1. mrich

   9

   This was a profoundly sad film. I don't think I was happy at any point throughout the film. However, the dynamic between Hester and Freddie was so emotionally compelling and heart wrenching. It shows the anguish and misery that is often integrated with love. The movie isn't easliy digested, and I don't think I want to see it again but, I am still glad I did. It was such a real love story and it will rip your heart to shreds.… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 1 users said Yes.
2. MarcDoyle

   7

   This is one of those tough evaluations. Yes, it explores a very tactile, real, passionate love triangle - an intense young woman in a loveless marriage to an older man falls passionately in love with a fun-loving younger pilot - but it's such a tough movie to get though, that I can't score it among the best of the season. Weisz is perfect for the role, but you just feel like slapping her throughout the film.... "snap out of it!" It's not a film that I can recommend, but it does vividly capture the predicament.… Expand

   • Helpful? 1 of 1 users said Yes.
3. ClariseSamuels

   4

   The Deep Blue Sea is interminable, deadly boring, and it boggles the mind. A sensuous young woman played by Rachel Weisz is unhappily married to an older man who is kind, hard-working, and extremely wealthy. She willfully trades him in for a passionate love affair with a man who is so carefree, irresponsible, and immature that he is positively cruel, but she is so starved for stimulation that she welcomes the cruelty because she finally feels something. In fact, she feels so much that it drives her to attempt suicide, an attempt that occurs at the beginning of the film, yet afterwards, everyone feels secure enough to leave her to her own devices, when she clearly needs a psychiatrist. They had them back in 1950. Sigmund Freud set up his private practice in 1886, so they definitely had psychiatrists back in 1950. Hester's lover, Freddie, played by Tom Hiddleston, chooses to leave her after finding out about the suicide attempt the same day, or perhaps it was the next, not caring a whit that he is almost condemning her to try to kill herself again. The onscreen chemistry between Weisz and Hiddleston is not overwhelmingly genuine, despite a nude love scene where Weisz's character, Hester Collyer, stares lovingly at the sleeping Freddie and proceeds to lick his arm like an affectionate puppy. This was meant to be a sign of uncontrollable passion.
   
   From the very first scene, Weisz, who has to carry the entire film, has a perpetual expression on her face that clearly states, "I'm not happy." The message of the film is also stated explicitly early on, in a scene where Hester and her husband, Sir William Collyer, played in an understated and expressive way by Simon Russell Beale, are dining with Hester's mother-in-law. Hester says she has no passion for tennis, and her mother-in-law warns her against passion because it always leads to something "ugly" (echoes of Shakespeare's "violent delights have violent ends"), and recommends a "guarded enthusiasm" which is safer than passion, although Hester notes that it is also duller. This brief dialogue lays down the foundational philosophy, superficial and trite though it may be, for the entire film. Anything is tolerable in a passionate, sadomasochistic relationship, as long as, heaven forbid, it isn't dull. When her devastated husband asks Hester for an explanation and wants to know what happened to her, her dreary answer is "Love, Bill, that's all." In this film, love is as welcome as a Blitzkrieg.
   
   Weisz's performance is uneven, sometimes bordering on electric, as when she stands on the subway platform in grief and despair after Freddie hangs up on her, but often has to depend on her ability to display fleeting emotions that play across her face. She doesn't always succeed and mostly conveys a sense that she is perpetually morose. In the end, Freddie is brutal, and Hester is left abandoned and alone. At first she sobs uncontrollably, but then suddenly walks to the window and stands there--there are a lot of window-gazing scenes--with an inexplicably tranquil smile on her face. The camera pans to what appears to be wreckage still left over from the war. Does passion lead to carnage the same way war does? It's not clear that the film had enough depth, despite the title, to draw that conclusion.… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.
4. Morpheus00

   2

   Interminable, indulgent and pretentious (unrequited) love drama which fails to provide one sympathetic main character (rich girl looking to indulge in a spicy affair; volatile paramour with an adosecelent attitude; ageing, doting cuckold). The intrusive, melodramatic score and clanging 'arty shots' further annoy and mystify. Poor show.… Collapse

   • Helpful? 1 of 1 users said Yes.

See all 12 User Reviews