Movie Review : Rebecca (2020)
There aren’t more terrifying ghost than your past failures. Times when you screwed yourself out of something great, knowing full well this was your only shot. It’s why exes make the best ghosts: they exist in real life and in fiction. In your head and in the real world. I don’t know if director Ben Wheatley has a diabolical ex who keeps him awake at night, he sure resurrected the worst ex in popular culture in his adaptation of Daphné Du Maurier’s novel Rebecca.
After slightly missing the mark with his adaptation of J.G Ballard’s seminal novel High-Rise, Wheatley properly resurrects the dead for the benefit of a young generation of horror freaks and anxious film nerds.
Rebecca tells the story of a young woman of modest upbringing (Lily James) who is seduced by the rich, mysterious and brooding Maxim De Winter (Armie Hammer) after a short courtship in Monte Carlo. She quickly becomes his wife and moves in with him to his enormous and iconic estate. Over there, she meets the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Kristin Scott Thomas) and many other people under the spell of Maxim’s deceased wife Rebecca.
People who don’t want her there.
The driving themes of Rebecca are control, deception and agency. The protagonist is being controlled economically by her employer (Ann Dowd) at the start and transfers control over her to Maxim. His motives for controlling her are different. He doesn’t want the shadow of his first marriage to dictate his second, but it is exactly what happens because he is still being controlled from the grave by the venomous ex he never had the courage to stand up to.
Our protagonist’s plight is different. Hurled into an emotionally fucked up situation, she is trying to gain agency over her life. Maxim, Mrs. Danvers and the staff of Manderley keep trying to manipulate her by denying her information on the past of the estate. They do not want to talk about Rebecca whatsoever, although it’s clear that she is still pulling their strings. She is literally and metaphorically haunting the place like the controlling ex she is.
This adaptation is successful because Ben Wheatley primarily tells a story of relationships. The setting is foreign and the Gothic themes outdated, but the impulses driving the characters are contemporary and relatable. When Maxim asks the protagonist to marry him, it feels like a rushed decision made by star-crossed lovers. When Mrs. Danvers is talking down on her, she feels like a scornful friends of Rebecca trying to get ill-fated “justice” for her employer.
Rebecca is a pretty dated story, but the characters are driven by timeless motives. Ben Wheatley understood that and incorporated just the right dose of teenage drama in these otherwise self-serious characters to make them gripping and relatable. His tight, intimate direction eventually makes you forget Rebecca is more or less a grim and melodramatic version of Downtown Abbey. It’s a wild, sweeping Gothic film with the heart of a chamber play.
I really liked Rebecca. It is colorful and artificial looking, but laser focused on the most timeless aspects of Daphne Du Maurier’s novel and therefore feel like a fresh new look. It doesn’t feel like an old movie, but like a new, millennial take on a story many of us weren’t familiar with. Ben Wheatley has a very well-defined style that you may or may not enjoy*, but he understands the nuances that make an adaptation worth watching. Well, this time he did.
7.7/10
* It’s very “Instagrammy” for lack of a better word. His films are filled with beautiful people and muted colors.
