This is not your grandmother’s "Hedda"

By Aisha Harris

In Hedda, an intoxicating headrush of a film written and directed by Nia DaCosta, party guests are descending upon an English estate when the 1951 Betty Hutton song “It’s A Man!” begins playing. The needle drop is brief, but the lyrics you don’t hear in the film reveal the song to be a pointed insertion.

“If it acts just like it's the boss /

When it knows that you are, of course … It's a man!”

“It’s A Man!” is a cheeky ode to the ineptitude of manhood, poking fun at patriarchy’s trappings while imploring women to half-heartedly accept them. How fitting for it to soundtrack this spirited take on Hedda Gabler, about a woman seeking to escape boredom with her bland academic husband by manipulating the affections and interests of everyone in her orbit.

Henrik Ibsen’s 19^th century play has been adapted for stage and screen many times, providing generations of powerhouse actresses (Ingrid Bergman, Glenda Jackson, Cate Blanchett) with a dastardly title role to play. With DaCosta’s interpretation, a slinky and mischievous Tessa Thompson comfortably sashays into that lineage, and the result is a dazzling rendering of caste, lust and ambition in 1950s England.

This Hedda’s Hedda stands out from her predecessors, as a mixed-race woman born out of wedlock to the renowned General Gabler. All her father left her when he died were his prized guns and a scant proximity to high society, which will hardly do for someone like Hedda — who, as one character puts it, possesses an “insatiable appetite.” To maintain a foothold in the upper echelons, she’s married handsome scholar and “dull fool” George Tesman (Tom Bateman), convincing him to go into debt to purchase a grand countryside estate they cannot afford. Naturally, the occasion calls for a fabulous party they cannot afford.

DaCosta confines Hedda to a roughly 24-hour period, including said party, during which unfolds a wickedly absorbing chain of events. As guests pour into the decadent digs (the film was shot on the grounds of Flintham Hall in Nottinghamshire), the married hosts’ many worlds — professional, personal, or as is often the case, both — collide consequentially throughout the evening. Hedda’s “bohemian” friends mix and mingle with George’s stuffy academic cohort; Thea (Imogen Poots), an old schoolmate of Hedda’s, crashes the party and finds herself unwittingly ensnared in Hedda’s web of machinations.

But the most crucial visitor is the formidable Eileen Lövborg (Nina Hoss, a force), Hedda’s one-time paramour, and George’s present rival for a university position. The women have plenty of unfinished business between them that Hedda is more than eager to exploit, to the most extreme ends.

As Hedda, Thompson has a ball being the agent of chaos, asserting her dominance through calculated mannerisms: an affected way of speaking that’s vaguely Brit-ish and calls to mind the Transatlantic accents of classic Hollywood stars like Katharine Hepburn; curt remarks accompanied by her gentle yet potent guiding touch of an arm or shoulder with those white-gloved fingers. The actress understands Hedda is herself doing a performance, a putting on of airs that seems to have been perfected through years of being an outsider, an act she envisions as a necessary tool for survival. Very rarely does that mask slip and reveal vulnerability, but when it does – it goes. Though this façade is apparent to pretty much everyone except the clueless George, her natural magnetism nevertheless allows her to impulsively scheme and play her party guests like a fiddle to get what she wants — to a point.

DaCosta’s most significant alterations to Ibsen’s text serve Hedda well. Bending Eileen's gender (previously Ejlert) while setting the events post-World War II but pre-Swinging ’60s lends that character’s professional aspirations added heft, and puts her in tension with Hedda for reasons stretching beyond that of a mere scorned lover. (The best scenes involve the two women verbally sparring over the life choices each has made.)

And Hedda’s race is integral to the interplay. Though hardly overstated and rarely commented upon directly, the viewer can infer and understand plenty about her twisted relationship with the acerbic family friend Judge Brack (Nicholas Pinnock). As her closest confidante and another Black person who’s managed to accrue some standing among the white elite, he’s the only one who truly “gets” Hedda as much as she can be “gotten” — the Addison DeWitt to her Margo Channing via dry, scathing observations of Hedda’s diabolical behavior, who sometimes, even, goads her on.

To choreograph this bumpy night, DaCosta assembles a stellar team that includes cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, production designer Cara Brower, and editor Jacob Secher Schulsinger. They find the beat and make the film dance, sometimes literally: a standout moment finds the revelers swinging in the golden-hued ballroom to a live band playing another Betty Hutton number, “It’s Oh So Quiet,” a song that oscillates between a whispered, serene waltz and the explosion of a big, strutting brass band, not unlike the structure and cadence of Hedda. Suddenly, the music fades to a dim echo but DaCosta’s camera keeps swirling close-up on Hedda letting loose, her exerted gasps and breaths amplified. (Those sonic exhalations echo throughout composer Hildur Guðnadóttir’s evocative score.) This sequence sets the stage for the seamless transition into the pivotal next act – and presents a visually effective moment which struck me as a possible homage to Spike Lee.

The filmmaking industry’s progress being as slow and nonlinear as it is, DaCosta occupies a rare space as a Black woman filmmaker. Unlike many of her peers and forebears, she’s had the opportunity to helm five features in less than a decade, and each has been a totally different vibe: her feature debut Little Woods, for one, is a quiet and very good indie about a parolee hustling to survive and support her sister in North Dakota (also starring Thompson); her next film is the zombie franchise installment 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. But Hedda suggests DaCosta’s at her most creatively free, at least thus far, in this mode. For the viewer, she excavates the pleasures in watching an antiheroine meddle maniacally and unabashedly, spinning a spectacular mess that’s impossible to look away from. Hedda may or may not possess any real, tangible power in her day-to-day life. But for a few hours at least, she is the boss.