Everything in Nia DaCosta’s Hedda seems too beautiful to hurt you—the amber lighting, the ornate furniture, the deceptively posh British accents. Everything, that is, but an ever-present gun, refusing to lull the audience to any such delusions. And yet, for all its beauty, the film appears more polished than it is profound.
The film is less an adaptation so much as a reincarnation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler, a story about a woman who, over the course of a night, manipulates the people around her to disastrous ends. As the film’s writer, producer, and director, DaCosta exercises complete creative control on the project for the first time in her career, and the result is patently hers.
It was admittedly ill-advised to read Ibsen’s original play before I watched the film; as much as I tried to resist it, Ibsen’s Hedda was on my mind as much as she was off screen. But it wasn’t long before I realized that trying to map the 19th–century Norwegian onto DaCosta’s Hedda would be a futile endeavor.
Among many changes to the original, DaCosta reimagines Hedda as a queer and mixed-race woman in 1950s English society. Rather than simply adding texture, the societal alienation that ensues fundamentally changes her as a character. Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler is a story about impotence—Hedda, confined to a bored middle-class life, fruitlessly seeks agency and control by maliciously manipulating the lives of others. DaCosta instead externalizes Hedda’s mental confinement, placing her in a world where seeking freedom is a doomed endeavor from the very beginning. DaCosta has no interest in portraying ennui-induced insanity à la American Psycho; this is a story about competition, vengeance, and passion.
It came as no surprise, then, when DaCosta explained in an interview with me that queering Hedda wasn’t about committing to Ibsen’s original thematic vision for the play. “I was drawn to changing Eilert Lövborg into Eileen Lövborg because I felt that character made more sense as a woman,” DaCosta said, referring to Hedda’s ex-lover and rival. “And then I was like, ‘Oh, everyone’s gay.’” It was only until after the gender swap that she realized the characters’ desires for sexual liberation worked alongside the original themes of agency and freedom, while compounding the societal pressures Hedda felt forced to conform to. In effect, it made Hedda’s desire for freedom a response to tangible, external threats, rather than internal malaise and implicit societal expectations. DaCosta went on, “Everyone is trying and everyone believes that they can find some sense of freedom, and they all sort of fail and succeed in different ways.”
So too, however, did the movie. Somewhere between intention and execution, the adaptation loses its grip. The film is undeniably a visual triumph, with meticulously composed shots and a camera that keeps pace with the chaos of the night. Equally brilliant is Tessa Thompson’s casting as Hedda, who manages to wield a pistol with the same careless elegance one might handle a cocktail. Yet, where Ibsen’s original play found its power in implication and restraint, DaCosta’s version struggles under the weight of its own explicitness.
What was once subtext becomes text, and that is then underlined, bolded, and highlighted. In externalizing Hedda’s motivations, DaCosta flattens her as a character, seeking sympathy for actions that deserve little to none. Without clear internal motivations, the protagonist’s actions are not unjustified so much as they are confusing and inconsistent.
The same confusion goes for the rest of the film’s characters, all of whom DaCosta transforms into three dimensional characters in their own right without adjusting their actions to match. Where this becomes most problematic is in her depiction of Hedda’s husband: once aloof but well-intentioned, he becomes controlling and vengeful, now with his own motivations for power. Though it rounds out his once admittedly flat character, it not only makes his actions misplaced and insincere, but it once again externalizes Hedda’s confinement. Her motivations become a response to oppression, rather than impotence or her own flaws. The change in characterization also results in the justification or complete omission of some of Hedda’s cruelest actions, undermining the power of the story. Ultimately, in attempting to flesh out and add layers to Ibsen’s world, DaCosta loses focus, leaving the core of the story irretrievably buried.
But there is something to be said about my attempts to confine the story to one of pure rationale. Contradiction is inherent to emotion, and DaCosta is unafraid to embrace that dissonance, capturing it with precision even if unable to make sense of it. If the film falters as an adaptation, it succeeds as an expression of Hedda’s own conflicting desires, seeking beauty where there may be none. After all, as the characters remind us, to seek beauty is, inevitably, to invite chaos.
