a tad bit stronger, but it was solid enough to get to grips with and to feel the emotional attachment between them.


Overall, The Deep Blue Sea is a highly underrated drama that is definitely one of the best British films of 2011 as it provides both emotional drama and a psychological in-sight into the mind. No, this isn’t going to be one of the greatest films that you’ll ever watch, but it is still provides what every film of this particular genre should: a meaningful message to its audience. So, for this reason, it is a recommended drama that is really worth checking out.