It’s not often a remake of an Academy Award winning best picture comes around. Alfred Hitchcock helmed the first incarnation of Rebecca in 1940, based off the novel by Daphne du Maurier, and now Ben Wheatley is giving it a try. As big of a movie buff as I’d like to be, I have not made my way through every Hitchcock movie as of yet, and Rebecca is one that’s slipped my radar. It’s a damn shame, because comparing the pair would have been fun.
Rebecca starts out in 1930’s Monte Carlo, where a lower-class lady, unnamed (Lily James), encounters and marries wealthy widow, Maxim de Winter (Armie Hammer). She follows him back home to his extensive mansion, Manderley. Soon the new Mrs. de Winter realises just how influential Maxim’s previous wife once was, as the Manor’s staff adored her, telling Mrs. de Winter how Rebecca, was one of a kind, beautiful, and loved by all. They also remind her that Rebecca was the love of Maxim’s life, and she is nothing like Rebecca. Our protagonist feels trapped, between an obligation to live up to her predecessor and paving her own way as the new lady of the house. To make matters worse, Maxim won’t give his opinion on the matter, refusing to talk about his deceased former partner, and Mrs. de Winter comes to suspect foul play.
It sounds silly to say, considering how lavish it is, but the movie is lacking originality. The movie seems to be going through the motions, like it’s acting out the CliffNotes version of the story, without any shade or character of its own. We don’t know anything about these people before they’re married, and it’s as if we should – the lady is poor and Maxim is very rich, but apart from small talk, they offer very little. The movie is around 2 hours without credits, but it still feels rushed; I said the same thing about Fences, and picked that it was based off a play before I knew it, just because the dialogue was so fast, like it was urgent to cram everything in. I imagine the screenwriter for Rebecca has the novel with a sea of pink paper tabs on every page, because every detail is so damn important. My response to this would be, condense and simplify, to allow this adaptation to breathe. One of my favourite moments of the film comes when Mrs. de Winter notices there are still brown hairs in the brush that was once Rebecca’s, and it continues to dawn on her how little around her is her own… but the movie doesn’t even linger long enough on that winning gem, to exude maximum dramatic impact, before hurrying along to the next moment. I was disappointed when the movie went to court, because I felt the story should have been over after Maxim’s confession, if the story really was about these two love birds, as it had started. Everything after that felt like a epilogue, and I felt the time could have been better spent elongating the tension in the middle part of the film, where Mrs. de Winter is coming to terms with her new house.
That being said, there’s a good story in here. Rebecca holds a murder mystery, and is as close to a ghost story as you can have without an actual ghost. Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas), is menacing, as the wily Head of the Household, who was very close to Rebecca, since she cared for her, for her entire life. The movie doesn’t work to update any attitudes to modern-day sensitivities; for example, it seems perfectly normal for a woman to marry a man after only a few days, as it probably was back then. Then she starts noticing his flaws and wonders why he’s cagey; ah, the drawbacks of marrying someone you just met – it doesn’t matter how many seasons of Married at First Sight they make, I’m still not convinced it’s a good idea. But on a lighter note, I have decided I’d do a terrible deal to own a yellow suit like the one Maxim’s wearing on the movie poster, and the very same one he was wearing in Monte Carlo; are they fashionable right now? They should be. It’s one of many extravagant costumes for this movie, if you’re into that sort’ve thing.
With the exception of Kristen Scott Thomas, who I felt goes beyond the rest, Armie Hammer, Lily James and the accompanying cast are serviceable. Cancer as a motive for suicide; did Viola Davis cover that on How to Get Away with Murder? The movie speeds along with a sameness that never makes the ride pleasurable. If Rebecca was a loaf of bread, it would be underproved.
2.0
Leave a Reply