There's a moment early in Hedda when our protagonist fingers the key around her neck, the one that unlocks her father's pistols, and you realise she's been doing it the whole time. Compulsively. A person might handle their wedding ring with uncertainty because they are not sure about their desire to keep it.
Nia DaCosta's adaptation of Ibsen's 1891 play relocates the action to 1950s England, where Tessa Thompson's Hedda has just returned from a honeymoon with George Tesman, an academic so anxious he seems one bad review away from collapse. The couple bought an enormous property which exceeds their financial capabilities to own.
Or rather, no, let me correct that: Hedda has convinced George to purchase it, with money secured through the sleazy Judge Brack, played by Nicholas Pinnock with the quiet menace of a man who knows exactly what he's owed. The house transforms into a prison before the first guest arrives at the party.
And what a party. The entire story of the film takes place during one disastrous evening which DaCosta uses to build an intense and disordered environment instead of Ibsen's conventional drawing room setting. Thompson navigates through the disordered environment as if she were leading the entire situation. Which, of course, she is.
The economics here are brutal and everywhere. Hedda is the illegitimate daughter of a general, raised in proximity to wealth but never fully admitted to it. "She reveals to him that her father gave her only these guns before he disappeared. The statement takes on a different meaning because he failed to provide her with social standing or financial stability or a recognized family name. Her marriage to George provides her with financial stability although it lacks romantic affection. The system fails to achieve its designed objective. George needs the university position to keep them afloat, and the person he's competing against is Eileen Løvborg, Hedda's former lover, now sober and brilliant and accompanied by her new partner Thea.
DaCosta's gender swap of Eilert to Eileen, played by Nina Hoss with that particular German intensity that makes you forget to blink, clarifies what was always implicit in the original text. Of course Hedda pulled away from this relationship. Of course two women in love in this era couldn't simply choose each other. The film doesn't belabour this point, which I appreciate, honestly, it trusts you to understand what "someone like you" means when Brack tells Hedda she made "the safe choice, the only choice."The term safe creates a feeling which makes people feel they are receiving blame.
The bodies in this film reveal the narrative which the dialogue occasionally avoids during the second viewing. Watch who gets to sit down. People who are always in motion and performing and making ongoing adjustments can be observed. Thompson performs Hedda as a character who recognizes her need to entertain the audience because it ensures her stay in the room while she works on destroying everything. The camera shows a floating dolly shot when she first lays eyes on Eileen at the party which caused me to tightly hold my armrest. The external appearance of desire and panic shows no distinction between them.
The production design presents itself through a beautiful style which requires significant financial resources while also imposing certain limitations. The entire house contains all its beautiful items which serve as financial obligations. Every immaculate costume is a uniform. The process of performing belonging in spaces which were not created for you must be extremely draining according to my thoughts.
The story concludes differently than Ibsen did in a way which I will not reveal but the ending places you at a doorway which seems appropriate. Hedda has been in doorways the whole film. In the gap between who she was allowed to love and who she was allowed to marry. Between the freedom she glimpses and the survival she can't abandon.
DaCosta and Thompson have made something that respects its source material enough to interrogate it. The movie fails to achieve its mark because the historical dialogue delivery is inconsistent and several minor characters become indistinguishable from each other while the middle section of the story requires viewers to wait through some slow moments. But when it works, when Thompson tilts her head and delivers "Best time to leave the party is after something terrible has happened, but before the police come," you understand why this play has survived for over a century.
Women begin fires because they wish to witness everything transform into ashes. Women start fires because they lack permission to create any other form of heat.
I'm still not sure which one Hedda is. I suspect that's the point.
