‘Hedda’ is a delicious power trip

Toward the beginning of “Hedda,” we find our titular heroine (Tessa Thompson) standing alone atop her vast estate wielding a pistol. Down below, Judge Roland Brack (Nicholas Pinnock) makes his way across the grass. He’s arrived early for Hedda’s party, thrown in celebration of her marriage to George Tesman (Tom Bateman). 

Hedda admonishes Brack for his earliness. “Shall I punish you?” she drawls, pointing the gun at Brack. She suddenly aims wide and fires, chuckling at Brack’s horrified reaction. She wins this round. 

“Hedda,” written and directed by Nia DaCosta and adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s play “Hedda Gabler,” is all about punishment and power, centering around the woman on top of the parapet who’s as likely to turn her gun on herself as anyone else. “Hedda” is a whirling dervish of power struggles, featuring a powerhouse performance from Thompson at the eye of the hurricane. Setting the story in the 1950s, DaCosta beautifully updates Ibsen’s play to explore questions of sexuality and race within one woman’s quest to find even an ounce of control.  

Hedda (bohemian, the illegitimate child of a general) and George (stuffy, an academic) are throwing this party not just as a way to celebrate their union, but also as a way to land George a professorship. It’s imperative that George get this job – the Tesmans are living in a too-large house they can’t afford with little to no money to spend. But the sudden arrival of Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss), George’s academic rival and Hedda’s one-time secret lover, blows up the evening with catastrophic consequences. 

“Hedda” is filmed in such a way to make the audience feel like another guest at the party. There’s something almost gossipy about the camera, giving you the same salacious, excited feeling you get when you hear something you weren’t supposed to. DaCosta, along with cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, don’t rely heavily on closeups. When you’re not swirling around the party, the camera putting you right in the middle of all the raucous action, you mostly find yourself on the periphery – eavesdropping on secret conversations, or hastily following different characters through the chaos, desperate to see the inevitable explosion. 

And there’s bound to be an explosion where Hedda is concerned. Thompson is as wonderful as she’s ever been, her words clipped and sweet, but coming down on her unsuspecting victims like a knife in the back. DaCosta’s script is delicious, filled with double entendres and the veiled barbs of polite society. For Hedda, who delivers those barbs with a sharp tongue, words are one of the only ways she believes she can wield power. 

In this iteration of the story, Hedda is not just illegitimate, but also Black. It’s rarely explicitly commented on, but it’s always lurking under the surface. It’s in the way the maid (Kathryn Hunter) rolls her eyes as Hedda inspects the kitchens. It’s in the way a professor’s wife murmurs “She’s duskier than I thought she’d be,” after being introduced. It’s in the way Brack – a Black man still with more power than Hedda – tells her that in marrying George, she made the safe choice. “The only choice, really, for someone like you.” 

Eileen doesn’t see Hedda’s choices as self-preservation or elevation, but rather cowardice. As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that her relationship with Eileen was something Hedda sacrificed in order to carve out a role for herself where she feels safer and more in control. In marrying George, Hedda has made herself the alluring queen of a group of people she believes herself smarter and better than – a group she enjoys toying with because she knows how they feel about her. This is a world where she can control everything and everyone. She’s always aware of whose eyes are on her, aware of who needs another drink, carefully maneuvering her little puppets just to her liking. Eileen – outrageously intelligent, queer, and alcoholic, someone who could ruin what little status Hedda has at the drop of a hat, but who she can’t help but be drawn to – represents a lack of control. George – almost impotent in Hedda’s eyes, a man who can’t fathom any type of sex outside of the blandly heteronormative – is easy. 

But where Hedda finds power, she too finds misery. Eileen and her new protege/lover Thea (Imogen Poots) are just reminders of the life Hedda could have had if she weren’t born into the situation that she was, or if she were brave enough not to care. When a pivotal moment between Eileen and Hedda ends with a devastating confession, setting off Hedda’s need for punishment, she digs her claws deeper into her machinations. That potent combination of jealousy, lust, and self-preservation sends Hedda – and all the other characters, for that matter – on a certified power bender. 

Hedda might be the control center of power in the film, but everyone is grasping for what little they can reach. George and Brack both seek to control Hedda, albeit in different ways. Thea wants the power to stop Eileen from drinking, and Eileen seeks to control the way her male colleagues view her. The question of the age difference between Eileen and Hedda arises late in the film, causing the audience to rethink everything they’ve seen up until that point. And Hedda wants power in whatever way she can have it. She cannot be happy, not in her mind at least, so she will take every last opportunity to make everyone around her as miserable as she is. Whatever the cost. 

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